 Do we think Coe gets in? |
The job of selecting teams was about the same as it was earlier in the week. It didn’t really get easier with Hardin-Simmons losing. And having a UAA winner didn’t help us read the tea leaves in Pool B.
Here’s the deal: Doing a full projection involves emulating the NCAA process from the beginning, all the way through. We have to create our own regional rankings, because it’s not just important to selecting teams, it’s important for seeding them. So Gordon Mann and I, who have been projecting brackets as a team for years in both football and basketball, started with four regional rankings.
| Cortland State Rowan Montclair State SUNY-Maritime Alfred Delaware Valley Endicott Springfield St. John Fisher Maine Maritime |
Mount Union North Central (Ill.) Wheaton (Ill.) Ohio Northern Wittenberg Trine Wabash Franklin Chicago Illinois Wesleyan |
Wesley Mary Hardin-Baylor Thomas More DePauw Washington & Lee Hampden-Sydney Salisbury Louisiana College Hardin-Simmons Muhlenberg |
St. Thomas UW-Whitewater Wartburg Cal Lutheran Bethel Linfield Coe Pacific Lutheran Redlands Central |
I decided instead of spending a lot of text explaining who plays whom since the seedings and travel and conference rematches don’t always line up, I would just create a darn bracket. So here, download the projected bracket and see what we’re talking about.
We end up ranking the three NJAC teams straight by strength of schedule, since so much else here is a wash. And we will talk more about this later.
Some things did change this week. Pool B doesn’t — still Wesley, Salisbury, SUNY-Maritime. Chicago was the one left out — we looked at Salisbury’s overall Division III SOS to help guide us and it ended up being .558, ahead of Chicago’s. And Chicago making our regional rankings has more impact down the line.
Pool C: Remember how this works is that the NCAA takes the top remaining team from each region and compares all four together. They pick the best, then replace them on the board with the next team from that region.
Wheaton is first and easiest. Hampden-Sydney next. Rowan takes a little discussion because of its .500 SOS but it has a win against a regionally ranked team — a team No. 1 in its regional rankings, in fact. Ohio Northern had a better SOS (.512) but no win against a regionally ranked team. However, we put ONU in next. It gets dicey here but we add Bethel, which is like Ohio Northern (only loss is to the No. 1 team in its region) with a lower SOS. But the Royals have a much better showing against St. Thomas than ONU did against Mount Union. That’s five of our six Pool C teams.
Here’s the board now, four teams, with record, SOS and results against regionally ranked teams (no common opponents or head-to-head here):
136 Montclair State 9-1 .493 1-1 beat East-2 lost to East-1
15 Wabash 8-1 (8-2 overall) .574 2-1 beat S4 beat N9 lost N5
74 Louisiana College 7-2 (7-3 overall) .516 1-1 lost S2 beat S9
135 Coe 7-1 (9-1 overall) .493 1-1 lost W3 beat W10
We need just one team. Montclair State and Coe look fairly identical here but Montclair’s 1-1 is better than Coe’s 1-1. This doesn’t get us all the way there, but we can eliminate Coe because at least one team is better than Coe here.
Of the two-loss teams (and Louisiana College isn’t even really a two-loss team), we can eliminate Louisiana College. So it’s Montclair State vs. Wabash.
Montclair has the edge in record. Wabash has a huge edge in SOS — I mean, .574 to .493 is significant. And even if you go away from the numbers for a bit and look at who Montclair scheduled out of conference (Westfield State), the schedule doesn’t grade well. Wabash has two wins against regionally ranked opponents — and even if you don’t think Chicago makes the regional rankings, well, Wabash still has a gigantic 47-0 drubbing of DePauw today.
There is no magic formula that tells us what is worth more, or how many points in SOS it takes to overcome a difference in winning percentage. And perhaps this is not what the NCAA will do. But it’s what the NCAA should do.
So, Montclair vs. Rowan. As you saw in our commentary above, Montclair State doesn’t fare well against the other teams on the board. If the East wants to get any Pool C teams in, it may have to put Rowan ahead of Montclair State.
You see, Montclair State’s head-to-head win against Rowan has meaning in the East regional rankings, but it means absolutely nothing in the Pool C debate. It’s a win against a regionally ranked team, but they’re not the only team with one, and it counts as a win whether they are ahead of Rowan or behind them.
That may be what’s going on here.
I have a great, great deal of respect for Pat and Gordon’s track record on these projections; 31 of 32 is about the average, and they land a lot of matchups and seeds (back when there were those) and home games. They put in all the work, and frankly, if these guys were the committee, D3 would get great playoff brackets.
