The regular season is officially over, and very few teams that were supposed to win today lost. As such, a relatively coherent guess at the NAIA playoff field is possible. The key games today:

#1 Morningside‘s 55-7 win at home over #4 Doane, which doesn’t do anything to either team’s actual playoff fate, but does absolutely secure the top seed for the Mustangs.

#6 Montana Tech‘s 24-17 home win over #10 Montana Western. I project that the loss will drop Montana Western out of the field.

#3 Grand View won 26-14 at #19 William Penn, ending Penn’s playoff hopes.

#16 Benedictine (KS) lost 19-17 at unranked Peru State, ending their own hopes.

#23 Saint Ambrose won 27-7 at home against #20 Robert Morris (IL), and #22 Saint Francis (IL) beat Olivet Nazarene 40-0. The end result of all of that: idle Saint Xavier, ranked #17, wins the MSFA Midwest League title, and will earn a playoff bid; the other three teams are out of luck.

This, then, is my projected top 20 in the final NAIA poll:

  1. Morningside (9-2, GPAC autobid)
  2. Baker (10-1, HAAC South autobid)
  3. Grand View (9-2, HAAC North autobid)
  4. Saint Francis (IN) (9-0, MSFA Mideast autobid)
  5. Montana Tech (9-1, Frontier autobid)
  6. Marian (IN) (8-2, at-large #1)
  7. Southern Oregon (8-2, at-large #2)
  8. Doane (9-1, at-large #3)
  9. Tabor (10-1, KCAC autobid)
  10. Kansas Wesleyan (9-1, at-large #4)
  11. Campbellsville (7-3, MSC East autobid)
  12. Reinhardt (8-2, at-large #5)
  13. Lindsey Wilson (8-2, at-large #6)
  14. Montana Western (7-3, no bid)
  15. Saint Xavier (7-3, MSFA Midwest autobid)
  16. Dakota Wesleyan (9-2, no bid)
  17. Point (8-2, SUN autobid)
  18. Dickinson State (8-2, NSAA autobid)
  19. Saint Ambrose (8-2, no bid)
  20. Saint Francis (IL) (8-3, no bid)

The placement of the teams may differ by a spot or two tomorrow, but ultimately the order itself doesn’t matter so much as where they are. Two conferences will forfeit autobids: The CSFL, where I project 6-3 Arizona Christian, idle today, will only get up to #21, and the MSC East division, where currently unranked Georgetown (KY) will probably only get up to #22 at best. If either of those two teams sneak into the top 20, that would cost first Lindsey Wilson and then Reinhardt their playoff berths, but for that to happen the voters would have to either severely devalue Saint Francis (IL) and/or Saint Ambrose’s wins, or punish Montana Western far too harshly for a one-touchdown loss to a top-5 team.

We’ll see where things end up tomorrow.