Quote from: Flying Weasel on November 17, 2021, 09:39:10 PM

Quote from: Futbol is Life on November 17, 2021, 08:17:03 PMBut the point is Margolis, as the chair of Region 2, buried the best argument for an at large bid for that region down under the teams that finished 4th and 5th in the league.  I'm not saying he did it consciously,  but simply pointing out that decisions in the Regional rankings are vital.

I think you are aware that there are Regional Advisory Committees (RACs), right?  And that the members of the national committee (in this case the Division III men's soccer committee) chair these RACs, but are non-voting members of the RACs?  The regional rankings are decided by the voting members of the RACs, not by the national committee member who chairs the RAC.

Flying Weasel- thanks for the info.   I wrongly assumed the chair was actually the leader of the RAC, and not just a non-voting member.   My stance remains the same but should have been pointed at the RACs as a group.   It's vital to give the Regional Chair the best possible argument to enter into a debate, and conference performance over weeks of play should not be so easily blurred by knockout tourney results. 

So as the Region 2 chair, as the at large picks are winding down, Margolis is asked to compare his highest available seed vs the others, and the Region 3 chair has Rochester.  So Margolis says "I have MIT, the team that won the NEWMAC regular season and lost in the finals of their tournament.  They are 4-3-1 vs ranked teams vs Rochester's 3-3-1, who finished 6th in the UAA.  But more importantly, my team played both within the last month - we tied Rochester despite outshooting them 27-12 and we lost to the MIT in OT while being outshot 13-6.  I think clearly MIT is the more deserving side".  Hard to believe the Region 2 chair, making this argument would have any problem winning over voters.

Problem is, the team Margolis instead chose to argue for was WPI, the NEWMAC 5th place team that lost in the quarterfinals of the tourney and had a 3-4-2 record vs ranked teams.   Mind you, Brandeis also lost to WPI this year, so Margolis still could have made an argument for WPI over Rochester.  But the point is Margolis, as the chair of Region 2, buried the best argument for an at large bid for that region down under the teams that finished 4th and 5th in the league.  I'm not saying he did it consciously,  but simply pointing out that decisions in the Regional rankings are vital.

Another example is Hopkins, the outright winner of the Centennial conference with a 4-3-1 record vs ranked teams yet ending up ranked behind Gettysburg (5th in the Centennial) after GC "makes a run" in the Centennial tourney, allowing them to get to 3-4-2 record vs ranked teams.    I get that the GC beat Hopkins in the conf tourney, but the regular season has to mean something.   Of course, both Hopkins and Gettysburg were able to make the tourney, as well as Region V's 6th ranked team Swarthmore.    But no one was surprised that GC and Swat left after 1 game.    And as could be expected, Hopkins found a way to win a tight game and almost snuck into the sweet 16.

So it's not so much that we need to avoid putting teams with losing records in a conference into the big tourney, although of course that's a red flag.  But the regular season conference performance provides great comparison between teams playing the same schedule.  A 1st place team has proven over weeks of play that they have worth.  Regions shouldn't allow a knockout tourney to have more say in determining a team's ability to get results.

Quote from: Ejay on November 13, 2021, 07:49:24 AM

Quote from: blue_jays on November 12, 2021, 08:16:51 PM
Also, with the how spread out the teams are, UAA league tourney will never happen.

Why can't they play a 4 team play-off like most other conferences? They could either do it at one central location on Fri/Sun or travel to higher seed Tue/Sat. That's not too much to ask for these schools.

I believe the point of the original post isn't that they don't play a tournament, it's that everyone else does and it often adversely skews the worthiness of top performers in those conferences.  Rochester's gift of an at large bid wasn't their fault, but rather just an example of giving too much credit for being in a "great conference".   And if they had played a conf tourney, and found a way to win against NYU, they still would be a good but not great team.   More likely, however, they would have lost to NYU and had their regional ranking go down and been less of a threat to fool the committee.

However, I actually think the UAA does it right and everyone else has it wrong, especially for D3 soccer.  By definition, all but one team participating in a conf tourney will get at least one additional L or T that weakens their claim for an at-large, especially if a computer is being used in the analysis.   Since there are so many conferences in D3 soccer,  if you simply took the regular season winner from each conference and then the best at large teams,  the field would certainly be a better representation of the most competitive teams.   Those 8-10 teams in a conference all played the same schedule and one team earned the most points  (tiebreakers would be agreed upon prior to the season). The UAA could still get 3 at large bids this year( which were fair), and the NESCAC could still get 4 if they deserved it (like they did), but across the country you would have teams with little room to argue since they had the whole season to earn their spot. 

