Region 4
Albion 8-0 8-0
Alma 8-0 8-0
DePauw 7-1 7-1
John Carroll 7-1 7-1
Mount Union 8-0 8-0
Mount St. Joseph 8-0 8-0
Trine 6-2 6-2
Committee has DePauw and Trine rather than our Heidelberg and whoever
There's obviously time for teams on this list to lose, but let's pretend DePauw wins out and stays put, Trine beats Hope and Kzoo and stays, MSJ gets past Rose Hulman and stays undefeated, and Alma and John Carroll both stay ranked after losing to Albion and Mount respectively.
That would give Albion a (2-0) record against RRs and Mount a (1-0) record. And Mount would have a significantly worse SOS... I'm not advocating that Albion is actually better than Mount, they're not. But is it possible Albion ends up above Mount in the regional rankings with the better SOS and additional win against an RR?
And this is once again why the arbitrary location of that line matters! We all have Heidelberg easily in our RRs above Trine and DePauw. With Heidelberg in and Trine out, those records are flipped. I'm not against using RRs to figure out who all is at the table. But I am against using records against RRs as though it's a valuable statistic.