NCAA Regional Rankings
 
INDIANAPOLIS – The Slippery Rock University women's soccer team was ranked third in the Atlantic Region when the NCAA Division II Women's Soccer Committee announced the first ranked-order list of NCAA Regional Rankings Wednesday.
 
The NCAA Regional Rankings are the only rankings that matter in terms of selecting which teams from each of the eight NCAA regions qualify for the 2025 NCAA Division II Tournament.
 
The Division II women's soccer playoff field features 56 teams from across the nation, with each region receiving a pre-determined amount of berths based on access ratio.
 
The Atlantic Region has seven spots in the NCAA Tournament this season as the conference tournament champions from the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference and the Mountain East Conference will earn automatic berths in addition to five at-large selections.
 
This week's rankings include seven teams from the PSAC and two from the MEC. Inside the PSAC, there were three schools in the latest rankings from the PSAC Western Division and four from the PSAC East.
 
West Chester was slotted first in the Atlantic Region followed by Gannon, The Rock, Kutztown, Indiana (Pa.), Shepherd, Bloomsburg, West Virginia State and Fairmont State.
 
The NCAA Committee uses a plethora of data to determine the regional rankings, including the win-loss records, a weighted strength of schedule, wins against teams above .500, multiple performance indicator metrics that weigh the quality of wins and losses, head-to-head competition and more. The NCAA also generates a "performance indicator" score for each team that includes much of the data mentioned above and still uses the "Rating Percentage Index" (RPI) as a metric to determine the strength of each team.
 
This week's rankings include only contests through Nov. 2. Slippery Rock held an 11-3-1 overall record in the rankings. Slippery Rock has the third-best performance indicator score among all teams in the region. The only two teams ahead of SRU in the metric are Gannon (21.118) and West Chester (19.938). SRU also has the fourth highest in-region RPI (.597) behind WCU (.639), GU (.614) and Kutztown (.599).
 
In terms of on-field results against teams in this week's Atlantic Region rankings, Slippery Rock is 2-1-1 after going 0-1-1 versus Gannon and taking the season series from IUP.
 
There will be one more set of regional rankings released Nov. 12 prior to the official announcement of the 56-team tournament field 6:30 p.m. Nov. 17.
 
The Rock are looking to return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019. Slippery Rock was a staple in the NCAA Tournament under current head coach Noreen Herlihy during her first stint at SRU. She led the program to the national playoffs nine times between 2001 and 2013.
 
Slippery Rock, which was ranked 25th in the nation in the latest United Soccer Coaches poll, locked up the PSAC West regular season championship Wednesday thanks to a 3-1 victory over Seton Hill at James Egli Field. The division title was the first for the program since 2019.
 
As PSAC West champions Slippery Rock has earned the right to host a PSAC Tournament quarterfinal game against a yet to be determined team from the PSAC East 1 p.m. Nov. 11 at Egli Field.  
 
A look at the nine teams included in the first set of regional rankings can be found below.
 
ATLANTIC REGION RANKINGS
(Through Nov. 2, 2025 )

Rank	Team	W-L-T	NCAA PI*
1	West Chester	11-1-4	19.938 (2)
2	Gannon	14-1-2	21.118 (1)
3	SLIPPERY ROCK	11-3-1	19.600 (3)
4	Kutztown	10-4-1	18.533 (4)
5	Indiana (Pa.)	13-2-2	18.471 (5)
6	Shepherd	7-1-6	17.714 (8)
7	Bloomsburg	9-5-2	17.125 (9)
8	West Virginia State	13-3-1	18.353 (6)
9	Fairmont State	13-1-2	18.063 (7)

*NCAA Performance Indicator score and current rank in the region




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