Mavericks down one, up one

Ranking teams in opinion polls is not a scientific process, especially when teams are bunched together and there are sweeps and splits among some of the better teams. So, after Minnesota State's sixth and seventh win in eight games, a sweep at lowly Alaska Anchorage but a sweep nonetheless, the Mavericks dropped a spot to No. 8 in the latest USCHO poll and went up a spot to No. 6 in the USA Today/USA Hockey rankings.

Just a curious thing. Here's the USCHO poll (which I vote on and the AP uses for rankings):

USCHO.com Division I Men's Poll
Minneapolis, Minn./January 08, 2018

   Team             (First Place)    Record   Pts  Last Week
 1 Notre Dame                (40)   18- 3-1   988     2
 2 St. Cloud State           ( 6)   13- 3-3   932     1
 3 Clarkson                  ( 3)   16- 3-1   916     3
 4 Cornell                   ( 1)   13- 2-0   855     5
 5 Denver                           12- 6-4   773     4
 6 Ohio State                       14- 4-4   707     8
 7 North Dakota                     11- 6-5   690     6
 8 Minnesota State                  16- 6-0   689     7
 9 Minnesota                        13-10-1   572    10
10 Northeastern                     12- 5-3   543     9
11 Providence                       14- 7-1   539    11
12 Western Michigan                 11- 8-1   440    12
13 Penn State                       12- 7-3   429    14
14 Bowling Green                    12- 6-6   244    19
15 Minnesota Duluth                  9- 9-3   228    16
16 Boston College                   10- 8-3   205    13
17 Omaha                            10- 9-1   187    18
18 Wisconsin                        10-10-3   173    15
19 Colgate                           9- 7-4    99    17
20 Maine                            11- 7-1    78    NR
20 Miami                             9- 9-2    78    NR

Others receiving votes: UMass Lowell 66, Harvard 16,
Michigan Tech 12, New Hampshire 11, Union 8, Bemidji State
6, Canisius 6, Colorado College 6, Niagara 3, Northern
Michigan 1.

Also, Bowling Green made a big jump to No. 14 from No. 19, which has lost just once in its last 10 games and has won four straight, including a sweep at Ferris State over the weekend.