Daily Archives: February 27, 2012

Our 2012 men’s projections

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Illinois Wesleyan battles
Illinois Wesleyan is playing the waiting game, but we think they are safer than the conventional wisdom might suggest.
IWU photo by Jeff Findley

It’s a late night, as always, but our full projection is up, with the bracket.

Having a third Texas team make the tournament, as Trinity (Texas) did by winning the SCAC on Sunday afternoon, actually helped part of the bracketing process. That made it possible to bring Claremont-Mudd-Scripps into Texas to be the fourth team (well, really, the second team) of a four-team pod. Whitworth then gets a first-round bye, based mostly on geography, and awaits the winner of two other West Region teams.

In our projection, Amherst gets the other bye, based on their high seeding. Remember, with 62 teams in the tournament this season, there are only two first-round byes instead of three. Hope was also a candidate. If the NCAA is looking to spend a lot on gas, it could send Westminster to Hope and Rose-Hulman to Wash U., but we think our bracket works out just fine for seeding purposes without sending Westminster an extra 350 miles.

Here are the Pool C teams. (Pool B is Maryville.) In order of selection:

Middlebury
UW-Whitewater
Rhode Island College
Wheaton (Ill.)
Western Connecticut
UW-Stevens Point
Mary Hardin-Baylor
Wittenberg
Gustavus Adolphus
Transylvania
Hobart
Hartwick
WPI
Ohio Wesleyan
Illinois Wesleyan
Keene State
Randolph-Macon
St. Mary’s (Md.)
Birmingham-Southern

Transylvania dropping into the at-large pool actually helps Gustavus Adolphus. It’s a non-regional result, but Gustavus defeated Transylvania at the D3hoops.com Classic, and by the time we get this deep into the selection process, we have to consider the NCAA’s secondary criteria.

When doing so, Illinois Wesleyan scored better, picking up wins against regionally ranked opponents Bethany and Staten Island. I took the committee’s penchant for SOS this year to mean that when push comes to shove, they would take the teams with the better SOS, so I ranked Illinois Wesleyan ahead of Lake Forest and Randolph-Macon ahead of Birmingham-Southern.

Left on the table: St. Joseph’s (L.I.) 21-3, .470 SOS, 1-0 vs. regionally ranked opponents; Nazareth (18-7, .552, 0-4); John Carroll (15-7, .491); Keystone (21-6, .505, 0-3); Lake Forest (19-4, .516, 0-1); Wesleyan (20-5, .513, 3-3); Puget Sound (15-7, .513, 4-3). Emory was next in the South.

Take a look at the full bracket.

Our projected women’s bracket

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JHU tips it up with Muhlenberg
Johns Hopkins is hosting games in our bracket. Why?

Well, here we are, another Selection Monday.

Hoping that Matt Snyder’s projected men’s field would whet appetites for a while, we started with the projected women’s bracket this year. And this year, it turned out nothing was particularly easy to figure out.

As a reminder, this is equal parts what we think the committee WILL do and what they SHOULD do. It’s meant to give readers some idea what might happen on Monday at 2:30 p.m. ET, when the selection show is scheduled to start. (Show will be linked from the front page of D3hoops.com.)

We talked extensively on Hoopsville about a glut of teams with very similar resumes, and that was the most difficult group to parse out. But after selecting St. Joseph’s (Bklyn.) as the only Pool B team, here was how Pool C broke down, in the order selected:

Kean
Washington U.
Juniata
UW-River Falls
UW-Whitewater
Tufts
Rochester
Southern Maine
U. New England
Hartwick
Johns Hopkins
Louisiana College
St. Vincent
Bowdoin
York (Pa.)
St. Lawrence
Colby
Carthage
Simpson
Lewis and Clark

Left on the table were Rutgers-Newark, Buffalo State, UW-Eau Claire, Hope, King’s, Williams, Virginia Wesleyan and Gustavus Adolphus was next up in the West. It was once thought King’s was in, but the Monarchs played just one game against a regionally ranked opponent, and lost that one at that. Messiah was trapped behind King’s because King’s had a better record against common opponents (8-0 to Messiah’s 7-1) and Virginia Wesleyan lost to Messiah.

St. Vincent moved itself out of the glut of teams with a win against Messiah and another against Misericordia. Colby edged in over Rutgers-Newark with two wins against Williams, while Rutgers-Newark was 0-1 against the Ephs. Carthage edged out Simpson with a 2-2 record against common opponents, although both eventually got in, and Lewis and Clark was lucky to find a spot still there when they came up. They have a pretty good strength of schedule (.539) but were 0-3 against regionally ranked opponents.

Bracketing was even more fun, trying to spread out New England teams that had played each other quite frequently. In fact, Rhode Island College’s first-round opponent changed twice just while copying names into the bracket.

Take a look at the full bracket.

Bear in mind that William Paterson and Amherst wouldn’t be able to host the opening weekend in women’s basketball this year because their men’s teams are expected to host games.