Michigan moves to 2nd in CFP rankings; coachless Irish 6th
DALLAS – Michigan moved up to No. 2 Tuesday night in the second-to-last College Football Playoff rankings, joining Georgia, Alabama and Cincinnati in the top four heading into conference championship weekend.
Oklahoma State is fifth going into the Big 12 championship game Saturday against No. 9 Baylor, and Notre Dame is sixth with no games left and no head coach.
Brian Kelly left the Fighting Irish and was introduced as the new coach at LSU on Tuesday, three days after independent Notre Dame finished its season 11-1.
Selection committee chairman Gary Barta, who is Iowa’s athletic director, noted selection protocol requires the committee to consider the unavailability of players and coaches and how that could affect a team’s performance in the postseason.
Losing Kelly had no impact on this week’s ranking for Notre Dame because the committee does not project ahead into the postseason until all games are finished.
“And each of the 13 members can weigh that the way they want to weigh it, compared to head-to-head competition and common opponents and all the other things we evaluate,” Barta said.
Georgia was first, as it has been for every selection committee ranking so far, and Michigan climbed to No. 2 after it beat last week’s No. 2, Ohio State. The Wolverines play 13thranked Iowa in the Big Ten title game.
Alabama will be third going into the Southeastern Conference championship game with Georgia, and Cincinnati is fourth heading into its American Athletic Conference championship against Houston, which is 21st in the committee’s rankings.
The playoff field will be set Sunday. The top four teams will play in the Orange and Cotton bowls on Dec. 31. The College Football Playoff national championship game is scheduled for Jan. 10 in Indianapolis.
The penultimate rankings come the day before the conference commissioners who manage the playoff meet in Dallas for a pivotal gathering.
The management committee – comprised of the commissioners of the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame’s athletic director – has a self-imposed deadline to agree on how to expand the playoff.
The commissioners have been debating whether to triple the playoff field to 12
2. The Wild have won four games in a row and scored 19 goals in that span.
“I just think that we’ve got some depth scoring, that everybody’s producing,” Wild coach Dean Evason said. “They’re all, for the most part, playing the right way and the same way, and if we do that, we feel that we’ll be able to score goals. Fortunately, we have and, fortunately, everybody has. It’s not one line. It’s not two guys. It’s not one defenseman. Everybody’s involved in the offense.”
Clayton Keller and Anton Stralman scored for Arizona, which has lost three of four.
After rookie Karel Vejmelka posted his first career shutout a night earlier at Winnipeg, Scott Wedgewood made the start in goal and stopped 32 shots for Arizona.
“We made strides in the right direction, which we want to get better every day,” Coyotes coach Andre Tourigny said. “It’s one of those days. I think we got better today in a lot of thing in our game and we have a lot of positive to build on. … Moral victories are sometimes overrated, but on the same time, we knew we did good things today.”
Keller got the Coyotes off to a strong start in the second game of the back-toback, opening the scoring 5:58 into the first. Phil Kessel passed across the slot to Keller, who had trouble controlling the pass. But Keller gained control and fired a shot as he spun around,
beating Kahkonen.
“We just talked about it with all lines kind of contributing, and hard to play against and hard on the puck,” Foligno said of the Wild’s play. “Not that you have a lot of friends in this league, but you know some guys on other teams and after games they say that it’s a tough team to play against. It’s really grueling and physical hockey. That’s what we expect.”
Minnesota has won eight straight games against Arizona, with each victory coming by at least three goals.
UP NEXT
Coyotes: Return home and get a short break before hosting Vegas on Friday.
Wild: Host New Jersey on Thursday as part of a fivegame homestand.