Alright folks, buckle up because diving into those new NAIA Baseball rankings feels like unpacking a huge box of mystery gear. Here’s exactly how I tackled it this morning.
First thing I did? Grabbed my giant mug of coffee – black, no sugar. Needed the fuel. Fired up the laptop and went straight to the official NAIA website. Scrolled down, clicked around, you know how it is, hunting for that little “Rankings” tab tucked away somewhere. Took a minute, felt like finding Waldo.
Found the list. Printed it out. Yeah, I’m old school like that. Needed to see it on paper, circle stuff, make messy notes. Spread the pages out on my kitchen table, right next to the coffee stains. Started scanning from the top. Saw the usual suspects up there, no big shock. But then my eyes snagged on a name maybe 15 spots higher than last time.
Thought, “Hang on, is that right?” Went back to my laptop. Pulled up my own little spreadsheet tracker from last month – I keep one, nothing fancy, just dates and positions. Yep, they definitely jumped way up. Started digging into why. Opened another browser tab, went to that team’s athletics site. Clicked through their recent schedule and results.
Focused on their series against teams ranked just above and below them. Got stuck for a bit trying to find box scores for a Tuesday doubleheader three weeks ago. Site navigation was… not great. Finally found ’em buried under “Archives”. Saw the scores. Huh. Took a game off a top-10 team? Okay, okay. That explains some momentum.
Then I hit a snag. Another team, usually pretty solid, had slipped down. Like, slipped a lot. Scratched my head. Went back to the schedule. Saw they had two rainouts, then got swept in a tough conference matchup. Started jotting down notes in bullet points right on the printed rankings list:
- Team X: Major slump after key pitcher injury (noted on conference injury report last week).
- Team Y: Massive jump = beating ranked opponents consistently, especially that top 10 win.
- That team from way out West? Still hanging tough mid-pack, schedule gets brutal now though.
Cross-referenced my handwritten notes with the positions on the paper, drawing arrows, writing “WHY?” in big letters a couple of times. Finished my now-cold coffee. Flipped the pages around, comparing the top 10 to the preseason predictions I had saved as a PDF. Called my buddy Mike, who knows a coach in one of these conferences, just to shoot the breeze and see if he’d heard any chatter. Nothing earth-shattering, but confirmed some roster shuffles I suspected.
Finally, stood up, stretched my back (too much hunching!), and looked at the chaos on the table. All the circles, arrows, scribbles… it kinda made sense now. The big movers mostly had solid wins or ugly losses to show for it. Some surprises stayed mysterious. Gathered the pages, stacked them up. Felt like I’d peeled back the first layer of the onion on these new rankings.