We’re getting uncomfortably close to Selection Monday and the usual questions are coming up about how the tournament is selected, where it will be held, and the like.
Although this (and many other topics) is primarily covered in our site FAQ, it seems like a front-page summary would be helpful. After all, this is the first season with a significantly different setup.
The women’s tournament expands from 50 to 63 teams. (Why 63? Division III allocates tournament bids equally across all sports, one for every 6.5 schools that are eligible for the playoffs in a given sport.) Thirty-eight conferences get automatic bids (also known as AQs for ‘automatic qualifier’ or less commonly as ‘Pool A’). Four bids are set aside for the schools who are not in those conferences (Pool B). The final 21 bids are for everyone left, in Pool C. In recent years Pool C bids were hard to come by, but the expanded tournament field was essentially entirely allocated to Pool C. One team gets a first-round bye. Two teams play on Wednesday, March 1, with the winner advancing to play that team. This is not a play-in game, it’s a first-round game like any other, the equivalent of an 8/9 game.
The men’s tournament expands from 48 to 59. Thirty-seven conferences get automatic bids, four Pool B bids go to teams outside those conferences and the remaining 18 bids are Pool C. That means five teams get a first-round bye and 10 teams play off on Thursday, March 2 to meet them. These Thursday games are the equivalent of 8/9 games and 7/10 games.
To combat a perceived issue with missed class time, the NCAA basketball committees have compacted the tournament dates. Whereas all first-round games used to be played on Wednesday for women and Thursday for men, now teams will meet in four-team regionals on Friday and Saturday to play first- and second-round games. Follow closely, here’s where it gets confusing:
In the women’s bracket, there are 15 regionals with first-round games on Friday and second-round games on Saturday. The remaining second-round game includes the team that got the first-round bye and is played on Saturday.
In the men’s bracket, there are 11 regionals with first-round games on Friday and second-round games on Saturday. The remaining second-round games includes the five teams that got the first-round bye and are played on Saturday.
The new format strips home-court advantage from 11 men’s teams and 15 women’s teams that would have gotten home games in previous years. First-round games played in great atmospheres in previous years, such as the night Southern Vermont packed the gym in a snowstorm and beat Lasell, when Calvin knocked off Wheaton on the road last season, or when the Case Western Reserve women hit a three at the end to beat Mt. St. Mary, now all get played on neutral floors in front of a couple hundred people. Some schools might never see an on-campus home game in this situation.
Why are there some games played Wednesday or Thursday? So the teams with first-round byes don’t get an inordinate advantage by hosting a team with less than one night to prepare.
The remaining first-round games are played March 3 and all second-round games are played March 4. These are the regionals. The sectionals are the next set of games, played March 10-11 with four teams again meeting at one campus site. Those sites are announced on Sunday, March 5. The winners of those sectionals meet at the Final Four, which is held for men at Salem, Va., as it has been since 1996. The women’s Final Four is at Springfield College in Springfield, Mass. The games are played March 17-18.
It usually takes a pretty decent gym to host sectionals, but I have been told that the standards will be less strict for hosting a regional. They might even used split admissions (clearing the gym between games) in some locations to accomodate ticket demand.
OK, that was pretty complex, but it gets even geekier from here. You may read talk about the NCAA ranking and selection criteria. Here they are:
• In-region winning percentage.
• In-region Quality of Wins Index.
• In-region head-to-head competition.
• In-region results vs. common regional opponents.
• In-region results vs. regionally ranked teams
(Ranked opponents are defined as those teams ranked at the time of the ranking/
selection process only.)
• Conference postseason contest(s) is included.
• Contest versus provisional members in their third and fourth years shall count
in the primary criteria. Provisional members shall remain ineligible for rankings
and selection.
Secondary criteria are as follows. We can’t tell if they actually use these:
• Out-of-region head-to-head competition.
• Overall Division III won-loss percentage.
• Results versus common non-Division III opponents.
• Results versus Division III teams ranked in other regions.
• Overall win-loss percentage.
• Results versus common out-of-region opponents.
• Overall Division III Quality of Wins.
• Should a committee find that evaluation of a team’s win-loss percentage during
the last 25 percent of the season is applicable (i.e., send of season performance),
it may adopt such criteria with approval from the championships committee.
I have probably left something out. Please let me know, or fire questions away. The good thing about the past few years is a lot of fans have become very knowledgeable about the tournament setup as well and can answer if I don’t get to it right away.
Pat,
Who get the byes? the highest ranked?
