Given the tumultuous weekend for what were the nation’s top two teams, Harvard hoped its two wins over No. 10 Brown would boost the team into the nation’s top spot.

Instead, the Crimson has to settle for second…for now.

Harvard coach Katey Stone speculated on national rankings following the team’s dramatic 4-3 overtime victory over the Bears on Saturday and prior to the poll’s release, but did not dwell on the issue.

“It doesn’t matter, but I imagine that we should be [No. 1] because we only have two losses and everyone else has four or more, but I don’t really care, I really don’t,” Stone said. “We’re going to take care of business and get ourselves ready for St. Lawrence because they’re playing great hockey right now.”

Stone is preparing the team to be focused and not suffer the same lesson Dartmouth learned this weekend. After dropping two games to then-No. 5 St. Lawrence–3-0 and 3-2, respectively—Dartmouth fell two spots from its perch as best in the nation, while the Saints climbed up to No. 4.

Meanwhile, Minnesota bumped up one place to the top spot after splitting a series with then-No. 4 Wisconsin, who has since moved down to No. 5.

The Crimson boasts the nation’s best record with only two losses—as well as the best winning percentage at .8913—so one might well ask, why the snub?

There is one very good explanation: many still feel that Harvard needs to prove itself. Though the Crimson is 5-2-1 against the top ten teams in the nation, the squad is just 1-2-1 against the nation’s top eight teams.

The poll that better reveals this fact is the Pairwise Rankings (PWR), composed by U.S. College Hockey Online (USCHO).

This poll uses methods similar to those of the NCAA selections committee and has accurately predicted the competitors for the Frozen Four in each of the past four years.

The PWR ranks above-.500 teams based on their performance against common opponents, against one another, and against other above-average schools, as well as the results of their last 16 games and each team’s Rating Percentage Index (RPI).

The RPI, another complicated statistical tool used to decide who’s tops in women’s college hockey, considers a team’s winning percentage, that of its opponents, and the winning percentage of its opponents’ opponents.

In the most recent PWR poll, Harvard ranks second behind Minnesota. Both schools have a PWR of 15, but Minnesota boasts an RPI rank of 1 to Harvard’s 4 because of the Crimson’s poor record against the few top teams they have played.

Compared to Minnesota–who is 7-3 against the top eight–Harvard has a ways to go in proving they are the nation’s best.

The Golden Gophers have beaten Dartmouth once and Wisconsin three times, whereas the Crimson has yet to beat any one of the other top five teams in the country.