2008 Lax World MCLA Division 2 Top 25 Poll (4/16/08) is out!

[Cameron pederson]

why even play the game then if the outcome doesnt matter?

The outcome definitely matters and it is reflected in where I placed Creighton. I just believe from what I have seen and heard that Creighton is a better team than Dordt and that they played a subpar game by their standards (much credit to Dordt's defense).

I am not ignoring information. I am just weighing it in light of other information. The better team does not win every single game. The better team typically wins, but their are times it does not happen.

Dordt has lost to Carleton(currently #6 in UMLL) and beat Augsburg(Currently Last in UMLL) in OT. And they lost to a Nebraska team that UND(Currently #7 UMLL) beat by 7 goals. By simply comparing scores of teams that I have seen I am somewhat skeptical of both Dordt and Creighton based on OOC play. The rest of the poll looks pretty good to me. I would maybe have GVSU at #3. I watched them play UST and they were pretty talented.

[Rave]

Plus #3Dayton is playing #6Emory POST-SELC Championship. Very Unusual, and I don't believe it was scheduled untill midway through the season. Maybe Emory decided it was a nice safety net if they fall in conferance play and still want to make the tournament. On the topic of OOC sheduling, does anyone know the rules? I know you are not suppossed to schedule Conferance games until your respective conferance meetings in the fall, but are there rules about OOC scheduling?

This does seem odd to play after the regular season, but I do not believe their are any rules that say two teams can not play each other when ever they want too.
When and where is this game taking place? Since this is a post-regular season game, will this even matter in the final poll vote? Why not wait till next year to play them? Why risk possible injuries before the national tournament?

[The_Buddha_Man]

How is Creighton rated so high. They have no wins in the top 25 and lost to a team not even in the top 25. I also don't get how Southwestern is still up there. They have no top 25 wins and are being held to their ranking by losses.

Why doesn't anyone remember that we beat DePaul when they were ranked Top 25. Regardless of how you feel about them now, or where they are ranked, we did beat a Top 25 Team. We have a doubleheader this Saturday against 2 Top 25 teams. Like I said last week, this weekend's outcome will tell us a lot.

As for Dordt, I scratch my head while trying to game plan for them because nothing we do works, they are hard for us to beat. But to say they should be ranked ahead of us while only having a 1 goal win, and a more than a few losses to unranked teams, (not too mention some we beat) seems to me like bad polling. No worries, I am sure that at the end of the day this Saturday's results in Denver will speak volumes.

[Gvlax]

Plus #3Dayton is playing #6Emory POST-SELC Championship. Very Unusual, and I don't believe it was scheduled untill midway through the season. Maybe Emory decided it was a nice safety net if they fall in conferance play and still want to make the tournament. On the topic of OOC sheduling, does anyone know the rules? I know you are not suppossed to schedule Conferance games until your respective conferance meetings in the fall, but are there rules about OOC scheduling?

This does seem odd to play after the regular season, but I do not believe their are any rules that say two teams can not play each other when ever they want too.
When and where is this game taking place? Since this is a post-regular season game, will this even matter in the final poll vote? Why not wait till next year to play them? Why risk possible injuries before the national tournament?

Laxpower has it listed the 27th @ Dayton

[Gvlax]

GVSU has the situation where geographically there are not many ranked teams around us where we can just go visit for a weekend. The teams that are around us were all sent emails with follow ups. Some teams we hear back from, many we didnt. Like an earlier poster said, Im sure some of those teams would love to host a game with us now. St. Thomas turned down our first request to play them but with the gracious help of Moorheads coach he was able to get us that game and look how much that helped us. Also, when we scheduled Augustana they were ranked, also UWEC was hailed as a good team in the preseason so GVSU went after those two. It hurts GVSU how both of those teams turned out.

The CCLA seems to be struggling this year. If calvin was elgible to recieve votes im sure they would be in the top 25 this year but since they can not our game against them looks weak because they do not have a number 1-25 by their name.

CCLA is pretty weak this year besides dayton but we still have to play our conference games. To overcome this minimal quality games in our conference we have been playing anyone and everyone that would play us. We look at each game the same, no matter how weak the opponent. We use that time to work on our game and to improve just live everyone else.


So overall yes we do have a "weak" schedule compared to other teams but if you look close many teams with a strong schedule are games that they are required to play in their conference. GVSU will look to increase its budget for a spring break trip next year. If teams would like to give us ideas of where we should head to get "quality" games please let me know. Thanks.

[Ryan Jackson]

Just wait till next year Gvlax... assuming that Davenport and Aquinas are admitted to the CCLA in the fall, the CCLA will be a very strong conference, and maybe even a destination for OOC games. With Calvin being eligible for votes again, GVSU only graduating 4 seniors, and strong coaches at those two new schools--I see the possibility of having 3-4 ranked teams in one city, let alone one conference. Hope College also is on the up and up and received votes early in the season. The possibility of having five teams receiving votes in the Grand Rapids area should be a draw for visiting teams, and bolster the SOS rankings for the CCLA.

