By Derby News Network, Last updated Wed Sep 7 2011 12:10am

With the 2011 tournament season just 10 short days away, it's almost time for the peanut gallery to quit their yapping and let the teams settle things once and for all on the track … but it's not quite that time yet, so we get to keep yapping! Welcome to DNN's final regular-season release of our Power Rankings. With the regional tournament cycle stretching from September to October, we'll release two more Power Rankings this year -- one after the end of the Regionals cycle in mid-October and one after Championships in mid-November.

Action around the nation (and over the pond) picked up a little bit since a slow July, with 26 games involving at least one Power Ranked team, as opposed to just 16 last month. As it turned out, this ended up being our best month for the year in terms of accuracy -- out of those 26 games, the Power Rankings correctly predicted the winner in all but one (#25 Nashville beating #19 Carolina 143-112) for a 96% hit rate. That brings us to 162 hits and 21 misses on the year for an 89% accuracy rating in 2011. As a comparison to previous years, going into the 2009 postseason we were at 85% and going into the 2010 postseason we were at 86%.

There were no games in August in which the WFTDA rankings and DNN rankings predicted different winners, nor any in-region upsets involving a top 25 team, so we're still sitting on last month's results for such games:

DNN hit, WFTDA miss: 4
WFTDA hit, DNN miss: 1
Both rankings miss: 7

To the future!

Rundown

There's relatively little movement anywhere this month. The highest-level game played in August was between #2 Gotham and #4 Denver, but the 187-116 final for Gotham there tracked pretty well with what the rankings predicted, so both teams hold steady. Bay Area's Golden Bowl tournament looked like it was likely to shake things up a little bit, with #6 Bay Area, #10 Windy City, #11 Texas and #13 Detroit all playing each other, but all six games there also went by the rankings.

The first team to move this month is previous #7 Philly, who squeezed out an unexpectedly narrow, last jam win over #16 Minnesota, 101-84. Perennial Championships team Philly has both apparently overperformed (a 66 point win over Texas and a 2 point loss to Bay Area) and underperformed (a 233 point loss to Gotham and the 17 point win over Minnesota) this year, making it quite hard to confidently to place them, but based on their last three results we're guessing low and putting them between #10 Texas and #12 Charm City. That nudges #7 Kansas City, #8 Rat City, #9 Windy City and #10 Texas all up a slot from last month.

Things stay steady down to #19, where previous #25 Nashville pops up with the help of their defeat of previous #19 Carolina. Coming with them are new #20 Chicago Outfit and #21 Arch Rival. The Outfit and Nashville had a 26 point game going to Nashville in June (and also had a fair performance against #15 Steel City in July, losing by 53) while the Outfit and Arch Rival seem evenly matched after trading wins earlier this year.

After quite a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth, we're going with contentious London for #22, right above #23 Carolina. 0-4 London still doesn't have a WFTDA win to their credit, and lost by 179 to Rocky Mountain in August; however, we're unconvinced that that rout should keep them out of the top 25, considering that #13 Detroit also lost to Rocky Mountain by about the same margin this month.

More relevant to our thinking here is 15-1 Carolina's relatively weak schedule; #24 Tampa (10 points) and Madison (68 points) are Carolina's only big-name wins, and 2011's Madison seems to be a much less dangerous squad than last year's -- particularly in light of a 63-point loss to an Arizona team that hasn't seen tournament action since February 2007.

On top of that, Carolina's return to Power Rankings in July was predicated on Tampa's narrow 8-point defeat of current #25 Boston in June, and Boston keeps putting up results that point up a steady erosion in 2011:

Montreal / Boston 2010: Boston by 62
Montreal / Boston February 2011: Montreal by 28

Windy City / Boston 2010: Windy City by 6
Windy City / Boston July 2011: Windy City by 103

Rose City / Boston 2010: Rose City by 26
Rose City / Boston August 2011: Rose City by 178

Putting it all together, we're inclined to think that Carolina and London's win-loss records aren't representative of what will happen when they meet on the track, and that London's much tougher strength of schedule will give them the edge. Fortunately, going back to what we said at the top, the time for yapping is almost over, and we'll find out on September 16.

On the Bubble

Sacred City. We're still waiting to see if Sacred can make good on the promise they showed in solid performances at ECE. In August they walloped Central Coast 372-34. Any upsets they deliver at West Regionals will likely have to be in consolation rounds, though, since they'll go up against Rocky Mountain if they win their first game against Angel City.

Grand Raggidy. They defeated regional opponent and North Central tournament #8 seed Brewcity too late for it to get them into the tournament with a 117-110 win last month, but it might point up a 2012 resurgence for the Grand Rapids crew.

Houston and Dutchland. Both teams were edged out of this month's rankings by the Outfit and Arch Rival. Houston, in particular, is a confusing case -- in July, they lost to current #25 Boston and current #14 Montreal by 6 and 5 points, respectively. We're treating the Montreal result as an outlier for the moment, but if it's not, Houston could make big noise at the South Central tournament late in the month.

You've got 10 days to yap. Better get your robust, courteous yapping on over to the Power Rankings thread!