West Region Rankings #1
We have a friend now! The brand-new CCAA blog. The CCAA blog is undoubtedly more adept than we are because his D2 psychosis has gone on much longer, and we’re so happy to have him!
Their first post is here. It consists of their rankings.
Here are ours:
1. Azusa Pacific -Leaning towards them hosting the regional, it’s great to see them this good, they need to win out but it’s going to be a difficult road in the gauntlet of the end of the Pac-West regular season and their tournament.
2. Cal Baptist -It doesn’t really matter which one of these schools hosts the regional, they play at APU and that game could be huge in determining the host, especially if they both end up in the Pac-West championship game.
3. Western Oregon -best team in a weak GNAC, they’ve got a couple of sure fire guys in Andy Avgi and Julian Nichols, they can play their guys major minutes, they’ve been fairly well tested in terms of close games in conference play, but how do they match-up with the theoretically much stronger Pac-West & CCAA?
4. Cal Poly Pomona -better regional resume than Chico.
5. Point Loma -Elite non-conference resume, but truth be told they barely played anybody -just a bunch of super low level teams; WOU and Cal Poly being the notable exceptions.
6. BYU-Hawaii -dropped three, but they should win out; the fact that they struggle a bit off the Island gives pause; they beat SPU, but PLNU beat WOU, so that’s kind of the tiebreaker here.
7. Dixie State -seemed to have progressed; they have a better regular season record than SPU in a much more challenging conference, feel like they’re getting strong at the right time. It seems odd to put them this low, BUT they had big early season losses to both SPU and WOU.
8. Chico State -love this team, think they’re in a really good position, should win the regular season, but… can they get the auto-bid? The CCAA tournament is going to be interesting.
9. Stanislaus -they play in a more difficult conference than SPU, they’re more consistent, they’ve got experience, they’re going to hold an advantage if/when one of the LA schools hosts the tournament. Doesn’t mean they’ll make it (the odds are against them) but if they do they will have that advantage.
10. Seattle Pacific -this one is hard; SPU has a way better non-conference record than any other GNAC team but WOU; their conference losses to WWU and CWU were rivalry games, which does excuse them a bit more; and they won at Anchorage this past weekend.
Other teams considered for ranking: Western Washington -seems to be back on track; Central Washington -too many terrible non-conference losses, too close of a call against Saint Martin’s. Alaska-Anchorage -just lost at home to SPU. Humboldt State -the CCAA just isn’t strong enough for them to be ranked this year; it was tempting to give them the nod over SPU, but the odds seem very low that Humboldt makes the tournament, whereas SPU still seems like a possibility considering they’re the only GNAC team to beat WOU.
As you can tell between our rankings and the CCAA blog-we disagree. That’s the beauty of college basketball. He’s coming from a CCAA/California perspective. It’s cool that there’s someone to disagree with. See? We can make D2 a thing, we can totally make D2 a thing.
Leave your rankings (and perhaps conference affiliation) in the comments. If enough (say five) people chime in, we’ll compile and do a composite ranking.
GNAC Men's Basketblog 
Point Loma also won at Cal Poly Pomona…
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Good call. Leaving them in position, but updated.
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