College Power Rankings, Presented By NUTC [April 3, 2024]

The last Power Rankings of the 2024 college regular season!

April 3, 2024 by Ultiworld in Rankings with 0 comments

 

Ultiworld’s College Power Rankings, presented by the National Ultimate Training Camp!

While our College Power Rankings can always be found on our permanent rankings page, every week during the season we will post the current edition here on the front page to facilitate discussion in the comments and serve as a permalink for each week’s rankings.

Ultiworld Subscribers have access to team-by-team coverage in the Breakdown sections.

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D-I Women’s Division Power Rankings

D-I Women’s Division Discussion

• True to their name, Vermont Ruckus shook up the rankings to claim #1 at the last minute with two statement wins over UNC at East Coast Invite. Tufts, Michigan, and Northeastern all similarly acquitted themselves well at ECI to make the bracket, with Tufts and Northeastern claiming semis berths while Michigan cleaned up the fifth place bracket.
• UPenn experience the only real backslide, after a 4-3 ECI saw them lose to Northeastern and Michigan. Accordingly, they fall to #18, right behind the Valkyries.

D-I Men’s Division Power Rankings

D-I Men’s Division Discussion

• Georgia got the big wins on the weekend and vault up to number one, displacing the Massachusetts team they beat in the Easterns final. Pittsburgh also ascend to the top three after a complete game upset over North Carolina in quarterfinals.
• Other Easterns beneficiaries include Carleton and Minnesota. CUT make it inside the top ten thanks to their pool play win over UMass, but their season record – 0-2 against Colorado (-15 aggregate), 0-2 against Vermont, and 0-2 against Cal Poly-SLO – keep them from greater heights. Minnesota meanwhile got the crucial head-to-head over Alabama-Huntsville en route to cleaning up the ninth-place bracket.
• The biggest drops on the week are also a result of Easterns: NC State, Tufts, and UNC Wilmington all posted even or losing pool play records to miss out on the bracket. NC State rallied to make it to the ninals game, while Tufts stopped the skidding to take 13th, but UNC Wilmington lost out and only claimed one win on the weekend to fall out of the Top 25.
• WashU cleaned up at Huck Finn, putting D-III’s St. Olaf to rest twice on the weekend to take home the tournament win and a two spot rise.
• McGill took home the crown at the men’s division of East Coast Invite and crack into the Top 25, a slight balm for the fact that they likely played themselves out of a strength bid.

D-III Women’s Division Power Rankings

D-III Women’s Division Discussion

• St. Olaf claim the top spot after storming to another undefeated tournament showing where they never allowed more than four. The team that scored four? #8 Macalester, who announced themselves in a big way in their second tournament of the season, beating #24 Davenport, #25 Grinnell, and playing St. Olaf within two, an improvement on their Midwest Throwdown bout and Vortex’s smallest margin of victory all season.
• Aforementioned Grinnell sneaks in at the back end, their similar loss margins to other ranked teams against common opponents and a lack of recent results from others making up for a losing record.
• After a lackluster No Sleep till Brooklyn, Bates vaulted up 81 ranking spots¹ into strength bid territory with a spectacular Northeast Classic, scoring critical wins over #17 Wellesley, #16 Wesleyan, and splitting games with #6 Haverford and Bryn Mawr. The Sneetches rebounded to claim the tournament title over Bates, and their success against out of region competition bump them up a spot.
• Rochester and Wesleyan are also on the up-and-up after Northeast Classic, both beating Wellesley at points on the weekend, but Rochester won the all crucial head-to-head on universe to slot just a tad higher.
• The common thread for many of these rises: wins over Wellesley. Coming into Northeast Classic as the no.1 seed, the Whiptails were only able to score one victory over a fellow D-III team, on universe against Rochester in pool play, a score Rochester would avenge on Sunday. Wellesley’s loss to Wesleyan sees them fall to #17 – though not, unofficially, out of strength bid territory.
• Also dropping are Richmond Redhots, who played with weaker competition at the Atlantic Coast Open and got burned; Davenport, who broke seed but only won one game at Old Capitol Open; and Williams, who did not play this past weekend, but whose universe point wins over Wellesley and Wesleyan look less rosy with hindsight.

D-III Men’s Division Power Rankings

D-III Men’s Division Discussion

• St. Olaf have the last say with a run to the Huck Finn final, only losing to D-I Top 25 team Washington Contra, to nab the #1 spot going into the postseason.
• Below #2, the South Central is down in a bad way. Colorado School of Mines took losses to previously-unranked Macalester and Davenport at Old Capitol Open to finish in seventh after entering seeded first, while Colorado College barely scraped out two wins at Huck Finn. The crucial difference: while Entropy didn’t play themselves out of a bid, Wasabi definitely did.
• Mirroring their women’s division counterparts, Bates ascend the rankings after backing up their no.1 seed with an undefeated showing at New England Open, while Macalester enter the rankings after storming to third at Old Capitol Open with a uni point win over #20 Colorado Mines.
• Davenport and Macalester had near identical Old Capital Opens, both taking their only loss on the weekend to Iowa in the bracket,  but Davenport’s wider margin of victory over Mines sees them slot just above Flat Earth.

Ultiworld Subscribers, see who passed with flying colors and who should’ve hit the books with our end of season report cards.

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1. Per frisbee-rankings.com ↩