Who hosts? the highest ranked with an adequate gym?
Who gets preference in hosting between men and women like Baldwin-Wallace, for example?
Which regionals are playing against each other in the sectionals?
Byes: Great question. This is the first time we’ll have something so pronounced like this, where one team is singled out over everyone else. It should be on the criteria but also could be placed in order to help geography, such as with three west coast teams or three Texas teams.
Hosts: Same as always — whatever the NCAA decides.
Preference: There’s a section in the handbook about it. You can’t host both. If both have the opportunity, the men have first preference in even-numbered years, the women in odd years.
Regionals: In the men, it is not predetermined and has not been since 1999. In women’s, Atlantic vs. Northeast, East vs. Mid-Atlantic, South vs. West and Great Lakes vs. Central. However, keep in mind that just because it’s the East bracket doesn’t mean it will have East teams in it once the sectional comes around!
My bet is the that the byes will be used to achieve the goal of our beloved “geographic proximity”.
In 2005, Maryville TN was the highest ranked team in a bye-home-away trio. But rather than flying Methodist, ostensibly the weakest of the three, to Clinton MS, they bussed them to Maryville TN. Maryville won and then Mississippi College, which received the bye, was bussed to Maryville.
In 2004, a very weak (13-12) Pool B UDallas team was “conveniently located” only 495 miles from Alpine, TX, home of the ASC Pool A “AQ” winner, Sul Ross State. Sul Ross State won and then was bussed 400 miles to Trinity TX for the second round game. It was clear that either SRSU, which won the second round game, or Trinity, were to be flown to Puget Sound with UW-SP and Lawrence for the Sectionals.
In any case, Top Seed Trinity in that sub-bracket, and SRSU may have had to play earlier than the NCAA wanted, or flown to another opponent. I speculate that UDallas may have filled a niche, had sufficient, albeit marginal, requirements in a very weak Pool B, and helped eliminate travel expense.
As I look at the travel restrictions in the South Region, Mississippi College (both the men and the women are ranked) is less than 500 miles from Maryville, Fisk, Huntingdon and Oglethorpe.
MissColl is more than 500 miles from McMurry, Hardin-Simmons, Howard Payne, Southwestern and Trinity, and I believe may be more than 500 miles from UMHB. If Trinity wins the SCAC tourney, they look to be the host for one sub-bracket. There may be a Pool C to either an ASC team and/or Southwestern.
There will not be need for five geographic proximity byes, however, in the men’s bracket. Two at the most, I would think.
Thanks, Pat.
Can you explain Pool B bids? They seem a bit confusing.
Sure thing. In the men’s tournament, 37 conferences get automatic bids. But there are 42 conferences, plus indepdendents. Pool B is to ensure that those schools have access to the tournament.
The Pool B conferences for both genders are Great South, North Eastern, Northern Illinois-Iowa, Presidents, Upper Midwest and the independents. A conference needs to have seven full members of Division III and go through a waiting period in order to get an automatic bid.
After the four Pool B bids are selected, the remaining teams can be considered for Pool C bids.
Thanks for bringing up “The Shot” (and non-East teams in the East bracket), Pat. One of the major contributing factors to the memorability of the Case women’s first (and thus far only) NCAA Tournament win is that they did it in front of a packed house, the most hostile crowd they had seen all year. Imagine if Case and Mt. St. Mary had been thrust into a sub-regional at St. Lawrence (Case’s 2nd round opponent), over 400 miles from either school. It just wouldn’t have been the same in front of a few dozen fans.
The fact that you chose to mention this game, coupled with Ashley Horton’s buzzer-beating shot to win at the University of Chicago on the same day, has prompted me to make a list of games that the Lady Spartans have won on last-second shots, since I started following the team in 2000.
16-Jan-01 (I think that’s the right date): Dawn Bialosky broke a tie with a last-second jumper on the road against Johns Hopkins, in the Blue Jays’ last season in the UAA.
11-Feb-01: It’s not a conventional buzzer-beater, but Erin Rogalski, playing in her last home game for Case, was fouled on a field goal attempt with the score tied as time expired. She made the first free throw to win the game over Chicago.
27-Feb-02: This is Jasmine Rowan’s 30-foot shot at the buzzer to beat Mt. St. Mary in the NCAA Tournament. While it only broke a tie, Case needed the shot to win for two reasons: (a) Mt. St. Mary had just rallied to tie the game, and the crowd was simply deafening– the official scorer didn’t even hear the referee signal a timeout after the tying shot. They had all the momentum at that point. (b) Case’s two senior captains, center Je’Nine Nickerson and point guard Tracy Roessner had already fouled out. In all likelihood, Case would have lost the game in overtime without them.
