With the play-ins for the final spots for the national playoffs done, we get a better send of the relative strengths of the various conferences. It's a small sample, to be sure, but something to go on.

This is what we found out: Cardinals is legit, even with their #2 losing to Potomac's #2, Towson was a heavy favorite and VMI (badly under-ranked last week) made them sweat.

Wisconsin-Illinois is, overall, stronger than Northern Lights. That doesn't mean the #1 team, Minnesota-Duluth isn't still great, but there's greater depth in WIIL. So now we look at UW-Stout's close win over Illinois State two weekends ago and, in the light of Stout's win over Northern Iowa, bump ISU up 5 places. 

Tri-State were competitive with MARC, but their #1 team lost to the MARC #2 team, so that tells us something. With IUP, York, and East Stroudsburg all quite close to Rowan, we figure they all should move up, and they do. Tri-State teams, notably Vassar and RPI, move down as a result.

Oswego moves up thanks to their win over Cortland, and then moves up more because some other teams lost.

And finally, the Deep South winner forfeited, after their runners up forfeited the conference final. We don't like forfeits, so everyone in the Deep South moves down.

The top six or so teams are really very strong, and it's possible that the next eight or so are close to that caliber. Right now it's hard to envision Duluth and Whitewater being beaten, but it's happened before.