[USTLAX06]

How the hell does that make you 1st place when said team is undefeated?[/i]

Dude, your delusional. First of all you are taking "legit" as me saying they are the only good team out there. SJU is legit. Westmisnster is legit. GVSU is definitely legit. I'm not saying UST is the only team out there, it just so happens that I was speaking about them. Pull your head out from being so far up and realize that. What I was trying to do was explain why some people may think that UST is deserving of number 1 votes. Please realize that your opinion isn't the only one out there. By the way, it's tough to go through an entire MCLA season undefeated with the caliber of a schedule that UST plays. Their goal is never to go undefeated their goals are to win the conf and win nationals, and just like Montana did last year, you can accomplish the goals with a couple of losses.

We're all arguing about a moment in time here. There are plenty of games to come the conf tourneys are right around the corner. Maybe we should focus on that rather then arguing the outcome of games from 3 weeks ago.

[Rave]

[quote="Gvlax"]GVSU has the situation where geographically there are not many ranked teams around us where we can just go visit for a weekend.

So does Minnesota, look at St. John's, St. Thomas, and UWEC, all teams have driven or flown out of state to play top twenty teams. I understand what you trying to get across by saying your not in a high profile area, but in order to get recognition from the voters, they need to see you play. This year alone Dayton and UNC flew into Minnesota to play UST and SJU. UNC-Charolette drove down to Atlanta to play us. I could go on but I would just be repeating myself.

And yes, wait till next year. But expand your OCC schedule, start making plans after the nationl championship, setup dates with teams and find a place that can host. It takes more than one year to be recognized.

[laxmid1077]

Rave I dont think GVlax meant to say that Grand Valley doesnt want to make long trips anywhere, actually he isnt saying that at all especially when he mentions that Grand valley will be taking a spring break trip next year. Grand Valley took somewhere around a 8-10 drive to Augustana and Ames this year to play 4 OOC games. They are definitely working on increasing their out of schedule load which can been seen by looking at where and who they have played in years past compared to this year. They have played 5 OOC games, which is much more than they have in the past. I do agree that out of those five it would be nice if next year they could get at least four top 15 teams for their OOC games, plus a game with Dayton in the regular season.

[Gvlax]

Rave I dont think GVlax meant to say that Grand Valley doesnt want to make long trips anywhere, actually he isnt saying that at all especially when he mentions that Grand valley will be taking a spring break trip next year. Grand Valley took somewhere around a 8-10 drive to Augustana and Ames this year to play 4 OOC games. They are definitely working on increasing their out of schedule load which can been seen by looking at where and who they have played in years past compared to this year. They have played 5 OOC games, which is much more than they have in the past. I do agree that out of those five it would be nice if next year they could get at least four top 15 teams for their OOC games, plus a game with Dayton in the regular season.

We are working on it. If we had it in the budget we would have gone down to the SELC and play Emory, elon, charlotte, and anyone else that would play us. When planning the schedule this year i took our budget then decided how far we could go and play as many games as we could. It was down to going to play Emory and a few others or playing St. Thomas and others. We chose St. Thomas because it was 4 hours shorter drive in a bus (saving money) and the other teams we were going to play were either ranked or on the border.

But luckily for us, destiny might put Dayton vs GVSU on paths to meet before nationals are decided.

[Moose]

After seeing both teams play, that GVSU v. Dayton game should be great!

[Pinball]

There is a pretty good chance (if history tell us something) that UST and SJU will have two battles (regular season and UMLL tourney) before the final poll comes out. Should be a good gage of both teams and who is more "legit"

[Rave]

UST 10
SJU 5

No big rain until the end of the game

[AuggieLaxCoach]

I watched the SJU vs UST game and it was very similar to the SJU vs Dayton game. Tommies pretty much ran the show from start to finish... though SJU scrapped back into it a few times, I think if UST didn't play such sloppy ball in the first half, this had the potential of a blow out.

That being said, I think SJU is not yet playing its best ball. As Pinball said, if history is any indication, SJU/UST will face off again in Blaine on Sunday evening.

SJU still has to get through a tough NDSU team that, if they beat, they will most likely see again on Saturday in the UMLL semis. In my opinion, SJUs road to the AQ will mean playing & beating NDSU twice in 4 days and still having it left in the tank for the chip on Sunday.

This will be the most enjoyable UMLL D2 Tourney in recent memory.

[dgr01002]

Plus #3Dayton is playing #6Emory POST-SELC Championship. Very Unusual, and I don't believe it was scheduled untill midway through the season. Maybe Emory decided it was a nice safety net if they fall in conferance play and still want to make the tournament. On the topic of OOC sheduling, does anyone know the rules? I know you are not suppossed to schedule Conferance games until your respective conferance meetings in the fall, but are there rules about OOC scheduling?

This does seem odd to play after the regular season, but I do not believe their are any rules that say two teams can not play each other when ever they want too.
When and where is this game taking place? Since this is a post-regular season game, will this even matter in the final poll vote? Why not wait till next year to play them? Why risk possible injuries before the national tournament?

Laxpower has it listed the 27th @ Dayton

The SELC has the earliest conference championships. There is over a month between those championships and Dallas. Two T10 teams going head to head is a good for both teams. Also, this game was cancelled in February due to a snow storm - so it's being replayed. Emory never looked at the SELC championships as our last game. Whether we won or lost the championships, we agreed to make up this scheduled game. Conference finals do not end a team's season, only mandatory Divisional matchups must be played before Conference playoffs. Emory still could even play a third game against Elon in a scheduled match up next week or the week after, hypothetically. It just becomes another MCLA game with no bearing on the already decided conference champion.