In Wednesday night’s post, I hoped out loud that the Brandon Bobcat rankings drop wasn’t due to something as simple as “the coaches screwed up.”

It would appear that’s exactly what happened.

If you look at Wednesday’s comments section, a post has been made there listing the rules/criteria for the coaches voting on the top 10 each week. Just three items down is this:

Best 2 out of 3 playoff series will count as one game when voting for top 10.

So Brandon wins the series, but drops to No. 3. Teams in the Canada West don’t play single-game weekends (usually), so there’s no reality to equate this to, but no teams get penalized for winning games, yet — by the letter of the CIS law — the Bobcats were penalized for losing a game, that really wasn’t a game.

To be honest, I’m one of the last people who cares about the national poll for about four-and-a-half months out of the season. Perceived injustices in November? Don’t care. Let’s see where everyone is in February. And I’m not the type of person who jumps on the coach-hating bandwagon and laments how the poll makes no sense, or highlights on a regular basis the incongruities from week to week. It’s about as productive as screaming at clouds to try to change the weather.

But then you get down to this time of year and rankings sure as hell do matter. Teams are going to their conference playoffs, schools that didn’t quite make it as far as they wanted are clamoring for a shot at the one precious wild card and everybody is desperate to find their spot in Ottawa.

This has little to do with the fact the team that dropped is the team I cover. Cut that B.S. out now. If it were another school that took the hit, I’d be railing against it just as strong.

So here’s the hypothetical: The Bobcats go into their Regina series knowing that if they win, they’re the No. 2 team in the country and the insider (because of that standing) for a wild card to nationals should things not go as planned at Canada West final four. If the ‘Cats were to open with a loss on Friday but back it up with a win in the bronze-medal game on Saturday, the wild card surely would be theirs. Now, however, say the same scenario presents itself but Acadia doesn’t go and win the AUS, a conference that is far from a lock and very much up in the air (just see last season’s results). Well, welcome to the national championship, Axemen.

BU head coach Mike Raimbault isn’t a scream and yell type of guy. He won’t raise fire and brimstone, his on-court and in-public persona is what you’d expect of a 26-year-old freshman coach just trying to get his feet wet. He’s not timid, but he’s not likely to be the one to raise the question publicly and bring it to light. Which is fine, he’s got bigger things to worry about right now than how the other coaches in the country couldn’t remember rules they’ve been supposedly following for weeks, months and years.

I’d suggest Raimbault knows what kind of team he has. The kind of team that can take the tiniest slight and use it like He-Man’s Sword of Power, like they did last season: Insulted by not getting an all-Canadian recognition, or mentioned in a Globe and Mail story previewing the nationals, or the constant doubting.

I’d also suggest Raimbault — even if he isn’t wont to make a fuss — is also pointing at the No. 3 and making his team well aware of what that means. Not only is there the revenge factor involved in trying to knock off an Alberta team that has beaten them twice already, now the Bobcats have been provided some extra ammunition.

• • •

• Another note, regarding one of our comments on Wednesday’s post: I would tend to agree Ross Bekkering should have been there but there were likely a couple of factors at play. Just playing Devil’s Advocate here, but he could have been a victim of a heavy senior class that included Andrew Spagrud, Alex Steele, Erfan Nasajpour and Greg Wallis on the first team, and Adam Hartman on the second team. Bekkering also missed a small portion of the end of the season and was third on his own team in scoring at the end of the year.

Do these arguments warrant his exclusion? I don’t know, but perhaps that’s the logic.