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Examining the Relative Competitive Strength of Men’s Conferences Through NPI
NESCAC is top conference. Who is No. 2?
Steve Ulrich
May 08, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
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FEATURE
Examining the Relative Competitive Strength of Men’s Conferences Through NPI
by Steve Dittmore, D3Lacrosse.net
The new DIII NCAA Power Index (NPI) rankings this year provide an opportunity to not only rank individual teams, but also consider relative strengths of conferences. We shared a primer on the NPI and what it means in January.
Using the 2025 season’s final NPI rankings, it is possible to assess how conferences performed in the new metric. Recognizing a team’s performance from year-to-year is dependent on a number of variables (quality of competition, team injuries, etc.), this snapshot does not necessarily reflect how teams improved or underperformed relative to last year. Consider Bates College which went 3-11 in 2024, but surged to 9-7 this season, a performance which certainly boosted the profile of the NESCAC. Below is what we can glean for DIII men’s conferences in the 2025 season. An analysis of women’s conferences will occur next week.
I created an average NPI for each conference by adding the overall NPIs of member institutions and dividing by the number of schools in the conference. Studying the data below allows us to assess top-to-bottom strength for a conference. Consider, for example, the NEWMAC which had the 6th-highest conference NPI and had seven of its eight members ranked in the Top 100. Despite this, only Babson College, the conference champion with the 27th-best NPI, reached the NCAA tournament. This would suggest the overall competitive balance in the conference was pretty equal as schools ranged from 27th to 170th in NPI.
In contrast, the ODAC (8th-highest conference NPI) only had five of its 11 members ranked in the Top 100 but still received two NCAA spots. This would suggest less competitive balance in the conference as schools ranged from 8th to 226th in NPI.
Both the NESCAC and Liberty placed all members in the Top 100 NPI, while three others (CLC, Centennial, and NEWMAC) placed all but one institution in the Top 100. So, for the 2025 season, 40 of the Top 100 came from just five conferences.
Conference | # of teams | Avg. NPI | Top 100 NPI | NCAA bids |
NESCAC | 11 | 71.922 | 11 | 7 |
Liberty | 8 | 67.856 | 8 | 3 |
CLC | 7 | 64.175 | 6 | 2 |
Centennial | 9 | 63.091 | 8 | 2 |
NCAC | 9 | 58.021 | 5 | 2 |
NEWMAC | 8 | 57.741 | 7 | 1 |
MAC Commonwealth | 7 | 56.680 | 4 | 2 |
ODAC | 11 | 54.641 | 5 | 2 |
MIAA | 7 | 54.160 | 3 | 1 |
CCIW | 6 | 53.743 | 4 | 1 |
OAC | 10 | 51.515 | 4 | 1 |
CNE | 9 | 51.510 | 4 | 1 |
MAC Freedom | 8 | 51.219 | 2 | 1 |
Landmark | 10 | 51.211 | 3 | 1 |
SUNYAC | 8 | 51.182 | 2 | 1 |
Empire 8 | 11 | 50.532 | 4 | 1 |
Little East | 9 | 50.531 | 3 | 1 |
SAA | 7 | 50.089 | 3 | 1 |
PAC | 9 | 47.991 | 2 | 1 |
Skyline | 8 | 47.593 | 2 | 1 |
NACC | 12 | 46.157 | 1 | 1 |
GNAC | 14 | 46.111 | 2 | 1 |
USA South | 9 | 46.057 | 1 | 1 |
United East | 5 | 45.488 | 2 | 1 |
HCMLC | 5 | 44.167 | 1 | 1 |
North Atlantic | 6 | 43.734 | 0 | 1 |
Independents | 3 | 42.995 | 1 | 0 |
AMCC | 4 | 37.749 | 0 | 0 |
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