In our last NCAA team rankings post, we ranked each DMV-area NCAA Men’s Soccer program for the 2018 season up until September 25, 2018. In our newest NCAA rankings, we’ve decided to take a look at how teams have performed since then, as opposed to ranking each program based on season long performance (which we will compile an in-depth spreadsheet for heading into tournament time).

Most Improved Teams

For every DMV NCAA team, we compiled a fairly in-depth spreadsheet that included the result and RPI of every opponent since 9/25. We calculated a point value for each result:

• 1 point for a draw
• 2 points for an away draw
• 3 points for a win
• 4 points for an away win

We calculated a total number of points earned for each team through the 4-7 matches (depending on each team’s schedule) that they’ve played since 9/25, and came up with an average number of points earned for that time span. We also calculated the number of points that each team earned in the matches prior to 9/25 when, came up with the average, and compared the change in points that each team earned from 9/25-10/17 vs prior.

One thing worth noting- if a team is already earning 2.5-2.8 points per match, Virginia for example, then obviously they’re not going to be towards the top of the list. We just thought it would make sense to recognize the teams which have really come into form since our latest rankings came out.

Average Points + Average RPI

In addition to calculating each team’s average points earned, we also wanted to take into account the RPI of each team’s opponent during the same time frame. So we came up with the average RPI rating for each team’s opponent, in addition to the average number of points earned:

Opponents’ RPI and Points Earned Rankings

We then took each team’s average opponent RPI and average number of points earned during that timeframe, we then ranked each team on both categories.

Final DMV Rankings for 9/25-10/17

Once we came up with each team’s opponents’ RPI and points earned rankings, we also factored in each team’s current RPI ranking, took an average of all three:

Overall ranking based on points per game + Overall ranking based on opponent’s RPI + Current RPI rating / 3 = average ranking

and that’s how we came up with our latest DMV NCAA team rankings for 9/25-10/17.

Full Spreadsheet:

Below is the entire master spreadsheet that we compiled which includes each team’s result, opponent RPI rankings, and more: