Holy cow, we are at 28 rated Member Teams. U of North Georgia enters the rankings at a healthy #10 in the Gonzalez Standings by pulling two road wins against their host Georgia Southern. We’ll see both teams again later in the month when UNG hosts WKU and VCU. The predicted exchanges for that schedule will be valuable to their each competitor’s rating.
| Mov. | Rank | Rating | Team |
| — | 1 | 55.184 | GVSU |
| — | 2 | 50.211 | MSU |
| — | 3 | 47.933 | CMU |
| ↑ from 7 | 4 | 46.661 | JMU |
| — | 5 | 46.282 | Kent |
| — | 6 | 45.971 | UK |
| ↑ from 8 | 7 | 45.182 | OSU |
| ↑ from 9 | 8 | 45.076 | SVSU |
| ↓ from 4 | 9 | 45.022 | Towson |
| → | 10 | 42.340 | UNG |
| ↓ from 10 | 11 | 41.966 | VCU |
| ↓ from 11 | 12 | 41.110 | WKU |
| ↓ from 12 | 13 | 41.008 | PSU |
| ↓ from 13 | 14 | 40.423 | UNT |
| ↓ from 14 | 15 | 40.177 | UWP |
| ↓ from 15 | 16 | 39.124 | BGSU |
| ↓ from 16 | 17 | 37.891 | NIU |
| → | 18 | 37.660 | GSU |
| ↓ from 18 | 19 | 37.350 | UVA |
| ↓ from 17 | 20 | 37.328 | UMD |
| ↓ from 19 | 21 | 37.154 | Akron |
| ↓ from 20 | 22 | 36.698 | DePaul |
| ↓ from 21 | 23 | 36.477 | BW |
| ↓ from 22 | 24 | 36.473 | Miami |
| ↓ from 23 | 25 | 36.333 | UNL |
| ↓ from 24 | 26 | 36.046 | Pitt |
| ↓ from 25 | 27 | 35.104 | SU |
| ↓ from 26 | 28 | 33.138 | Ohio |
Movement as of last week.
This weekend’s MVEC featured only one Michigan team against three East Coast teams this year. It featured one upset with JMU[away] def Towson[home] at an exchange of 1.464, which falls within one standard deviation (<68%) of the mean for Upset Exchanges. There are still some 40 to 45 upsets ahead that were more influential exchanges of points.
That said, JMU was able to push their rating and lead the competitive #4-#9 section. There is only a 1.764 rating differential between #4 (JMU) and #9 (Towson), so two even strength exchanges will change to composite of this competitive group of Ratings.
JMU’s potential games will count less since they are leading their geographical neighbors. Unless the Dukes head west to compete, JMU will need to play and beat Towson more. Bringing home a win at a road game against VCU will help, too. But playing anyone else won’t give them the larger quality wins they will need to jump into the top three. With Towson and VCU posting rising rating projections this year, there is no great certainty where the VA, MD, and GA teams rank out come Nationals.
Certainly less confident than when I had the privilege to record the first East Coast games hosted by Maryland way back in Nov 2011. It’s great to see so much growth we had to think about spiting it into 2-3 regions! Disclaimer, Regions are completely arbitrary and don’t count for anything. Just a way for the Content Team to group teams that play together more than others, so we can talk about them.
I think a new team’s rating be considered provisional until they play about 6 games, this is about two average events. The World Rugby system model says a new rating is provisional for 10 matches played, but they don’t really say what a provisional rating says about a team and what they can do. But at the very least, playing six games should push a team into sensible measure of strength for that team. Playing even more matches will still adjust their Gonzalez rating to be even more accurate.