D3Boards.Com Soccer Top 20 Fan Poll

[Gregory Sager]

In case anybody's wondering, I'm the one who low-balled North Park at #5. We'll have to wait and see if the NPU administration will allow me to set foot on campus to call the game tonight.

Five of my picks were on-the-nose as far as the fan poll goes. But I was a serious outlier on several of the NESCAC teams; I'm the one who picked Wesleyan, Conn C., Tufts, and Hamilton higher than everybody else, in some cases much higher. Never let it be said that my living 730 miles west of the NESCAC's westernmost outpost has given me a case of regional bias.

Four of my 25 picks failed to make the Top 25. The highest-ranked team I didn't have on my ballot is #18 Pacific Lutheran.

I like the diversity of 39 different teams appearing on at least one ballot, which is a lot for a poll that only has six voters. I think it's indicative not only of a lack of groupthink but of the breadth of competitive teams in D3, particularly this early in the season.

[PaulNewman]

And let the debating begin.

My top 5 were Messiah, NPU, Chicago, Kenyon, Calvin.

My second 5 give were Hopkins, Stevens, Wesleyan, Oneonta St, Tufts..

My biggest disagreements are CMU...cannot believe how high folks voted the Tartans and given their anemic schedule to put it mildly that last second goal vs JCU is working very hard.  Same with Gettysburg for me...best results a win over .500 St Mary's and a draw with Catholic.  I could see somewhere between 20-25 for the latter but 17 (D3soccer) and 15 (fan poll) seem really high.  As for CMU, I think UWEC, Drew, MSOC, Western CT, etc have had tougher schedules.  I think we can now safely dub CMU as the "Rochester of Great Lakes."

Clarkson in my mind I caved to slot in at 24 so 14 and 16 seem too high.

I did not include Hamilton who has to show me a little more, and I instead included Midd at 19 who I think got overly punished compared to the other NESCAC expected top dogs.

Speaking of NESCAC, I had Wesleyan at 8, Tufts at 10, Conn at 11, Amherst at 13, Bowdoin at 14, and then Midd at 19.

I had W&L at 12.

For misses compared to the other polls, very, very surprised Luther and Pac Lutheran omitted.  I had Pac Luth at 15 and Luther at 17.  Also St Thomas at 18, CNU at 21, North Central at 22.

I have pumped Denison more than anyone, but for me the Big Red were just short and based on results so far need to do a little more.

Shakiest pick for me I think was MSOE at 25, and by that point there are like 15 teams you could choose. 

[jknezek]

I think you have to remember that 39 teams appeared on the ballots. So you look at W&L at 10th, they had 1 10th place vote and everything else was lower. But because there was so little consensus, their overall rank ties their highest vote, not their mean vote. You see a lot of schools that "outperformed" their votes because the votes had such a large disparity. CMU, Conn College and Tufts, tied at 11, had votes ranging from 4 to not ranked. Drew got 15pts from one voter, but no one else even listed them.

Really, outside the top 8, who had a low vote of 13 amongst them and only 5 votes total 10th or below, there was very little consensus, and I don't think that's unusual this early in the season. We had voters focused on total wins, we had voters who focused on one or two quality results, we had voters focused on SoS. The 6 of us generally took some pretty disparate tactics in deciding our ballot.

I suspect, as the season goes on, that disparity will be significantly reduced.

[PaulNewman]

I'm clearly getting confused....we went from no polls to three (actually four) -- D3soccer, fan poll, my own ballot, and Coaches poll.

Anyway, the fan poll did have Pac Luth and Luther in there.  The teams I included that did not make the fall poll were St. Thomas, Midd, Montclair, CNU, N. Central, MSOE.

[Gregory Sager]

Shakiest pick for me I think was MSOE at 25, and by that point there are like 15 teams you could choose.

I watched MSOE for the first time yesterday, and, yeah, that's not a Top 25 team at all. The Raiders had to engineer a miracle comeback with three goals in the final 21:45 just to draw level with a very unimpressive Elmhurst side.

