2026 Women’s Soccer Top 25

[CentPA]

#2 Washington & Lee (#4 NPI ) suffer their first set-back of the season last night.  They are now 9-0-1.

The Generals played to a 1-1 tie at home against unranked Mary Washington (#52 NPI).  Mary Washington scored first with about 12 minutes left in the first half, but Washington & Lee would tie it back up within 2 minutes for the 1-1 draw.

[jknezek]

#2 Washington & Lee (#4 NPI ) suffer their first set-back of the season last night.  They are now 9-0-1.

The Generals played to a 1-1 tie at home against unranked Mary Washington (#52 NPI).  Mary Washington scored first with about 12 minutes left in the first half, but Washington & Lee would tie it back up within 2 minutes for the 1-1 draw.

Yeah. Bummer. Tough mid-week game right before Fall break, which has a long road trip to Sewanee. Lots of elements made that mentally harder than it should have been.

Oh well. Soccer is a hard one to win them all. Sometimes the ball just won't go in the net.

[BusyBee]

Here are the three biggest discrepancies between the USC top 25 and the NPI that I could identify:

#1 Pomona-Pitzer: they are ranked #8 in the USC poll but #51 in the NPI.  Difference of 43 places.

#2 North Central: they are ranked (effectively) #35 in the USC but #1 in the country in the NPI.
      Difference of 34 places.

#3 Messiah: they are ranked #6 in the USC but #33 in the NPI.  Difference of 27 places.

As a PP fan I can tell you that both of those numbers are a bit silly. Number 8 in the country with a 1-0 loss to UChicago and a 1-1 draw with Cal Lutheran. Also, number 51 in the country with 7 wins and those two results. Must be that the NPI number is being dragged down by Cal Lu and CMS's relatively mediocre performances early season out of the SCIAC conference play. Otherwise it makes no sense.

I personally think the current Massey ranking of 18 is probably closer to reality, but the NPI number is a bit scary. It is difficult to know how good they are, even after watching every match this season as they play 22 plus individuals. Last match they played 30. Thus the top 11/starters as unit get about 30-40 min with each other tops. Not sure if that will continue into the 2nd half of the season, but we will see. With the SCIAC teams only playing Santa Cruz as an out of conference opponent it will be difficult to make up the NPI number unless the UAA and NESCAC teams start to knock each other down??

[CentPA]

The NCAA just updated the NPI this morning: through games 10/07/2026

[CentPA]

BusyBee the NPI for Pomona-Pitzer got even worse! 

When I mentioned their discrepancy in rankings they were showing at #51 NPI.  However, I think the NPI got readjusted because of what ziggy mentioned  regarding Azusa Pacific a few days ago. 

So the win against Azusa has been taken out of their NPI calculation and that dropped PP even further down to #62 and then on today's new NPI rankings they are now showing at #71!  That does seem really low to me.

[BusyBee]

So crazy! I guess there is nothing they can do - even if they keep winning 5-0 every SCIAC match (which they won't) - I don't know how much that can move.

Here's where I don't quite understand the formula. Let's pick Carleton (a team that I know and has also played CMS) They are at NPI 16.

Loss 0-1 to North Central #3 (vs PP loss to UChicago #10) - would change if they played each other?!
Win 1-0 vs CMS (same)
Wins vs all MIAC teams (4 additional SCIAC wins)
Draw last night vs Wisc Eau Claire #75 (draw vs Cal Lu #78)

I can understand that this is marginally better, but how is this 55 places different? How did the MIAC end up with so much more weight?

[CentPA]

So I have been looking through the top 25 of the USC rankings and where they stand in the NPI and Massey rankings.

By far the two most unusual teams are Pomona-Pitzer and Messiah.  Here are their rankings:

School      USC ranking      NPI ranking      Massey ranking
 
Messiah             6                               32                              21

PP                         8                               71                              19

It's like nobody knows what to do with these two schools!

[CentPA]

By the way, here are the rankings between USC, NPI, and Massey for the top 25 (in order of USC ranking):

School (USC, NPI, Massey)

Wash U (1, 2, 1)
Wash & Lee (2, 4, 10)
Tufts (3, 1, 2)
Rowan (4, 6, 5)
MIT (5, 21, 13)
Messiah (6, 32, 21)
Colby (7, 5, 4)
Pomona-Pitzer (8, 71, 19)
Vassar (9, 22, 26)
TCNJ (10, 13, 16)
Carnegie Mellon (11, 11, 7)
Williams (12, 15, 8)
Calvin (13, 9, 9)
Wisconsin-La Crosse (14, 7, 6)
Swarthmore (15, 19, 25)
Penn St - Behrend (16, 17, 37)
Hartford (17, 33, 31)
Rochester (18, 25, 17)
Chicago (19, 10, 3)
Batten (20, 18, 24)
Emory (21, 23, 23)
Johns Hopkins (22, 12, 20)
Hamilton (23, 14, 11)
NYU (24, 36, 38)
Trinity(TX)  (25, 8, 12)

[jknezek]

Excited to be off to the W&L at Sewanee game today. Always happy when one of the Generals teams ventures down this way to be able to go to the game. Sadly I'm going with a coworker whose daughter plays for Sewanee, so I won't have my W&L flag that I bought almost 30 years ago to hang in my dorm and bring to waive when they score.

Best behavior.... Uggh.

[CentPA]

Excited to be off to the W&L at Sewanee game today. Always happy when one of the Generals teams ventures down this way to be able to go to the game. Sadly I'm going with a coworker whose daughter plays for Sewanee, so I won't have my W&L flag that I bought almost 30 years ago to hang in my dorm and bring to waive when they score.

Best behavior.... Uggh.

Cool that you are going to be at the game - enjoy it - just sit on your hands when the Generals score!

I am going to try and catch it live online - I'm interested to see if W&L can bounce back from their tie.  Sewanee is no easy opponent so they could have their hands full on the road (long road!).

[jknezek]

I usually go to the games when they come down this way. Well, for sports I like. Soccer, football, basketball, lacrosse, wish the wrestling team would come down. But yeah, volleyball and baseball I just can't do it. Same with the individuals like cross country, track, or golf/tennis. I feel bad, but not bad enough to go!

[Ron Boerger]

Until you get to minimum wins (8 for women's soccer), NPI is just killed by playing crappy teams as those "bad wins" hurt you so much.  Once you get to 8 in WSOC you start dropping any win result that hurts your overall NPI.  Wins above minimum that help your NPI are retained.   And good or bad, all losses are part of your NPI.

What frustrates me about the dials are that you get no bonus for an away win.  At least it's the same on the men's side; some sports treat them radically differently, such as basketball where the men get a 20% bonus for an away non-conference win, a 10% bonus for an away conference win, while the women get no bonus of any kind for away wins.  If you want to look at all of the dials go to https://www.ncaa.org/championships/general-championship-resources/ncaa-power-index/ under "Division III Championship Resources".