Still, I’m surprised by Rowan getting in and I’m stone-cold stunned at Wabash.
I look at the same facts and see Rowan vs. Montclair State differently. The record is the same and the SoS difference is negligible (.500 to .493). The 1-1 record vs. RROs is fine, and Rowan beat someone (Cortland, 20-17) that Montclair State lost to (Cortland, 10-9) later in the season.
Still there’s a VERY convincing h2h result, a 26-7 MSU win that can’t/should not be ignored. Two 9-1, 8-1 teams with nearly the same SoS and identical record vs. RROs, with a 19-point h2h result should matter. This is why committees assemble to pick the teams and not robots, so obvious red flags that the numbers miss can be corrected.
Now, P & G are great at predicting what the committee WILL do.
Certainly if Rowan goes in & Montclair doesn’t you’d want to tune in to Inside the HuddLLe tomorrow and listen to the committee chair, the Rowan AD, who must recuse herself when the Profs are on the board, explain how that came about.
Other things I noticed:
Two-loss Wabash going in ahead of one-loss Montclair State, Pacific Lutheran, Coe and Redlands, who isn’t even getting their name mentioned in Pool C this year.
Four legitimate one-loss teams missing out would be unprecdented. Win your automatic bids, kids!
Four teams from Indiana in the final projection and none play each other. Franklin, Trine, Wabash and DePauw are all close to schools in other states, and in fact all are in different conferences; just found that peculiar.
It didn’t happen in this iteration, but I could see 9-1 H-SC hosting a South playoff game instead of two-loss W&L, Salisbury or Muhlenberg.
Anyone could go to UMHB. I feel like we’ve projected Muhlenberg to go in the past.
Shame about CLU not being able to host. SCIAC rarely has the advantage over NWC and finally earned this one.
I think Pool B is right, and I would project Montclair State in before Rowan, then have Coe vs. Rowan for the final bid (PLU & Redlands don’t get to the board; Redlands has a decent SoS advantage, .518 to .493/.490, but other two have the RRO win).
Rowan and Coe is a toss-up same as Rowan-Montclair is. SoS is .500/.493 again, and RRO record is 1-1.
I could see Coe and Montclair going instead. You could justify Redlands by weighting SoS.
Obviously, everything Keith says here is correct, but let me comment on some of these things.
Keith is right, of course, that Rowan lost to Montclair. But that isn’t any different than last week or the week before, and Rowan has been ahead of Montclair both of those times in the NCAA’s regional rankings. What has changed to suggest it will be different now?
Keith is right that there are three one-loss West teams that we believe Wabash gets in ahead of. But the way the selection process works, only one of those three West teams is on the board at any particular time. Bethel is ahead of Coe because of SOS. Coe is ahead of PLU because of SOS. PLU is ahead of Redlands because of their result against common opponent Cal Lutheran.
I think Keith is getting hung up on 1-loss/2-loss here when the regional rankings have shown less of a reliance on that this year, to the betterment of the bracket. 1-loss Wheaton and ONU have been ahead of 0-loss Witt and Trine every time it’s come up. 2-loss W&L is ahead of 1-loss H-SC (there’s a late-season head-to-head result in play) so why would H-SC host instead of W&L?
A big part of the projections is reading the tea leaves and deciding what the current year’s precedents are, then extrapolating those out to this current ranking.
And if Joy Solomen has to get up and describe why Rowan gets in over Montclair tomorrow, imagine her describing why Montclair gets in over Rowan, despite Rowan being ahead of Montclair in the last two regional rankings and none of that changing.
This from a reader:
“If the committee picks mtclair vs wabash, what happens to the bracket in your view? Seems like an east team has to go north?”
If Montclair gets in, I would probably kick Rowan to the South, perhaps to host Salisbury, and then Thomas More to the north, potentially hosting Wittenberg. That’s a rough estimate, if cascading those teams down doesn’t cause any damage to mileage or conferences.
Ah yes, the big question you & Frank keep asking, what has changed to suggest MSU could leapfrog to their rightful place?
Different people involved in the discussion. And just as you and I can intelligently analyze the same info and come away with different teams, so can the 6 people on the national selection committee who had no part in regionally ranking the East.
Also, a second thing has changed. As I wrote elsewhere, I basically believe the NJAC regional rankings to be a three-way tie. And once Cortland goes in as the A, you have only two teams, ranked one on top of the other, with a great big honkin’ h2h result between them, plus identical records, records vs. RROs and nearly the same SoS.
I understand exactly what you guys are saying, I just think it’s a case of not seeing the forest for the trees, should it go in that direction.
