Rankings seem to be important to you so go with that.
We went with the best fit in 3 areas: sport, academics, finances. My daughter picked a school with a new team for her sport. She liked the academics and took a chance on the team. She did not care about rankings and turned down some schools with much higher academic rankings because she didn’t like LACs or the fit of those schools that were offering. She also turned down D1 schools for a D2 school. I really think she got the best of both worlds as she got to major in engineering and was a starter (started every game for 4 years). At her school and with her coach, academics came first. The coach would delay leaving for an out of town game so they could take tests on Friday mornings. No team had practice or games on Thursday nights because the math department (and they all took math) had exams.
No regrets. When she went for interviews all they wanted to talk about was her playing, her winning awards, her being a captain. The engineering stuff was there on the resume but what made her stand out was her sport.