The undefeated Army Black Knights found themselves in good standing when the first College Football Playoff rankings were revealed Tuesday night.Attempting to keep climbing Saturday afternoon against North Texas is the focus in the American Athletic Conference matchup in Denton, Texas.Army (8-0, 6-0) was No. 25 in the CFP standings, grabbing the final spot in the rankings used to determine the field for the inaugural 12-team playoff.The Black Knights stayed unbeaten with a defensive-minded 20-3 victory over rival Air Force last weekend to extend the country’s longest active winning streak to 12 games.The 17-point margin of victory equaled Army’s smallest this year. The Black Knights also defeated East Carolina (45-28) and Florida Atlantic (24-7) by that margin on Oct. 19 and Sept. 7, respectively.The Black Knights have not trailed during their dozen-game winning streak.Since 2003, the only school with a longer winning streak without trailing is Alabama, which went 14 games from 2020 to 2021.Army also is one of only five unbeaten schools in FBS competition, joining Miami, BYU, Indiana and Oregon.Army’s triple-option threat usually leads the way, but coach Jeff Monken said the defense was at its best in the 20-3 win over Air Force.”I don’t know if our defense could have been asked to do more than they did,” Monken replied when asked if it was the unit’s best performance of 2024.”Obviously, there were some plays there, like I said, it was first-and-25 at one point. They converted and got a field goal out of that drive. We had them in a fourth-and-11. They scrambled. We had a pass down our sideline on fourth down that they converted and got a down there and into scoring territory.”But … we found a way to get them off the field and came up with three big interceptions, and that was great.”