2021 NCAA Regional Rankings

The NCAA regional rankings are done by the same regional and national committees which will make the at-large selections for the men's and women's NCAA tournaments and the rankings are done by applying the same criteria which is used for making the at-large selections. The rankings are released following the fourth last, third last, and second last weeks prior to the tournament selections being made. Therefore, by design, these rankings are a direct foreshadowing of the at-large selections providing a certain level of transparency to the at-large selection process. It is for this reason that these rankings are so important and meaningful.

All information about the regional rankings is found in the Division III Soccer Pre-Championship Manual. Much of what follows highlights, summarizes, or quotes the manual.

Ranking Committees

The NCAA regional rankings are done by the ten-member NCAA Division III Men's and Women's Soccer Committees which are each composed of the chairs of their respective regional advisory committees. The Regional Advisory Committees assist the national committee in evaluating teams.  These are the same national and regional committees which will make the Pool B and Pool C at-large selections for the men's and women's NCAA tournaments. The members of these committees can be found on pages 9-13 of the Pre-Championship Manual.

Release Dates

As per the Pre-Championship Manual (pgs. 13 and 19), the rankings will be released on the following dates which correspond to the last three Wednesdays prior to the tournament selections being made and the Monday that the at-large selections and tournament fields are announced:

Like the USC and D3Soccer.com rankings, they are based on results through the Sunday prior to their release.

Where to find the Rankings

The rankings are posted by the NCAA on their Division III men's and women's soccer webpages under "Rankings" where you must select the "Regional Rankings" option from the pull-down menu.  They are also conveniently available here on our site from the “Rankings” pull-down menu above or by clicking on the following links:

Men's Regional Rankings

Women's Regional Rankings

Size of the Rankings

The number of teams ranked differs from region to region and from men to women based on the number of eligible teams in each region. The top 20 percent of eligible teams (or a minimum of four) are ranked by the committees. As per the Pre-Championship Manual (pgs. 19-20), the number of teams to be ranked in 2021 is as follows:

Along with the new regional realignment in place for the 2021 season that increased the number of regions from eight to ten, the percent of eligible teams to be ranked increased from 16% (men) and 15% (women) to 20% (men and women). This results in 13 more men's teams (from 66 to 79) and 20 more women's teams (from 65 to 85) being ranked in 2021 versus 2019. And this will impact the rankings and at-large selections because one of the primary criteria for ranking and team selection (see below) is results versus ranked teams. The regional alignments, school sponsorship, and eligibility by region can be found in Appendices B and C (“Men's Sponsorship” and "Women's Sponsorship, respectively) of the Pre-Championship Manual (pgs. 30-49).

New for 2021 - Alphabetical Rankings?!?

The first weekly regional rankings will be published in alphabetical order instead of rank order this year. At their mid-September meeting, the Division III Championships Committee directed all team sport committees to do this in 2021/22 based on a recommendation from the Division III Men's Basketball Committee. The first set of rankings cannot incorporate the primary criterion of results versus ranked teams, and consequently are not considered to be accurate. Ordering by numerical ranking will start in the second rankings when all criteria can be considered. This is a one-year pilot that will be reviewed next summer to determine whether to make it a permanent feature.

Ranking Criteria

The rankings are done by applying the same criteria which is used for making the at-large tournament selections. The at-large selection criteria are found in Section 2.4 of the Pre-Championship Manual (pg. 23). The criteria is divided between primary and secondary criteria, the latter only being considered if the former does not enable a distinction to be made between schools.

Regular season and conference postseason matches are considered.  This criteria remains unchanged from 2019. See the sections that follow for an explanation/clarification of the results versus ranked teams and strength of schedule.

Results versus Ranked Teams

For the purposes of at-large selections, "ranked teams" are those teams ranked in either the final rankings or the third weekly rankings. However, for the purposes of the weekly regional rankings, "ranked teams" only includes the teams ranked the previous week, not the previous two weeks. Obviously, for the first weekly regional rankings of the season, there is no previous ranking and thus there are no results versus ranked teams. Consequently, the regional data sheets (see section further down) for the first weekly rankings do not include teams' records verus ranked opponents, but starting with the second weekly rankings this criteria is in play and is among the criteria listed in the regional data sheets.

"Results versus ranked teams" criteria spelled out

Strength of Schedule

The Strength of Schedule (SOS) used by the Division III soccer committees is based on Opponents' Cumulative Winning Percentage (OWP) and Opponents' Opponents' Cumulative Winning Percentage (OOWP). For a third straight season, no home and away multipliers will be applied as was once done. An explanation with an example of these calculations is found in Appendix D (pg. 50) of the Pre-Championship Manual.

Regional Data Sheets

Along with the rankings, data sheets for each region are made available.  These data sheets, which include all teams in each region, provide some (but not all) of the data that was considered by the ranking committee.  The following data is listed: record and winning percentage against Division III opponents, results versus ranked Division III opponents, Division III SOS (primary criteria), and overall record and winning percentage.  These sheets allow for a look at the numbers the committees had in front of them and therefore insight into why some teams are ranked and others not. The NCAA provides links to this data below the rankings. Direct links to the latest released data sheets are given below:

The data sheets can also be accessed by clicking the links on our regional rankings pages.

Published Final Rankings

As part of the at-large tournament selection process, the committees do final rankings that include the results from the final week prior to the tournament, usually the completion of conference tournaments. These final rankings are published following the announcement of the tournament fields and may answer many questions about why certain teams were at-large selections and others not.