By Derby News Network, Last updated Wed Jul 6 2011 12:28pm

Hey, guess what time it is? Indeed, it is time for us to happily present our July 2011 Power Rankings.

First up, for those keeping score at home, our record for this month was 24-5 in games involving at least one top-25 team, giving us an accuracy rating of 82% for June. That's a bit lower than our average monthly performance, and brings us to 123 hits and 18 misses for the year, knocking one point off our overall 2011 accuracy at 87%.

Our project to track how the official WFTDA rankings differ from the Power Rankings continues to not have a whole lot of data. This month, there were two relevant upsets: DNN hit and WFTDA missed when Arch Rival (then #22 DNN, #10NC WFTDA) defeated North Star (unranked by DNN, #7NC WFTDA). Both rankings missed when Oly (then #2 DNN, #2W WFTDA) beat Rocky Mountain (then #1 DNN, #1W WFTDA).

That makes the overall comparison for the year look like this:

DNN hit, WFTDA miss: 4
WFTDA hit, DNN miss: 1
Both rankings miss: 6

Housekeeping out of the way, let's move on to July's landscape.

Rundown

The most obvious change is a new #1 in Oly, who solidly defeated Rocky Mountain early in June, but Oly is followed one spot up on the rankings by new #2 Gotham. What we've seen from both Oly and Gotham this year are even deeper benches and more dominant performances, while Rocky Mountain has suffered from some injuries and unavailable players, just enough to move them down for the moment.

In particular here, we're looking at Gotham and Rocky Mountain's performances against Philly -- although they were both lopsided blowouts, RMRG had a somewhat depleted Philly on the road while Gotham faced a full-strength Philly at home, and Gotham came out with a much bigger win. On top of that, the RMRG win came before the loss of Amanda Jaminitya to injury, which appears to have been a factor in a closer-than-expected win over Bay Area in May.

Either way, there appears to be a pretty significant gap between the top three in the sport right now and the rest. Oly has never lost to anybody but Rocky Mountain, Gotham hasn't lost to anybody but the other two since September 2009, and Rocky Mountain hasn't lost to anybody but Oly since November 2009. It'll be tough (but certainly not impossible) for anybody to crack that top three anytime soon.

Moving down a little further, new #8 Kansas City gets their highest Power Ranking ever after upsetting previous #8 Rat City on the road, pushing everybody in the next four slots (Rat City, Windy City, Texas and Charm City) down a notch. Montreal jumps 4 spots to #14 with an inspired performance against Windy City at ECDX.

Back on the rankings after a four-month absence is new #19 Carolina, who have not defeated a then-Power Ranked team all year, but benefit from a May win over Tampa Bay, who claimed #20 by upsetting new #21 Boston at ECDX. Also back is #25 Nashville with a June win over previous #23 Chicago Outfit. The Outfit, Madison and No Coast are bumped off this month (though the Outfit has a chance to prove their way right back on when they face #24 Arch Rival this weekend).

On the Bubble

Jet City. They were ranked early in the season before falling off following a loss to Sacred, but Jet looked good in June, solidly defeating unranked Atlanta 137-95 and acquitting themselves admirably against new top-10 team Kansas City (146-92). Jet City seems to usually have considerably more trouble on the road than at home, but if they can avoid that against Charm City on July 23 they'll be bolstering a good case for a reappearance.

Sacred City. A 176-113 loss to Montreal at ECDX looked a lot better the next day, when Montreal very nearly took down top-10 Windy City. However, Sacred doesn't appear to have a very challenging schedule leading up to their regional tournament and likely won't have an opportunity to seal the deal before then.

Atlanta. Atlanta is a little hard to figure after their Pacific Northwest trip -- they did better than expected against then #8 Rat City (losing by 58 points) but then worse than expected against unranked Jet City (losing by 42). Depending on which result is the outlier, ATL could be in a position to make a solid play for top 3 in their region.

No Coast. Although the Chicago Outfit finally stopped their 9-0 2011 streak with a 128-96 defeat in June, it was the debuts of Carolina and Tampa Bay this month that forced NCRG off. A July weekend against Providence and Ohio gives No Coast another chance to put up some more wins.

Arizona. Previous results hadn't given us much reason to think AZRD was a threat to a top-25 team, but they laid a somewhat shocking 158-95 defeat on last month's #24 Madison. Although it feels like that one is an outlier (especially considering the fact that unranked Brewcity easily handled Arizona 201-117 the previous night), we'll have to wait and see if AZRD can make similar noise in the future.

Brewcity. If Arizona's result is an effect of Arizona significantly improving and not just of Madison having a very off night, then Brewcity looks extremely good in comparison.

If you'd like to say things, then we, as always, would like to hear them. Robust and courteous discussion is welcome over on the Power Rankings chart.