I have no idea about the overall quality of Knight D3 (there are at least a few more good, human conferences, one in the midwest and one in the south I think?), but the bottomline is the quality of the coaches. There are multiple guys with a tremendous amount of success at at least D2, sometimes D1 (in recent memory, off the top of my head: chisox won a D2 crown in tark a season ago, kmason has won a few, duke just won a D3 title last year, I think by now I need two hands to fit my rangz). There will never be a season where I'm not in the top 10 RPI, rarely is there a season where kmason/duke aren't in the top 10 RPI, and some of the other coaches (ship, bow, bills) just churn out great recruiting class after great recruiting class. I'm sure this season was a culmination of good timing (although CMHMS will be better next year), but the success, because of the high quality recruits targetted, should be sustainable.