Regular Season’s First NCAA DII National Coaches’ Polls Revealed

NEW ORLEANS – With two weeks of the 2015 NCAA Division II cross country season in the books, the Adams State men have joined the Grand Valley State women as unanimous No. 1 teams in the first regular-season edition of the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) National Coaches’ Polls announced Wednesday.

National PDFs: Top 25 Summary | Week-by-Week 2015 | Week-by-Week All-Time

Regional Rankings PDFs: Regional Rankings Summary | Rankings Recap

Division II XC Polls/Rankings Central

NCAA Division II National Coaches’ Poll Top 5 – Men 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) Adams State GVSU Chico State Colorado Mines Augustana (S.D.) View Complete Men’s National Coaches’ Poll   NCAA Division II National Coaches’ Poll Top 5 – Women 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) GVSU Hillsdale Adams State Minnesota Duluth Augustana (S.D.) View Complete Women’s National Coaches’ Poll

A perfect score of 15 at their home Joe Vigil Open on opening weekend was enough to convince national voters – preliminarily, at least – that the three-time defending national champion Grizzlies have the chops to extend that streak at least one more year.

Adams State pried the two wayward preseason first-place votes away from two-time national runner-up No. 2 Grand Valley State, which remained firmly entrenched as ASU’s top challenger.

A minor fluctuation from the preseason vote advanced No. 3 Chico State and No. 4 Colorado Mines one spot each, while Augustana (S.D.) dropped a couple positions to No. 5. All three remain only narrowly separated in the voters’ eyes.

That same Joe Vigil Open that boosted the ASU men also benefited the No. 3 Adams State women, as they also scored a perfect 15 and now stand virtually alongside No. 2 Hillsdale (they’re separated by a single point) as the current biggest threats to Grand Valley State’s streak of three consecutive national titles.

Meanwhile, Hillsdale cruised to an easy win over GLIAC rival Saginaw Valley State in perfect-15 fashion on the same weekend.

No. 4 Minnesota Duluth and No. 5 Augustana (S.D.) round out the women’s top five.

The bottom half of the men’s top 10 remained undisturbed – No. 6 Southern Indiana, No. 7 Alaska Anchorage, No. 8 Western State, No. 9 Sioux Falls and No. 10 Cal Poly Pomona – with the women’s poll doing the exact inverse.

No. 6 Chico State and No. 7 Western State swapped from their preseason standings, while No. 8 Northern Michigan and No. 9 Alaska Anchorage both moved up one spot as No. 10 Simon Fraser dropped two from last time.

For Northern Michigan, this is their best rank since a No. 3 showing in week eight of the 2005 season. The Wildcats will hope for a different postseason result a decade later, as they ultimately finished 16th that season in what is still their most recent NCAA Championships appearance. They entered the Midwest Regional ranked No. 14 a year ago, but were left on the outside-looking-in as only four teams were allotted to advance from what was ultimately a cutthroat region.

Six teams will advance this year from what has become the deepest region in the country, but eight Midwest programs are currently ranked in the top 25 with another receiving votes.

One of those eight is No. 14 Bellarmine, which performed well at Kentucky’s Bluegrass Invitational to catapult from regionally unranked in the preseason to fifth in yesterday’s regional rankings to top-15 status nationally on Wednesday.

This is tied for the team’s best showing in the USTFCCCA Polls/Rankings alongside a No. 14 showing in week eight of 2010, though the Knights would ultimately miss NCAAs that season. Their only NCAA Championships appearance came in 2012.

The Midwest Region also featured the other new team to the women’s top 25 and the first team outside the men’s top ten – both courtesy of UW-Parkside.

While this is the first top-25 appearance for the No. 24 Ranger women since the 2007 in a quest for their first NCAA Championships berth since 2007, the No. 11 showing by the Ranger men is perhaps even more historically significant.

Dating back to 2000 (the beginning of the USTFCCCA polls/rankings archive), this is the UW-Parkside men’s best USTFCCCA rank as they go for their first-ever NCAA Championships team berth. They were ranked as high as No. 15 a year ago.

Elsewhere in the men’s poll, No. 20 Neb.-Kearney and No. 21 Simon Fraser (tied at No. 21 with Stonehill) tied for the gender’s biggest move with four-spot improvements.

For Simon Fraser, it’s the highest rank in the short DII history of the program, though the team has some history at the NAIA level with a national title back in 1982.

Two new men’s teams joined the poll in No. 24 Indiana (Pa.) and No. 25 Northwest Missouri. Indiana (Pa.) joins the top-25 for the first time in the duration of the USTFCCCA archives (2000 and later) and is seeking its first NCAA Championships appearance since 1993.

Northwest Missouri is ranked for the first time since 2012 and is ranked its highest since the 2000 season. An NCAA Championships berth would be its first since 1998.

The NCAA Division II Cross Country Championships will be held November 21 in Joplin, Missouri.