I definitely stand by this thought: “This is why committees assemble to pick the teams and not robots, so obvious red flags that the numbers miss can be corrected.”
H-SC/W&L is another great example. An h2h result settles any ties between the two, and perhaps W&L should host before H-SC. But there are definitely examples of the runner-up/Pool C team hosting and the Pool A going on the road when the Pool C has a better record; trust me on that, I don’t know if I want to pull the book out.
Not saying that will happen, just that it could. Matchups have been funky before and seeds/regional rankings aren’t necessarily always abided by.
As far as being hung up on number of losses, I think we’ve fallen for this trick too many times. We (meaning I agreed with you Pat) thought that in spite of the W&J/St. Norbert mess last year, that ONU, North Central, Willamette, et. al. deserved two-loss consideration based on stronger schedules played. Committees have fairly consistently ignored our sentiments there — I can really only think of the one UWEC over Whitworth year where they used that theory, and at the time we had a different sentiment.
The regional rankings to me have always seemed like more of a guide than a hard-and-fast order. And it makes sense; only two of the eight or nine people that make up the rankings in each region join the national call where they pick the Pool Cs and match up/seed the bracket. So there’s great potential for it to be different.
h2h is a dominant factor when all else is equal, as I believe it is when you compare MSU & Rowan. In the case of W&L and H-SC, although there’s an h2h result, W&L also has two losses to non-regionally ranked teams. I don’t think it should cost them their ranking with regard to H-SC, but I wouldn’t find it to be an outrage if the Tigers hosted and the Generals did not.
Joy would have an easy explanation for Montclair going in before Rowan despite what the Regional Rankings say. Wanna guess what it is?
I would gain a lot of respect for her and the committee if they did right by that situation. And they have a very thankless job this year, as three — or perhaps four — deserving one-loss teams are going to be left standing when the music stops.
One last thing … please please please don’t anybody interpret this as me trying to undermine Pat and the bracket he and Gordon put a lot of work into. I only offer my thoughts as a way to generate thought and discussion until the bracket is revealed, and as an example of how people well-schooled on the process can differ, as you might imagine the committee is doing right now.
P.S. remind me next year, I’ve always wanted to sit on that as a story idea; would have to craft it so no one gets embarassed. Maybe it couldn’t run until the following season. Probably should have remembered that yesterday. Oops.
Anyway, if you have to trust anyone on this stuff, trust Pat and Gordon. They crunched the numbers. I am highly motivated by whimsy. It’s very easy to sit here and pick apart someone else’s logic than to come up with it yourself; Please keep that in mind tomorrow when the committee reveals its final choices.
“Ah yes, the big question you & Frank keep asking, what has changed to suggest MSU could leapfrog to their rightful place?
Different people involved in the discussion.”
This is not the case. The national committee meets every week and goes over every region’s rankings. And sometimes it makes changes. The 8-person selection committee has seen this ranking result for two weeks now.
“Joy would have an easy explanation for Montclair going in before Rowan despite what the Regional Rankings say. Wanna guess what it is?”
We will still ask why this win is important in Week 11 when it was not in Week 10 and Week 9. Then we will ask whether early regional rankings are even worth looking at, since they seem to have less and less to do with selection reality.
I see that everyone is favoring Rowan over Monclair state. I honostly am confused.
1. Montclair state beat Rowan 26-7, while Montclair state lost by only one point 10-9 at Cortland State.
2. Montclair State has more points for and less points against.
3. The only non-confrence games are Montclair State 34-0 over Westfield State, weak right? well, Rowans only non-confrence was against Lycoming who they only beat 24-17. Lycoming ended the season 6-4 WOW, pretty average to me.
5. And my fifth and final point is, owe back to point one, Montclair BEAT Rowan
And Yes I am happy Bethel came away with a win in a blizzard snow storm. Augsburg scored their only points with a second left
Pat asked “what has changed” in the RR as a rationale for taking MSU over Rowan. But haven’t we seen irrational moves in the RR already such as MT Union leaping NCC last week after NCC beat then #1 seed Wheaton? I love the bracket Pat and GM puT together but I sense the drama isn’t over with the committee.
Grant — read through the comments already posted for more about Montclair-Rowan.
By the way, there is no comparison between Lycoming and Westfield State. To a MIAC fan it might not be obviously but they are worlds apart on the field, regardless of record.
This was my favorite line:
“Obviously, everything Keith says here is correct”
That didn’t mean I agreed with your conclusions, just your facts. 🙂
“As far as being hung up on number of losses, I think we’ve fallen for this trick too many times.”
