Men's soccer climbs to No. 17 in NSCAA national rankings

[PonyPride]

From SMUMustangs.com:

Mustangs Climb To No. 17 In NSCAA National Rankings
SMU is ranked first in the Midwest Region

Oct. 10, 2012

DALLAS (SMU) - The SMU men's soccer team is ranked No. 17 in this week's NSCAA National Rankings and is tops in the Midwest Region. The Mustangs are also ranked No. 13 in the country by Soccer America and No. 22 by Top Drawer Soccer.

SMU is 8-2-2 on the season, holds a 4-0 mark in Conference USA action and is currently riding a nine-game unbeaten streak (8-0-1). The Mustangs boast the reigning C-USA Offensive and Defensive Players of the Week in sophomore Tyler Engel and junior Jaime Ibarra, respectively. The entire SMU back line - Michael King, Amaury Ponce, Damian Rosales and Aaron Simmons - was named to the TopDrawerSoccer National Team of the Week after the Mustangs posted back-to-back shutouts in wins against No. 20 Tulsa and Kentucky last week.

SMU heads to Florida to take on UCF on Sunday, Oct. 14, and FIU on Oct. 17.

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

The first official NCAA RPI rankings come out next week and it will be interesting to see where SMU is.

As the C-USA weekly notebook points out, the Massey ratings have SMU with the 16th most difficult schedule in the country so far. Those ratings also have SMU ranked 13th overall.

All of these other rankings and polls are nice dinner conversation and all, but the RPI is all that really matters considering the NCAA pretty much follows the RPI for tournament seeding. As long as SMU is in the top 16 in the RPI, we should get a bye to the second round and be able to host the second round game which is obviously always a big advantage.

Of course, it's still way too early to be thinking about the NCAA tournament when there is still a lot of unfinished business in the regular season.

Go Ponies!

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

SMU is at No. 19 in today's NCAA RPI rankings.