26-Feb-05: Case didn’t win the game on this shot directly, but I’m counting it anyway. After trailing by nine late in the game at Emory, Ashley Horton (again) made a layup at the buzzer to tie it up. She was fouled on the play, but missed the free throw; however, Case won the game in overtime.
And then there’s 12-Feb-06 at Chicago. Incidentally, in the same time, the Case men have only won one game on a buzzer-beater: Mason Conrad’s put-back at home against Bethany earlier this season.
I, for one, am glad to see the change in moving the tournament to a Friday/Saturday event – it’s a start in the right directon. Home court shouldn’t be a factor in why a team advances, but rather because of being the better team on a particular day. Familiarity with the floor, or the lighting, or the rims shouldn’t be the deciding factor in a tournament game, though it all too frequently is.
I don’t think you’ll ever see the day when the early rounds of the D3 tournament are as close to neutral as possible, as they are at the D1 level, but this is probably as good as can be done. I know I’m probably in the minority on this, but I am strongly against home court advantage.
I understand the desire for neutrality, but I think there needs to be a balance between that and creating an entertaining, fun atmosphere.
That will always be easier for Division I than Division III. In DI you can ship four teams to a neutral site and it’ll still be packed. Fans from the host market will take whatever seats the traveling fans don’t. That usually doesn’t happen in Division III.
I’ve heard lots of players say they enjoyed the tournament because of the atmosphere and the energy of the crowd. I’ve never heard any player — victorious or not — say they really enjoyted the tournament because it was in a neutral site.
To put this in a practical example, one of the best crowds I’ve seen at a women’s tournament game was Thomas More/Wilmington at the Saints’ gym a couple years ago. The site wasn’t neutral but the energy was fantastic…and Wilmington won despite being on the road.
The next night Wilmington played Puget Sound at Thomas More. It was a neutral site for both teams and, with a relatively small crowd, it was like playing the game in the shadow of the previous night’s supernova.
Or you can look at the SUNYAC, which plays its men’s and women’s tournament at the Utica Memorial Auditorium. Since SUNYIT is rarely a factor, it’s basically a neutral site. And it’s routinely deflating to see two teams play such an important game in front of a handful of fans.
Pat,
In your first reply, you wrote that the Northeast women will be match up with the Atlantic. Is this a new pairing? I thought the Northeast was tied with the Mid-Atlantic.
I, too, like the Friday-Saturday format. There will always be home-court sectionals (the DI women moved away from that just recently).
I also believe that a team should have something to show for having a superb season/higher seed.
Monkey,
Appendix E, Page 53
http://www.ncaa.org/library/handbooks/basketball/2006/2006_d3_w_basketball_handbook.pdf
Left side Right side
Atl vs NE GL vs C
E vs MA S vs W
do the subregional winners always meet in the 1st round of the sectionals instead of ranking the sectional participants 1 thru 4 and having 1 play 4 and 2 play 3?
for example, in last year’s women’s sectional at scranton, arguably scranton (1) played messiah (3) and bowdoin (2) played wm smith (4).
If I understand your question, the answer is that the brackets for the entire championship are determined in advance; there is no re-seeding done in mid-tournament.
I’ve never understood why the don’t arrange the brackets so that you have two inter-regional matchups in the sectional semifinals.
For example, I’d rather see IWU vs. Chapman and Puget Sound vs. Hanover on the first night of a sectional rather than IWU/HC and Chapman/UPS. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to have two teams from the same region automatically play in a sectional that might be 1,000 miles from their fans.
Sometimes it happens that way, sometimes it doesn’t.
So what are your guys opinion on who the Pool B teams will be for the men’s tourney? I’m a Clarke fan and they have a good shot at winning their first ever conference tournament. Do you think they have a shot at getting one of the four spots? If not, who does?
I would say Lincoln is a lock and Bethany is pretty close. Then Fisk, Maryville and Villa Julie are ahead of Clarke — well ahead of Clarke. I think all three could take another loss and still be ahead of Clarke.
Team, QOWI, Regional w%
Lincoln 10.563 .750
Bethany 9.333 .810
Fisk 9.769 .692
Maryville (Tenn.) 9.600 .700
Villa Julie 9.105 .789
Clarke 8.684 .632
When is the opening day of the playoffs?