Birmingham-Southern was ahead of Hardin-Simmons in this week's regional rankings. Will that be enough to get the Panthers into the playoffs? Greg Thomas's thoughts follow ... Birmingham-Southern athletics photo

By Greg Thomas
D3sports.com

On Wednesday afternoon, the NCAA released the second regional rankings — actually ranked this week — which gives us our first glimpse at the roadmap to finding the five at-large teams that will ultimately round the tournament field into that beautifully symmetrical 32-team masterpiece we are all so eager to see return. This week, Around the Nation is going to project the field of 32 and give D3football.com’s first projected bracket. We’ll do it again Saturday night after the polls close on this 2021 regular season. 

First, a bit of procedure. The 32 team field is composed of:

• Pool A. 27 conference champions from each of the 27 qualifying conferences. The NESCAC, as we know, does not participate in the postseason tournament. 
• Pool C. Five at-large bids, selected by a specific set of criteria- broken down into primary and secondary criteria (to be used when the primary criteria just doesn’t offer enough information to separate teams). 
• What happened to Pool B? Pool B is reserved for teams that play in conferences that do not have enough teams to qualify for an automatic bid or teams that play independent schedules. Division III football has no such teams and awards no Pool B bids. 

Pool A. As of this column’s publication, 16 of the 27 automatic bids have been clinched. Teams already in the tournament are: 

ARC - Central                        ASC - UMHB

CCIW - North Central             E8 - Cortland

MASCAC - Framingham State  MAC - Delaware Valley

NJAC - Salisbury                    NCAC - DePauw

NACC - Aurora                       NWC - Linfield

OAC - Mount Union                ODAC - Washington & Lee

SAA - Trinity(Texas)               SCIAC - Redlands

USAC - Huntingdon                WIAC - UW-Whitewater

Of the 11 remaining bids, ATN is going to assume the following teams currently leading their conference will win and clinch their conference’s Pool A bid: 

CC - Muhlenberg                   CCC - Endicott

ECFC - Anna Maria                MIAA - Albion

MWC - Lake Forest                NEWMAC - Springfield

PAC - Carnegie Mellon          

Three of the remaining conferences have de facto (or literal) championship games. ATN is making the following projections: 

HCAC - Rose-Hulman defeats Mount St. Joseph

MIAC - St. John’s defeats Bethel

UMAC - Greenville defeats Minnesota-Morris

And that leaves us with the Liberty League. The Liberty League’s exciting season boils down to the Dutchman’s Shoes game between RPI and Union. ATN is projecting that Union will hold serve at home (as has been the case in all of the LL’s key games this season) and defeat RPI. That result would make Ithaca the Liberty League champion (regardless of their result in Saturday’s Cortaca Jug game), and brings Union’s final regular season record to 9-1, which will be important in the next phase. 

27 down, five to go. At this point, a tableau consisting of the top ranked team from each of the six regions are compared directly with one another. The national selection committee will rank these teams using the same selection criteria used at the regional level, with the top ranked team being selected to join the field. The next team available from the region of the team that was just selected joins the tableau and the comparison/ranking process repeats itself until the field is complete — five rounds of ranking in total. 

At the beginning of the Pool C process, the teams available for selection are:

Note: records are Division III records, SOS is up to date as of the release of the second regional rankings, records vs. ranked opponents (RRO) reflect opponents ranked in the first regional ranking — this data should mirror what the NCAA used to rank teams this week. We’ll discuss points where our projections impact selection criteria. 

Merchant Marine, 8-1, .517 SOS, 0-0 vs. RRO
Union, 8-1, .530 SOS, 0-1 vs. RRO
Birmingham-Southern, 7-1, .525 SOS, 1-1 vs. RRO
Baldwin Wallace, 8-1, .515 SOS, 1-1 vs. RRO
Wheaton, 8-1, .495 SOS, 0-1 vs. RRO
UW-La Crosse, 6-1, .608 SOS 1-1 vs. RRO

This is our Pool C starting point and we should start by noting that we’re projecting Union to beat RPI and, along with Hobart’s ranking this week, will have Union carrying a 2-1 record against ranked opponents at selection time. In this first round of selection, I like UW-La Crosse with a win over a ranked team, a loss to their region’s No. 1 team that went down to the final play, and an SOS figure that is significantly higher than anybody else on the board. 

Joining the table then will be: 

Bethel, 8-,1 .541 SOS, 0-1 vs. RRO

Bethel is an interesting case. Remember that we’ve projected St. John’s to defeat Bethel in the MIAC championship game, which will saddle the Royals with a second loss, albeit to a regionally ranked team. Gustavus Adolphus being ranked this week will likely prevent Bethel from dropping below either Gustavus Adolphus (who the Royals beat head to head) or UW-Oshkosh who was ranked behind the Gusties. Even though Bethel has lost to the same team twice in ATN’s projection this week, we will not treat that second loss any differently than we would treat a second loss to any other ranked team. 

Back to selection. As discussed, Union is going to have stacked up a pair of regionally ranked wins that aren’t included in their primary data set from this week and that should be enough to put the Dutchmen in. The Liberty League performed extremely well in September, building a foundation for high strengths of schedule, and the league should reap what they’ve sown. 