This may be true, but again, reading the 2010 tea leaves (Wheaton/ONU ahead of Witt/Trine) shows the committee may be open to such a logical, reasonable assessment of teams by all the criteria, rather than first by number of losses, and then by everything else.
as far as a MIAC fan I see that having only one non-confrence game doesnt mean as much when you WIN head to head
That’s fine — I asked you to read the comments, though, because a bunch of Rowan-Montclair stuff has already been said.
Grant, EVERYONE is not favoring Rowan over Montclair State. There is a strong divide.
RE: the 3:15 post, I’ve never heard the part about the national committee making changes before, but regardless, the crux of the issue is the same.
“We will still ask why this win is important in Week 11 when it was not in Week 10 and Week 9.”
Simple. It WAS important, but so was Cortland’s win. Once Cortland is out of the picture, and the committee is simply deciding which East team to bring on to the board next, Montclair or Rowan, then a ranking that slotted them only as a means to break a three-way tie becomes less important, because there’s a better way to break a two-way tie.
Really what this is coming down to is do you want to protect your Week 10 regional rankings or do you want to put the right team in the field? I believe the committee is assembled to do the latter.
Back to the other log about people saying st. thomas would be crushed by five touchdowns, Beware. They are a tough and gritty team just like a minnesotan 🙂
Re: Reading the 2010 tea leaves, I’ll grant you that and respect your position there. I’m not buying it until I see it happen, but since I think we’re generally a little slow to read the tea leaves (by nature, since you don’t see a committee’s changes in view until after they reveal their field), I appreciate your effort to get ahead.
And throughout all this, I acknowledge that you are the master of reading what a committee WILL do as opposed to what it SHOULD do. I am definitely arguing a SHOULD here.
There’s also a measure of self-preservation here. I go back to my very first comment on this post:
“As you saw in our commentary above, Montclair State doesn’t fare well against the other teams on the board. If the East wants to get any Pool C teams in, it may have to put Rowan ahead of Montclair State.
You see, Montclair State’s head-to-head win against Rowan has meaning in the East regional rankings, but it means absolutely nothing in the Pool C debate. It’s a win against a regionally ranked team, but they’re not the only team with one, and it counts as a win whether they are ahead of Rowan or behind them.
That may be what’s going on here.”
The East Region committee wants East Region teams in the field. Ordering your best at-large candidate first helps that cause. Sitting them behind someone who may not get in might mean you get neither team in.
Grant: I am a Minnesotan. 🙂
I believe all three NJAC teams should be in the tournament with Rowan moving to the South for traveling purposes. I agree the decison makers should look at this from a pure football sense. There all 9-1 and tied atop the East. Wabash should not be considered at 8-2, just like St. John Fisher is not in this discussion. If the arguement is made that there should not be 3 teams taken from the NJAC, then the committee should not have set that precedent 2 years ago when they took 3…count ’em…3 teams from the Empire 8. I realize we can’t make everyone happy here but when you consider how MSU goes from being an outright #1 in the regional bracket to not even getting a bid because of literally 1 point…then the committee is NOT looking at it from a pure football standpoint and their motives can only be political.
I just wanted to thank Pat for all of his work on this. A few years ago I never would have guessed that I would be so passionate about d3 sports, however after having a daughter play d3 basketball and having a son currently play football, things have changed. I appreciate d3football.com so much and probably visit it 10 times a day. Just one comment about 1 win versus 2 win teams. In 2008 Wheaton went in with 2 losses and went all the way to the semi-finals. Someone may correct me, however I believe they were a pool c pick that year with NCC winning the conference. I am not sure many first or second seed teams would really like to have Wabash as their first round opponent. For that matter I think Louisiana college and their million yds/game offense would strike some fear in the hearts of many. LC only lost to MHB 42 to 38 in a barn burner. Anyways thanks again to Pat and all for providing all of this wonderful info.
I like the projections, with one change, I would switch UWW with NCC, make both #1 seeds. Not sure how far that would make a UST-Franklin game, within the mileage?
Too many miles-so switch Franklin with Benedictine-esentially leaving the match-ups unchanged, just the seeding.
Rowan vs Montclair… At the end of the day it’s hard enough to select/seed tournament teams that have little common ground, with so much in common and a HEAD to HEAD I can’t see how head to head isn’t the #1 tiebreaker. If Rowan gets in and not MSU it will feel a “bit” like Univ of Texas and Texas Tech from 2008.
Montclair was ranked entire season, they fell out after losing to Cortland 10-9 AWAY. I was at that game which MSU should of won, after driving down the field with less than 1:30 to play the offense got the ball to the 16 yard line with 7 seconds left, called their last time out, kicker comes in for the game winning field goal, good snap, good hold, kicker boots it wide Cortland hangs on 10-9 (what a GIFT). BTW, my other son’s high school team has a sophmore 16 yeard old kid who kicks 45-50 yard field goals with CONSISTENCY.
