Liberty just lost to Gerstell. Cmon publics aren’t good enough to compete with top 8 privates.
MV has the top Junior in the nation. And arguably the best freshman. Those 2 alone are better than half the IAAM teams. They would walk onto any IAAM team and take any spot they wanted.
But yes, they are the anomaly. Other than SP, there aren't any other public schools that could hang.