Johns Hopkins (8-1, .510 SOS, 0-1 vs. RRO) now joins the table from Region 2 but Hopkins lacks a signature result and doesn’t seem likely at this point to be a significant factor in the Pool C selection process. Baldwin Wallace, if they win the Cuyahoga Gold Bowl this weekend, will end with a 2-1 record vs. RRO. Despite some close calls down the stretch, it seems difficult to ignore those RRO wins and the Yellow Jackets are my third choice. Heidelberg replaces Baldwin Wallace at the table, but with two losses, the Student Princes are also not serious players for one of the final two at-large bids. 

The fourth choice comes down to Birmingham-Southern and Wheaton. The Panthers have an RRO win (this week that win is the 30-20 win over Centre, next week it will be the 48-9 wipeout of Huntingdon — an upgrade for the Panthers). Wheaton lacks a signature win, but they are the one team that has pushed the No. 1 team in Region 5 (and the team that will be the top overall seed in the tournament). The lack of a third CCIW team in these rankings is the only thing that prevent Wheaton from having already been selected. I’m taking Birmingham Southern in this spot because of the ranked win in combination with their last-second defeat to Region 3 No. 2 Trinity, and enough of an SOS edge over Wheaton to be significant. 

With Birmingham-Southern in the field, Hardin Simmons joins the fray with a criteria line that reads 7-1, 0.528 SOS, 0-1 vs. RRO. We’re dealing with heavyweights here- two teams ranked in the top 10 of our Top 25 and this field is only big enough for one of them. Coin toss? Nearly. Neither team has an RRO win — the only teams on the board at this point that do are Bethel and Heidelberg and I don’t think we can accommodate teams with two Division III losses in the absence of another piece of compelling criteria — a head to head result, a common opponent result, or multiple wins over ranked teams. 

Looking at the results against ranked opponents, Wheaton lost 20-7 against North Central (ranked No. 1 in Region 5). The Thunder were within a touchdown until the final 96 seconds of the game. The Cardinals have defeated every other opponent on their schedule by nearly 50 points — Wheaton’s result here is impressive. Additionally, North Central has a SOS of 0.545 and has defeated another ranked team in addition to Wheaton. Hardin Simmons also has a close loss to their region’s top ranked team, UMHB. UMHB, like North Central has won the remainder of their games by nearly 50 points. One difference here is that UMHB has no other results against ranked opponents and has a 0.500 SOS — significantly less than that of North Central. Comparing similar results to top ranked opponents, I favor Wheaton’s result against a slightly stronger (per the criteria) opponent and will select the Thunder as the final team in. 

I will freely admit here that Wheaton’s at-large profile is not stout. Neither is that of Hardin-Simmons, if we’re being honest. It’s hard to envision a scenario where the national selection committee can say no to Wheaton five times — they’ve been that good all season. The challenge for Hardin-Simmons is different. They’ve been pipped by somebody in their own region and it looks like they will have to wait to get to the table. Fans of the Thunder and Cowboys are going to want to watch the Dutchman’s Shoes and the Cuyahoga Gold Bowl closely as these games are going to help determine how many single-loss teams with RRO wins are going to be potentially blocking them from selection. In short, they’ll want as few one-loss teams left as possible. Let the scoreboard watching commence!

The field is projected! Here is how I would bracket this field: 

The top seeds in this bracket are North Central, UW-Whitewater, Mount Union, and UMHB. There are very valid reasons why St. John’s could be a top seed and not UMHB, but it becomes exceedingly difficult to package teams in the northeast appropriately when three of the top four seeds are west of the Mississippi River. As it stands, I’ve taken some Region 1 and 2 spillover that couldn’t fit in the Mount Union region and packaged a pod to pair with the Texas/Alabama pod. 

Regular season rematches abound, which isn’t ideal, but I expect austerity to be the order of the day and extra expense to avoid regular season rematches seems unlikely. Linfield/Redlands and BSC/Huntingdon are probably unavoidable. Aurora returning to St. John’s would be seed appropriate. There’s not really another seed-appropriate matchup for St. John’s — would it be right to send an undefeated Lake Forest team to Collegeville? My feeling is that it wouldn’t be. 

Much will change between now and Saturday night and we’ll be back to do this all again. Enjoy Week 11 and for all of our fans of teams in the Pool C bubble — remember to breathe!

On tap 

It’s playoff season! We made it. Stay linked to D3football.com for playoff week coverage. Here’s what’s coming!:

Tomorrow: Quick Hits featuring our panel’s predictions and insights into this weekend’s games

Saturday: Game day. For the night owls, D3football.com’s final bracket projection.

Sunday: New Top 25 poll, NCAA Selection Show. 

Monday: Around The Nation podcast. Pat Coleman and Greg Thomas recap the weekend that was and preview the weekend to come in Division III football.

Tuesday/Wednesday: Team of the Week honors, features columns, playoff team capsules

Thursday: Around the Nation column

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Small college football is actually pretty massive. Division III is home to 239 teams, many thousands of student-athletes and coaches. There are so many more stories out there than I can find on my own. Please share your stories that make Division III football so special for all of us! Reach out to me at greg.thomas@d3sports.com or on Twitter @wallywabash to share your stories.