[PaulNewman]

Shakiest pick for me I think was MSOE at 25, and by that point there are like 15 teams you could choose.

I watched MSOE for the first time yesterday, and, yeah, that's not a Top 25 team at all. The Raiders had to engineer a miracle comeback with three goals in the final 21:45 just to draw level with a very unimpressive Elmhurst side.

I guess.  A lot of teams have looked unimpressive.  They did beat UW-P who waxed Wheaton, and also beat a decent Dubuque squad.  In hindsight maybe would change that last slot for UWEC or Drew but also of course voted before the draw last night.

[Gregory Sager]

Wheaton's dramatically down from its usual standards (perhaps having to do with WC's off-season coaching change), and Dubuque is the proverbial box of chocolates this season.

I'm not impressed by Drew's gaudy record thus far, but if I was forced to reward either Drew or MSOE on my ballot I'd go with the Rangers over the Raiders.

[jknezek]

One other fun comment on the disparity... d3soccer.com's poll had 31 teams in the receiving votes category. So they had 56 teams receive at least one vote. Now I'm not sure how many voters they had, way more than the fan poll, but that's a pretty big disparity as well.

However, looking at a comparison of the 2 polls, we shared 21 of the 25 teams. The first team that was unlisted was D3Soccer having Montclair State at 16, while only 3 of our 6 had them in the poll and none higher than 20th. We listed Pac Lu and Luther at 18 and 19. Pac Lu tied Willamette late on Sunday night. Regardless, D3soccer had them as their 3rd team RV while Luther came in at their 6th team in the RV category.

The D3soccer poll then had St. Thomas (TX) at 21. They were our first team in the RV section, with 4 Fan voters putting them between 19th and 24th. Then for the last 2, D3Soccer went with F&M and Lynchburg. F&M had one fan voter putting them at 14th but the rest passed, and Lynchburg got no fan voters. Being 3-0-3 wasn't enough, though one tie is Messiah's only blemish of the season so far.

The Fan poll wrapped up with Loras and Rochester, with Rochester being the second RV team for D3Soccer and Loras falling quite a bit later. Loras only appeared on 2 fan ballots, but at 12 and 18, while Rochester appeared on 3 ballots 19,20, and 21.

[Ejay]

I thought our fan poll was pretty good, but the D3 poll has a real head scratcher for me.  Who gave Gettysburg a first place vote???

[SimpleCoach]

I thought our fan poll was pretty good, but the D3 poll has a real head scratcher for me.  Who gave Gettysburg a first place vote???

I try to mix it up.... albeit illogically... but that is certainly a bridge too far for even me.

SC.

[jknezek]

Honestly, due to the size of D3, the difference between 15th and 25th is negligible and unknowable. I get concerned if we are seeing teams at 1 and 20, and I think in the fan poll it's interesting that Conn College got a 4 and a no vote. That's about where I start to get a little antsy.

But so long as there is consensus on the top 5 or so teams, near consensus through about 10, and valid reasons for 11-25, that's about the best you are going to do.

When looking at these teams, if they haven't played recently and have no common opponents, there simply isn't a great way to say one team is 15 and one team is 25. There are 30-50 teams in any one week that can make a legitimate case for 10-25. While those numbers go down as the season goes on, they probably don't go down by as much as we wish, and it's hardly clear cut who is 15-25 the week they set the tournament field.

[PaulNewman]

^ Agreed.

[jknezek]

