At the January convention, the intriguing proposal to designate any D-III games played on an institutional break of seven or more days (winter break basketball and spring break baseball/softball/lacrosse come to mind) count as regional games was tabled.
At the recent Division III championships committee meeting, it was killed. Says The NCAA News:
Two specific concerns — about how teams would notify opponents about designation of a game as an in-region contest and the probable difficulty of obtaining both teams’ consent for that designation — prompted the committee to abandon the proposal, which it first recommended to the Division III Management Council last year.
“When discussing the specifics of implementing the proposal, it became apparent there were some logistical hurdles that were going to be difficult to clear,” (Iowa Conference commissioner and championships committee chair John) Cochrane said.
They’re looking at something different, expanding the definition of a regional game to include teams in the NCAA’s overall defined regions. There are four of those, which means more schools would be in a particular region. That goes into the NCAA pipeline and requires more approval.
Finally, too, the opponents’ opponents winning percentage is headed back into play for selection criteria.
“A goal of the committee over the past year has been to develop and implement a true strength-of-schedule component in our criteria,” Cochrane told the News. “The component we have now, the ‘quality of wins index,’ is not a very accurate measure of an institution’s strength of schedule. (Emphasis added.)
“For years, we’ve talked about the importance of encouraging our institutions to play the best teams within their region that they possibly can, but our criteria haven’t rewarded institutions for doing so in near as strong a way as we would like. We’re hoping this gets us closer to that objective.”
Well hallelujah! It’s about time! They call it opponents’ opponents’ average winning percentage, so one would think that is pretty self-explanatory. If that gets through the pipeline, the strong teams will actually benefit and be measured more accurately.
The NCAA’s four regions, from the bylaws:
(a) Region 1 – Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont; (Revised: 1/12/99)
(b) Region 2 – New York, Pennsylvania,; (Revised: 1/12/99)
(c) Region 3 – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia; and (Revised: 1/12/99)
(d) Region 4 – Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
Why not just do a regional RPI? Then we could have the regions ranked accordingly by inter-regional games to set the tourney brackets up. Hmmm…
Why don’t they just get rid of the whole “regional” concept. I know they want to encourage playing regional opponents because it will cut down on costs of travel. But, costs will always be an issue if we have “regional” emphasis or not. It’s not like a school in our “region” is going to just decide to fly out to New York every year or the south whenever possible because “we don’t have to worry about those games not counting as in-region!” Costs are still a priority so I don’t see teams suddenly flying all over the country if they got rid of that.
That’s true – part of a well-rounded experience is visiting areas from other parts of the country – however, it is an equalizer as teams with small athletic departments won’t be able to make those trips.
Here is what I don’t get. It’s a NATIONAL frigging championship. So why do we look at REGIONAL criteria to let teams in? Are we saying the committee isn’t smart enough to look at teams on a national basis? Are we saying that seeing the country is not a good thing? Are we saying that playing local dreck is better than palying solid national teams?
i just don’t understand.
C
What I love is New York and PA are one region all by themselves. That still wouldn’t help some of the SUNY teams much. If they want to go to four regions it would be much easier to just take the current eight and make four. Atlantic and NE, East and GL, Mid-Atl and South, MW and West. Simple, easy and helps the weaker regions. Keep the 200 mile rule in effect or expand to 500 miles. If you can ride a bus 500 miles for an NCAA tournament game, then it is not unreasonable to do the same during the regular season. The school doesn’t have to do it, but if the oppurtunity to play in a great tournament comes up and it has schools in it that can count as regional games because there is a 500 mile regional radius it helps the schools.
“What I love is New York and PA are one region all by themselves. That still wouldn’t help some of the SUNY teams much.”
That’s 115 or so schools, Knightstalker. I would think that’s plenty to choose from.
Yeah but how many of those 115 are within 200 miles of each other?
My guess is that you are only really adding the upper tier of NY to the equation.
C
From dealing with regional games and 200 miles for the past few years, it’s not as many as you might think. For example, the entire NYC area isn’t even within 200 miles of Potsdam/Clarkson/St. Lawrence, let alone western NY or most of Pennsylvania.
You’re adding western PA-to-eastern NY, not to mention western PA-to-eastern PA.
Yes you are doing that if you are say Philly bible in PA. 15 miles away, TCNJ doesnt get those teams.
C
I was mostly talking about the extreme upstate NY teams. I think that some of the teams like Potsdam would be more than willing to head to NE to play some of the better teams if they could count as regional games.
I guess you’re assuming they would remove the 200-mile rule. I’m not sure that’s been stated.
I don’t assume anything with the NCAA, but yes I believe that they will remove that allowance.
C
My frustration with this argument is that many people are assuming a trend opposite of what has been happening, that the Competition Committee (governing all of D3 and not just basketball) will restrict the criteria, rather than improve on them.
Almost everyone believes that we have a more equitable tournament. The NCAA has handled the access issue as well as possible. Every D3 player knows exactly how to make the Tourney.
The Pre-Pool era, pre-dating many of us current fans and before the 1999-2000 season, had notorious inequities and subjective manipulations that are being addressed in a symptomatic fashion.
The regional emphasis has been expanded to include “next-door” which works really well east of the Mississippi River. The “200-mile radius rule” is a quite sensible adaptation.
I propose these changes.
1) As Pat as highlighted, adopt the 4 official regions listed in the by-laws.
2) “Tweak” to the 200-mile rule to include the “200-mile venue rule”. Any inter-region tourney venue that is within the 200-mile radius limit makes a game a candidate for the 200-mile rule. Restated, if a non-region opponent A lies within the 200-mile radius of the venue, then the game can count as in-region if the opponent B satisfies the criteria of being a fellow member of the host’s region, or also qualifying as a 200-mile radius venue team.
3) Address conference competition formats to be eligible to receive a Pool A bid, i.e., require one of these formats:
a) double round-robin.
b) double round-robin intra-division and minimum of 14 total conference games in multi-division conferences. (This would allow a two 6-team divisions, (12-team) conferences to play 10 intra-division games plus 4 more crossover games.)
c) A minimum of 14 conference games in the larger conferences. This would keep the 10-member SCAC in compliance and is the same number of conference games that 8-member conferences are currently playing, e.g. the SCIAC and the CCIW.
4) Adopt the “opponents’ opponents’ winning average” as a primary criterion.