It's interesting to play around with NPI by conference to get a sense of which conferences are likely 1 bid this year.  I don't think it's that far off from what you would expect.  NESCAC is looking like it will get its typical 6, maybe 7, but others are perhaps a little more surprising.  We obviously won't know the rankings "cutoff" until we see who wins conference AQs.  Here are a few (non-NESCAC) examples

Some possible 1-bid conferences this year if the favorite wins the auto-bid

UAA (highest NPI is Rochester at 48 and next is Brandeis at 50)
CCIW (highest is North Park at 19, but next is Illinois Wesleyan at 71)
C2C (UMW is 1, but next closest is Christopher Newport at 61)
MAC Commonwealth (York is 13, but next closest is Messiah at 89)
MAC Freedom (highest NPI are Lebanon Valley at 63 and Stevens at 64)
American Rivers (highest NPI is Luther at 77)
Liberty (Vassar is 14, but next highest is Clarkson at 104)
NEWMAC (Babson at 9, but next highest is Wheaton at 46)
NJAC  (Montclair at 16, but next highest is Rowan at 80)

Some possible multi-bid conferences

MIAA (Hope is at 21 and Adrian is at 32)
MIAC (Gustavus Adolphus, Macalester, and St. Olaf are 5, 24, 27)
SCAC (Trinity and Colorado College are 11 and 17)
NCAC (Kenyon, Denison, and Ohio Wesleyan are 12, 23, 25)
OAC (Ohio Northern and Mount Union are 15 and 26, John Carroll is 42)
Centennial (Dickinson, F&M, JHU, and Wash College are 10, 21, 31, 35, and Swat is 43)
SCIAC (Claremont and Redlands are 29 and 33)
ODAC (Could go either way w/ Roanoke, Va Wesleyan, and Lynchburg at 36, 41, 44)
SUNYAC (Buffalo St and Cortland at 22, 34, with Oneonta and Plattsburgh at 45, 47)
WIAA (Eau Claire and Plattesville at 7, 28)

Still too early to put much stock I think, spots 20 through 120 are separated by 3 points.

I have not been paying any attention to this, but where are these NPI rankings of which you speak?

Go to first post in the thread for the link

Quote from: stlawus on October 15, 2024, 03:13:50 PMStill too early to put much stock I think, spots 20 through 120 are separated by 3 points.

Definitely things will change, especially with teams getting a chance for quality win bonuses and enhanced strength of schedule with remaining conference games and in conference tournaments by playing the better teams in their conferences.  Nevertheless, if your team is in a conference where the NPI rankings of all or almost all teams are not that great and non-conference games are over, playing those teams more isn't going to help those aspects of the ranking much (although they can help your W-L record).  There is a chance, however, someone you beat earlier in the season will do well and raise the quality of your win and SoS, so you have to monitor the NPI of your opponents too.

I posted this more to highlight the new reality that things like USC rankings, regional rankings and equity, etc are out the window and NPI is the only game in town other than winning your conference's automatic bid.  So, tracking these weekly (or twice weekly) NPI numbers replaces predictions about whether a committee of humans would pick a 7th team from the NESCAC or take a second team from the Liberty this season.

Quote from: Kuiper on October 15, 2024, 03:58:33 PM

Quote from: stlawus on October 15, 2024, 03:13:50 PMStill too early to put much stock I think, spots 20 through 120 are separated by 3 points.

Definitely things will change, especially with teams getting a chance for quality win bonuses and enhanced strength of schedule with remaining conference games and in conference tournaments by playing the better teams in their conferences.  Nevertheless, if your team is in a conference where the NPI rankings of all or almost all teams are not that great and non-conference games are over, playing those teams more isn't going to help those aspects of the ranking much (although they can help your W-L record).  There is a chance, however, someone you beat earlier in the season will do well and raise the quality of your win and SoS, so you have to monitor the NPI of your opponents too.

I posted this more to highlight the new reality that things like USC rankings, regional rankings and equity, etc are out the window and NPI is the only game in town other than winning your conference's automatic bid.  So, tracking these weekly (or twice weekly) NPI numbers replaces predictions about whether a committee of humans would pick a 7th team from the NESCAC or take a second team from the Liberty this season.

USC rankings (and the standard regional rankings they do) usually seem way off anyway so hopefully NPI starts to make sense.