D3Boards.com Soccer Fan Poll Games as of 9/25/2022

National Top 25

Rank		School			Points		Weekly Change		Voter Breakdown
1		Chicago (4)			170		1		1, 2, 3, 1, 3, 1, 1
2		Messiah (2)			167		-1		2, 4, 1, 3, 1, 2, 2
3		Kenyon (1)			162		1		3, 1, 4, 2, 4, 3, 3
4		North Park			159		-1		4, 3, 2, 4, 2, 4, 4
5		Stevens			142		2		6, 6, 6, 5, 6, 6, 5
6		Johns Hopkins			136		0		12, 5, 5, 7, 5, 5, 7
7		Wesleyan			135		-2		5, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, 8
T8		Hamilton			110		12		7, 8, 19, 12, 8, 9, 9
T8		Washington and Lee			110		2		13, 11, 8, 11, 9, 8, 12
10		Calvin			96		-2		8, 19, 10, 8, 10, 11, 20
11		Amherst			85		3		9, 14, 18, 9, 15, 16, 16
12		Connecticut College			74		-1		17, 18, 17, 10, 12, 23, 11
13		Gettysburg			71		2		10, 24, 11, 13, 14, 13
14		Gustavus Adolphus			69		8		11, 9, 22, 13, 17, 15
15		Oneonta State			68		2		21, 10, 17, 11, 15, 14
16		Carnegie Mellon			57		-5		24, 22, 9, 25, 13, 6
17		St. Thomas (TX)			50		---		22, 12, 20, 18, 16, 21, 23
18		Clarkson			46		-2		15, 14, 19, 10
19		Rochester			45		6		14, 13, 16, 24, 18
20		Tufts			42		-9		18, 21, 25, 14, 10
21		Middlebury			38		---		25, 13, 15, 17, 22
22		Drew			33		---		12, 12, 21
23		Bowdoin			32		-14		16, 24, 16, 18, 24
T24		Catholic			23		---		15, 17, 23
T24		Christopher Newport			23		---		16, 24, 20, 25, 22

Also Receiving Votes:
Cortland State (20) , Franklin and Marshall (18) , UW-Eau Claire (16) , North Central (IL) (12) , Coast Guard (11) , Montclair State (9) , St. Lawrence (8) , Babson (7) , Denison (7) , Lynchburg (7) , Western Connecticut (6) , Willamette (4) , Luther (3) , MSOE (3) , Williams (1)

Newly Ranked: St. Thomas (TX), Middlebury, Drew, Catholic, Christopher Newport
Dropped Out: Pacific Lutheran (Prev:18), Luther (Prev:19), Denison (Prev:20), Babson (Prev:23), Loras (Prev:24)

1 = 1st Place Vote, 25 = 25th Place Vote in Voter Breakdown
Special Thanks to the Voters: Gregory Sager, Ejay, SimpleCoach, College Soccer Observer, Paul Newman, jknezek, Mid-Atlantic Fan

[jknezek]

Couple things this week. Hamilton with a big move up, Bowdoin with the big move down. Some shuffling at the top, but the top 4 are on a tier to themselves with those 4 teams getting all 1st-4th place votes in various orders. The next tier is similar with Stevens and Wesleyan flopping around Johns Hopkins.

The two lowest votes for the Top 10 teams are a 20 for Calvin and a 19 for Hamilton. By and large, the top 10 was stable except for Hamilton and Bowdoin basically swapping places.

Gettysburg at 13 is the first team to not appear on all 7 ballots, while St. Thomas (TX) at 17 is the last team to appear on all 7 ballots.

7 NESCAC teams appear in the poll. 6 of the 7 are in pairs, with Bowdoin being the only NESCAC not sitting immediately before or after a NESCAC school. The sheer number of ties and intertwining wins and losses in the NESCAC seems difficult to untangle.

We have 15 teams in the RV category. That's up from 14 last week, but we have one more voter this week as well. 20% of the poll changed out this week, with 5 new teams. The highest ranking team to drop out was 18 last week (Pac Lu), and the highest ranking debutante is St. Thomas (TX) at 17.

The greatest voter disparity goes to Carnegie Mellon, who was 6th on one ballot and unranked on one ballot. One team made the poll on only 4 ballots (Clarkson), while 2 teams made the poll on only 3 ballots (Drew and Catholic).

[SimpleCoach]

The two that I don't get are Gustavus Adolphus and Catholic.  But otherwise, I don't have any disagreement necessarily with the teams.  Am surprised by both Luther and Denison being dropped.  I wouldn't have seen that.

As always, great job @jknezek.

SC.