First Regional Rankings Released

 Here's a look at the first Regional Rankings that came out a couple of days ago......Wanted to get this in sooner than I did but have been working some extra hours as of late and still celebrating my LA Rams hoisting the Lombardi Trophy as well :p .  In any event, let's take a look at the Region 9 (West Region) rankings that were released.

1 Simpson 22-1 14-0 2 UW-Whitewater 22-3 12-2 3 UW-Eau Claire 18-7 9-5 4 Wartburg 19-4 12-3 5 Loras 17-6 11-3 6 Bethany Lutheran 17-6 12-0 7 UW-Oshkosh 18-5 7-4 8 GAC 19-4 17-3 9 Augsburg 19-5 19-2

Obviously, things are set up a lot differently this year with most of the WIAC schools now included in this new Region 9.  I've updated the records of the teams listed with their most up-to-date records as well......I don't think there's that much surprise with the first two teams listed on here although UW-Eau Claire in the number three position is a bit of a surprise to me.  Bethany Lutheran appears to be an almost sure bet out of the UMAC and UW-Oshkosh may be treading on thin ice at first glance right now.  Again, there's some things that need to shake out across the River before we know who and how many will come out of the WIAC.

Now, the good new for the MIAC is that both GAC and Augsburg made the Regional Rankings.  The bad news?  They're in the eighth and ninth positions, respectively, and right now anyway, it's difficult to see anyone other than the AQ coming out.  Of course, that's not necessarily etched in stone right now; we've seen things take crazier turns in the course of just a few short weeks.  But two things working against the MIAC right now are (1) it was a relatively "down" year for the conference and (2) because there was an agreement set up to play a full round-robin schedule, MIAC teams were limited in the amount of non-conference games that they could play which in turn limited their opportunities to match-up against other potential regionally-ranked teams.  This error is the most egregious, IMHO, and I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to talk about that later.  Right now, it is what it is and both GAC and Augsburg are going to have to take care of business on their ends if they want to solidify their chances of getting in.

Fire away with thoughts....