Looks like the NCAA is starting to roll-out the NPI rankings in a public way now

https://x.com/NCAADIII/status/1846627557992456405

I'm cross-posting this from the NESCAC thread.

 A poster noted that 5 of the top 10 teams in the latest NPI rankings (and 6 of the top 20 and 7 of the top 25) were from the NESCAC and mentioned that this wasn't surprising given their history of success in the NCAA tournaments.  I responded, not so much directly to the comment, but with the following little "ramble" as speculation as to why this was the case:

I agree that it shouldn't shock anyone to see that those are some of the top ranked teams given the NESCAC's history of success, but is it because of past results from the perspective of the formula inputs?  I could be wrong, but I don't think it's like Massey where a few years past results are included as a part of the algorithm to a declining degree. 

I suspect that because NESCAC teams simply don't schedule a lot of non-conference opponents, but they tend to beat most of them, and they schedule just enough good non-conference opponents (e.g., Babson, Cortland, Oneonta), that most of their teams are pretty highly ranked early on.  Because they start conference play long before most other conferences, that means that in these first few NPI rankings, they have great SoS from playing each other and great Quality Win Bonuses because so many of their teams start in the top 50. 

For example, Hamilton is #24 in NPI despite having a record of 5-4-3, which is probably the worst record among the top 50 teams.  I think you have to go to Christopher Newport at #61 to find a team with a % record barely over .500.  Hamilton also has only 1 win in the NESCAC, but that win against Williams is huge because Williams is #6 after beating Amherst and Cortland.  Plus, Hamilton's loss against Oswego State isn't horrible since they are #79 and they have tied Bowdoin, which is #40 and Conn College, which is #8 (and has a tie against #3 Tufts, which gets them half a QWB I think) and Oneonta, which is #45.

The key is that most NESCAC teams start out winning early, with a few of them beating high NPI teams, and they quickly play each other.  Winning early matters a lot for these early rankings, and then SoS and QWB take over soon after.  It's why Adrian was #18 in the first NPI ranking on 10/6 - they were undefeated even though they had played an exclusively marshmallow-soft schedule.  They dropped to #32 in the 10/13 ranking because they tied Olivet and Albion, and beat Kalamazoo.  Not horrible results for them, but they weren't playing teams that had started winning early (or teams that had started playing teams that won early).  You can't stay high, even if you are still winning or tying, if your opponents remain low SoS teams and you get no QWB points. 

The men's soccer committee has given so much weight to QWB (more than any other sport as I recall), that it actually reinforced the strong conference advantage, at least early on.  Those advantages will lessen as teams stop winning.  So, Hamilton might not suffer too badly if it loses to Amherst, but Utica and Trinity will drag down its SoS (since they won't have the 10 wins to drop any "bad wins") and won't provide any QWB, making it more important that they qualify for the NESCAC tournament and get some more points there.

There are probably some lessons here for non-conference scheduling from a league, not just team, perspective, but I would like to see more results to get a better sense of how things shakeout.  I wonder if something like the old BIG10-ACC basketball scheduling agreements will pop up to allow leagues to ensure that their teams will have enough high SoS to schedule cupcakes the rest of their non-conference games and maximize their high NPI teams.

QuotePlus, Hamilton's loss against Oswego State isn't horrible since they are #79 and they have tied Bowdoin, which is #40 and Conn College, which is #8 (and has a tie against #3 Tufts, which gets them half a QWB I think) and Oneonta, which is #45.

Are you saying Hamilton tied Tufts or they tied Con, who tied Tufts?

No.  He is saying Hamilton tied Conn, who then tied Tufts.

Quote from: camosfan on October 18, 2024, 03:51:19 PM

QuotePlus, Hamilton's loss against Oswego State isn't horrible since they are #79 and they have tied Bowdoin, which is #40 and Conn College, which is #8 (and has a tie against #3 Tufts, which gets them half a QWB I think) and Oneonta, which is #45.

Are you saying Hamilton tied Tufts or they tied Con, who tied Tufts?