Re: oconnmi,
Good post. I think there’s a shot all 3 NJACs are in, and in a year with a weaker Pool C field, they would be.
I don’t think if they get left out the motives “can only be political.” Pat left them out of his projection & he’s got no reason to favor one over the other. Non-political looks at the numbers could lead to any number of conclusions.
I can’t recall a year where there’s been nine 9-1 or 8-1 teams for six spots. We’ve had years with more Pool C candidates, but never this many with only one loss.
Great point about Montclair being one point from 10-0. Or two points. But that didn’t matter when Cortland was 9-1 and an OT away from unbeaten so the margin won’t matter here either.
sju56321- Not sure why you would have UWW and NCC switch. I think the idea is that St Thomas and NCC are #4 and #5 (pick whatever order you prefer) and putting them in the same bracket is both do-able and fair to let them fight it out. It rewards the other clear top 3 seeds and balances the brackets. It certainly doesn’t mean that’s what the NCAA will do but it seems very fair to me. The only argument is whether NCC or St Thomas should host and putting them in the same bracket lets them decide that on the field. It would be a great move by the committee. But as I have said before…criteria and common sense don’t often mix well with the NCAA.
“Criteria and common sense don’t often mix well with the NCAA.”
No doubt.
In the end it came down to us looking at two teams with nearly identical criteria and taking neither. The NCAA could take both instead, and reiterate that strength of schedule doesn’t matter (except in the North Region rankings).
Hey Pat get some rest you’ve been burning the midnight oil…nice job all around..will you be in the show this PM
Re: trainer at 8:23,
There’s no doubt teams left out would be able to win games in the tourn. And if you remember Wheston ’08, only a cascade of losses even opened the door for them to get in.
(typed this much earlier & forgot where I was going with it)
I’ll post again after the reveal. I’ll check with Pat if we stay here or get a new thread going.
I agree with the comment by oconnmi, that all three NJAC teams should be in the tournament with Rowan moving to the South for traveling purposes. I wonder if the final rankings (unpublished) won’t involve a change, with Cortland State #1 and Montclair #2. If that were the case, then I think the Pool C teams could be, in an order based upon Pat’s assessment (but bringing Montclair to the table before Rowan): Wheaton, Hampden-Sydney, Montclair, Rowan, Ohio Northern, and Bethel.
In that case, Montclair State hosts Delaware Valley.
Rowan goes to the South and hosts Washington and Lee, while Hampden-Sydney hosts Salisbury (since I think W&L could end up ranked below Hampden-Sydney, given the W&L’s 2 losses and their much lower SOS — only .483, as compare to .539 for the HSC).
Thomas More gets moved to the North and hosts Trine, while Wittenberg takes the vacated place of Wabash and travels to Ohio Northern.
??
BTW, my other son’s high school team has a sophmore 16 yeard old kid who kicks 45-50 yard field goals with CONSISTENCY. comment by rxrx…….i dont play for either team but i can see you have no knowledge of kicking….first of all high school you kick off a block meaning a 10 year old could kick fieldgoal in high school.(almost) obviously both these teams are deserving to be in the tournament but thats why we play 10 games…win them all like Maritime!!! then you dont have to worry…(ok that was a little ignorant)…and yes i know maritime doesnt play the strongest schedule, but they played 10 games with lots of tests throughout the season..it is soo easy to lose one game a season and for a team to go undefeated is well deserving to be in this tournament…also people that were bashing maritime before prob didnt know that we lost our starting (triple option) quarterback during the preseason game, thats a week before regular season starts..then went to someone that was switched to running back to lead maritime at quarterback..i made that comment because some people like to break down the schedule and say well maritime only beat mass maritime by 2…and so on and so on…well that was the first game with a sophomore running back at QB..anyway there has been lots of injuries for maritime and i love reading all of yalls comments but i figured id share a little bit about maritime and good luck to yall on selection sunday
GO PRIVATEERS
“If this were an actual NCAA bracket, it would make less sense.”
Hard to make less sense than my Mules going to Texas for the first round, but OK. Then again, we have Hardin-Simmons to thank for that.
Id like to echo something I read above. Never thought id be interested in d3 sports either, until my son hit redlands. Keep up the good work, maybe the big boys will take a lesson from what you guys do here….
Giants Cowboys Pirates – WTF?
Come on, get to the IMPORTANT stuff.
nice job Pat Well dressed Well versed and no B S