Last Four In: Chattanooga, Illinois State, North Dakota, Western Illinois
Eight Outside Looking In (in alphabetical order): Central Arkansas, Idaho State, Maine, Monmouth, North Carolina A&T, Northern Iowa, Rhode Island, Sam Houston State
First, let’s address the bubble. The last six in, which are the four listed above with Nicholls and East Tennessee State, are not much safer than the eight on the outside looking in are in peril. That’s not even to say that teams above are impervious to exile either, there are still three games to play for most teams. And right now, the only team 100% safe is North Dakota State. A three game losing streak right now would put Kennesaw State, UC-Davis and James Madison on the cut line. There’s a lot that can happen in three weeks.
As for movement, this week was pretty stale compared to near reversing of the poles the last two weeks have given us. The Southland played itself out of a bid with McNeese beating Central Arkansas. A pretty well established line of order has worked its way out between their four contenders. But we’re not going to give away trade secrets here. The lost seed was picked up by the Southern Conference.
Although the final national seed was still given to Colgate, and it wasn’t charity, the Red Raiders are very good, the seed they took last week was given back to Eastern Washington and thus taken from South Dakota State. Nothing was won or lost this week by either of those three teams, it was just a matter of looking at the bracket from another perspective. Once again, it’s not a final edition, so it doesn’t hurt to play around a little. There’s still games to be played between teams holding those seeds and another upset or two, knowing how the season has already gone, and those seeds will change and take care of themselves.
Big Sky (3): *UC-Davis, Weber State, Eastern Washington
Big South (1): *Kennesaw State
Colonial (5): *Elon, James Madison, Delaware, Towson, Stony Brook
FCS Independent (1): North Dakota
Missouri Valley (4): *North Dakota State, South Dakota State, Illinois State, Western Illinois
Northeast (1): *Sacred Heart
Ohio Valley (2): *Jacksonville State, Southeast Missouri State
Patriot (1): *Colgate
Pioneer (1): *San Diego
Southern (3): *Wofford, East Tennessee State, Chattanooga
Southland (2): *McNeese, Nicholls
* denotes conference’s projected automatic qualifier
