Conference titles are being decided and byes into the USA Rugby Women's DII College Fall Championship, hosted by ACRA, are being awarded, so it's time for an update to the Top 20 rankings.

With the Round of 32 poised for this weekend (see brackets), we can't help but regret some match-ups that will occur too early in the tournament. The prime example is Notre Dame College and Davenport. The Falcons overtook Winona in the previous ranking, and Davenport leapt two spots into fourth. The duo are competing in the Midwest Region and will likely play in the Round of 16. The only salvation is that it should be a good game.

Kutztown jumped up one spot to number three and will play for the MARC championship against also-undefeated Bloomsburg on Saturday. Kutztown has dominated the local competition, like many in the top 10, and mixed up league play with a humbling loss to DI West Chester. We expect that friendly has reinvigorated Kutztown. 

Appalachian State and IUP have done nothing "wrong" to warrant their drops; teams 1-4 are simply operating at full throttle and posting intimidating results. Same goes for Florida International, which hasn't played a full-length match in more than a month. FIU's last two games were cancelled due to weather and forfeit.

Rutgers and Vassar swapped places after the former's two wins over the Brewers. The most recent victory occured last weekend during the Tri-State conference championship, and Rutgers won 38-15.

Teams like Ithaca, CSU Long Beach and Salisbury jumped up one spot due to consistent winning. A similar case could be made for Mary Washington, but the scar of that big Notre Dame College loss hasn't yet healed.

Three new teams have joined the lineup: Stonehill College, UW Steven's Point and Utah Valley. Each was named its respective conference's champion last weekend. Stonehill blanked Bryant 70-0 to go undefeated in Rugby Northeast; UW Steven's Point dominated then-undefeated UW Whitewater 92-5 in Saturday's final; and Utah Valley escaped a tough Colorado College in the semis (26-24) before beating Mesa State 19-0 in Rocky Mountain.

Consequently, three teams vanished from the list: Utah State, which was the early-season leader in Rocky Mountain but finished fourth; Lee University, which recently defeated UTC 26-12 but isn't banking enough challenging games right now; and Humboldt, which recently beat two lower-level DII teams in friendlies. This weekend is Scrum By The Sea, where we'll see teams like Humboldt, CSU Northridge and CSU Long Beach take on DI teams, and those results should lend more perspective.

Finally, we're keeping our eye on teams like Colorado College, Bloomsburg, Buffalo State and St. Michael's - teams that challenged their respective conference leaders during the season and might surprise in the playoffs as number twos.