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UPDATED (03.05.18 6 PM EST): Denver (#45) just beat UNC (#4). As this Ranking is a race to the top, not to the bottom, UNC holds their #4 spot while Denver moves to #3. Duke, who beat Denver, moves to #2.
If you look at today’s NCAA D1 Men’s Rankings, you’ll see that Denver is ranked #4, #4, #6 and #3. To be fair, having Duke as your only loss is respectable. The problem is that Denver’s three wins were against Air Force (who is 1-4 and their only win was against a weak Marist team), Cleveland St. (who is 1-5 and their only win was against Air Force), and Furman (who is 0-5). Denver lost to Duke, beat three weak teams and… They’re #4 in the nation. People give rankings like a teacher gives lollipops to their favorite students. If Rankings were intellectually honest, they would look very different than what we are seeing. This is my attempt an an intellectually honest ranking. You will see teams, like Denver, who are ranked below mediocre teams who both you and I know Denver would beat. None the less, this ranking does not capture what you and I and Quint or anybody else thinks would happen if they played. This Ranking is based solely on the results of games played.
1- Albany
2 (tie) – Syracuse and Duke
4 (tie) – UVA and Denver
6 (tie) – OSU, UVM, UNC, Loyola, and Marquette*
11 (tie) – Jacksonville, Villanova, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and Maryland
16 (tie) – Delaware, Navy, Notre Dame, and Towson
20 (tie) – Boston University, Lehigh, UMBC, Richmond, Mt. St. Marys, Yale, Penn*, and Army
28 (tie) – Bucknell, Providence, Sacred Heart, UMass, Harvard, Holy Cross, Michigan, and Princeton
36 (tie) – Bryant, Dartmouth, Monmouth, and Siena
40 (tie) – Detroit Mercy, UMass-Lowell, Lafayette, Wagner, Manhattan, and Robert Morris
46 (tie) – Canisius, Mercer, Quinnipiac, Bellarmine*, and Rutgers
51 (tie) – Brown, Cleveland St., Colgate, Hofstra, St. Johns, and Penn State*
57 (tie) – Air Force, Cornell, Drexel, Hartford, and Stony Brook
62 (tie) – Fairfield, Hobart, Marist, and VMI
66 (tie) – Furman, Hampton, Binghamton, High Point, NJIT, and St. Josephs
Asterisks * – There are four asterisked teams: Penn, Marquette, Bellarmine, and Penn State. With 67 of the teams, there was relative clarity of who should go where. With these four teams, it was more complicated. For example, Penn beat a highly ranked Duke yet they lost to a lowly ranked Penn State. Conversely, Penn State lost to a mid-tier Robert Morris squad yet they beat Penn who, at the time, was highly ranked. So, for obvious reasons, there is confusion about where to put these teams with such varied successes and failures. As a solution, we removed each teams’ most detrimental loss as well as their most vaulted win in order to stabilize the relevant teams.
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