The latter. It was an awkward and convoluted way of saying that part of Hamilton's high ranking is that it tied a team (Conn) that tied a team that is ranked #3 (Tufts).  That is how league play can really supercharge the collective ranking of the teams in the league if the league has a lot of highly-ranked teams or drag it down if a league has mostly lower-ranked teams.

updated NPI just came out. Tufts up to #1 over UMW based off the win over Amherst. But no ill effects for Amherst - i guess that is a "quality" loss. Middlebury down to 3rd. Colorado College, Denison, UW-Platteville & JHU all making moves up. York, Montclair, ONU, Vassar, F&M and Buff State moving down.
Ties at the top of NESCAC definitely help.
Despite not playing in the last week the QWB for UMW went up which is probably based on the moves by CC and JHU in the rankings.
To Kuiper's point - Bowdoin moved up 6 spots with a tie to Wesleyan

There are a lot of teams in the top 50 that do not have a minimum of 10 wins.  What does that mean if they do not ultimately get the 10 wins?  Do these teams become ineligible for the tournament? Apologies if this is answered earlier in the thread.

Here's a link to the NPI rankings through 10/20

https://stats.ncaa.org/selection_rankings/nitty_gritties/39652?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Submit

Tufts jumping above Mary Washington is an example of how NPI differs from human rankings.  My guess is UMW does not drop in the USC poll in a week where it wins both games to remain undefeated, especially when one of the wins is against Christopher Newport and Tufts ties Middlebury at home (NPI doesn't distinguish between home and away games).

My guess is that York drops a bit more than from 13 to 18 in a human ranking system in a week when it loses to Messiah 4-0, in part because of the perception that York's performance was a mirage (and, in fact, the USC voters already must have concluded that because York wasn't even ranked or RV last week in the USC national rankings even though York was ranked ahead of RV Johns Hopkins in the regional rankings).

From a NESCAC perspective, Wesleyan ties Bowdoin and Williams and drops very little (from 18 to 20).  The problem is that it plays Eastern Connecticut State next and then has Colby and Conn College.  Eastern Connecticut State is ranked #306 and Wesleyan likely won't be able to drop them if they win because they are far away from 10 wins.  I'm not positive how the NESCAC tournament factors into the win count, but they would need to get to the finals with straight wins - not PKs - to get to 10 wins anyway and if they do that they would have beaten so many top teams that the ECSU ranking wouldn't matter.  Conn College (#8) will help them a lot, but Colby (#93) likely won't.  So, it's possible Wesleyan could go from #20 to out of the picture even if they win 2 of their last three if they don't also win outright (not PKs) the first game in the NESCAC tournament.

Edgewood is probably the most interesting case.  It's ranked #35 with a 13-1-2 record.  It doesn't have anything that really looks like a signature win.  It has only played 1 team above it (Eau-Claire) and lost.  It has won a lot of games, but every additional conference game in the NACC is dragging down its SoS and it can only drop a few of those "bad wins."  Its remaining regular season games against Ripon, Concordia Chicago, Marian, and St. Norbert are going to hurt Edgewood and there's no one coming up in the conference tournament that is likely to help them given that they are all over 100 and most over 150/200 in the rankings.  I think they should still make it if they win out and lose in the conference tournament final, but I'm not sure.  Perhaps that's no different than in the old system though.

Quote from: wihsuafs24 on October 21, 2024, 12:31:24 PMThere are a lot of teams in the top 50 that do not have a minimum of 10 wins.  What does that mean if they do not ultimately get the 10 wins?  Do these teams become ineligible for the tournament? Apologies if this is answered earlier in the thread.

No.  My understanding is that the 10 win minimum is to be eligible to drop "bad wins" for SoS purposes (you can't drop losses regardless), not to qualify for the tournament itself.  If you scheduled all of your games against the worst teams in DIII, but one game against a good team, you could theoretically drop all the games except that one "good win" and go in as an undefeated team with a good SoS.  This requires you to get to 10 wins before you start dropping anything else. 

This is what Coach Bianco of Denison tweeted about this in a thread earlier this year

https://x.com/BMBianco/status/1799429004522397850

QuoteThis is very poorly written. It's not a "min win", but as I understand it, the min. # of games that must be counted in the algorithm.

QuoteYes, all loses count as I understand it. So if you play a "bad" team and lose, you'll be punished. What this wants to do (right or wrong) is not punish you for beating a "bad" team. In their words, "a game you should win". This counts for league and non-league opponents