But more importantly, it's vital to get the most deserving team from the conference into the tournament. Basically 2/3 of the d3 soccer tourney are automatic bids, which already waters down the competition (i.e. already the best 64 teams in the country aren't in the tournament, but that's fine since it's great to have everyone getting a chance).   But the overall competitiveness of the tourney is further diluted by allowing conf tourney winners to get their conference AQ -  allowing teams that haven't shown over 2 months that they are the most competitive.   As a comparison, the NCAA men's basketball tournament (the standard for sports entertainment) has 36 at-large bids and 32 auto bids.   DI Hoops has the luxury of allowing the conference tourney upsets while not diluting the overall field, since the majority of the field will be picked by the committee.   

Quote from: PaulNewman on November 10, 2021, 02:28:37 PM
Great post...even if there are legit counter-arguments.  And hopefully that will not be all you have to say.

Since you insist 

I'm not really big at looking at one result and making broad statements about conferences or even teams.  Especially since there is lots of parity and lots of close one-goal games.   There often are hidden issues that no one outside of the team knows are going on that would make it irresponsible to put too much weight on one game.

But since Brandeis sits in Region 2 and plays many games vs New England opponents, their results do offer some defense to the quality of NE in general and, in particular, the top half of the NEWMAC this year, as it relates to the UAA.  Brandeis lost 3 close games to 3 of the top teams in the NEWMAC (MIT, Babson, and WPI), and were outshot significantly in each of those games.   They also won a close game vs Clark (7th in the NEWMAC).    In a season of close games, they ended up 5th in the UAA ahead of sixth place Rochester, with whom they tied on Halloween despite enjoying a 27-12 shot advantage.   Against the top half of the UAA, Brandeis went 3-1 (being outshot in 3 of those games).

I'm not trying to convince anyone that Emory, Chicago, and NYU are not impressive teams deserving to be in the tournament since they lost to Brandeis.  And I'm not disparaging Brandeis whatsoever, as their resiliency to keep plugging away after losing tight match after tight match is admirable.  My point is that the top teams in the NEWMAC certainly could compete with anyone (as also shown in close head-to-head matches with Tufts and Amherst), and that the outright regular season winner of that league, MIT (who also advanced to the conf tourney final), deserved far better treatment than the tourney committee offered. 

Did someone on these boards mention that the Brandeis coach was, in fact, on the committee? 

First time caller, longtime listener.   I'm a former college player (not in NESCAC, fwiw).

I agree that it's hard to figure out what some of these Regional chairs were doing, in particular the Region 2 chair.  In that region, all 6 ranked teams were from the NEWMAC.   The regular season NEWMAC outright winner, MIT, lost in the finals of the conference tournament.  Yet somehow WPI, the 5th place team in the league, who lost in the tourney play-in game to the 4th place team, ended up ranked as the highest at large seed in Region 2, ahead of MIT and also ahead of Coast Guard (the aforementioned 4th place team in the league that beat WPI twice).  Seriously, how in the world does that happen.

That's what has me motivated to post.  When it gets down to figuring out who to reward with at-large bids and you're getting down to the end, you're dealing with teams of lots of equal ability that likely would all play each other close if they played head to head.  For me, the at large picks should be rewards for having a standout season,  and I'd argue that you need to focus on these two measurements to determine a season worthy of that reward:
•   conference performance, and
•   performance against ranked teams, including conference tourney

In fact, the most beneficial aspect of the regional rankings being done at all was to compare each school's "Record vs Ranked" teams, as this lets you see performance vs the best teams, regardless of what conference the opponent belonged to.

As you would expect, every team (16 in total) with at least 5 ranked wins are in the tourney.   Here are the six teams with 4 wins vs ranked teams that did not get an at-large, and where they stood in their own league :

Wesleyan  (4-3-2 vs ranked teams) – Tied for 4th in NESCAC
Rutgers-Newark (4-2-1 vs ranked teams) – Tied for 2nd in NJAC
MIT (4-3-1 vs ranked teams) – Outright winner of NEWMAC
Vassar (4-2 vs ranked teams) – Fourth in Liberty League
Mary Washington (4-4-1 vs ranked teams) – went 1-1-1 in C2C
Wisconsin Whitewater (4-5-0 vs ranked teams) – went 0-0 in CTC

I feel it's clear that Wesleyan, Rutgers-Newark, and MIT all should have been rewarded for their season over each of the following:
Rowan (3-3-1 vs ranked teams) – Tied for 4th in NJAC
Gettysburg (3-4-2 vs ranked teams) – 5th place in Centennial
Oneonta (3-3-2 vs ranked teams) -   3rd in the SUNYAC
Rochester  (3-3-1 vs ranked teams) – 6th place in UAA

The NESCAC not only in recent history is a different story than the UAA and Centennial conferences, but this year is so strong at the top that Wesleyan and Middlebury both had standout seasons even while tying for 4th place. There was only one out-of-conference loss among the top 5 teams.  They deserve 5 bids, this year.  The same cannot be said for the UAA and Centennial conferences.  Those boys from Wesleyan, MIT, and Rutgers-Newark got wronged.

And that's all I have to say.