Top 25 discussion

[thebear]

That said, the folks who really dug into the brackets think Tufts is the top seed with CNU being unable to host due to men's precedence this week.  A pity b/c Trinity(TX) has already had to travel so many times in the past to make flights work when they otherwise would have hosted.

Actually, I think that CNU is still the top seed in the bracket, and that's why Trinity (TX) [which arguably is the 2 seed in the bracket] is matched up against Tufts, who if CNU's facility were available, would probably be the three seed in the bracket.  The price Tufts pays for being a default host is a tougher Friday game.

I wonder if the NCAA would ever consider re-seeding after the first weekend, but limited travel budgets and facility availability still makes that messy.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Tufts is the 2. You can tell by bracket position.

[VT-Alum-NOVA]

All teams fly in this sectional

[Ralph Turner]

Thanks to Pat Coleman for citing the plight of Region 10.

https://www.d3hoops.com/notables/2023/03/sectional-hosts-announced

Here is Hoopsville's listing of the Top 16 from mid February

Rank   Team   Conference   Region   Reg. Rank   D3W   D3L   W/L%   W vs. RRO   L vs. RRO   SOS


8   Trinity (Texas)   SCAC   10                1            22   1   .957                5               1   .513
.
10   Tufts                  NESCAC   1                1           18   6   .750               6               5   .655

Trinity's one loss was to Colorado College in Colorado Springs, elevation 6035 feet, talking about a tough venue in which to play. It takes about 2-3 days for the body to adjust to that elevation. (Only the summit of Mount Washington NH is higher in New England.)

I will plagiarize some research that Ron Boerger posted on the SCAC board including his acknowledging the criteria.

Trinity:
Record: 28-1 (.966)
vs RRO: 6-1 (.857, net +5)
SOS: .521
Losses to non-regionally ranked opponents:  Zero
Home losses: Zero
Average margin in one defeat: -7.0
MOV, all games:  25.8

Tufts:
Record:  21-6 (.793)
vs RRO:  9-5 (.642; net +4)
SOS:  .643
Losses to non-regionally ranked opponents:  ONE (shouldn't this count for something?  Of course not)
Home losses: Two
Average Margin in six defeats: -12.0
MOV, all games:  7.5

Tufts wins exactly ONE thing, SOS, but they lost to five of the teams that got them that SOS *and* lost to someone else who wasn't regionally ranked.  If you are going to use SOS as a primary criterion, you need to discount it for the teams you don't beat!  And when you look at the first two rounds:

Trinity:  2-0 vs RROs, average margin +18.0
Tufts:  1-0 vs RROs/1-0 vs non-RRO, average margin +12.0

So great job, national committee, focusing on SOS to the exclusion of all else to determine seeding.  And yes, before Dave chimes in here, I know that much of the above aren't official criteria.  But when you lose an eye test this badly, maybe it's time to adjust them.

We now have enough data over the past 2 decades to give perspective to the SOS, because the geographical constraints of scheduling distorts the absolute value of those numbers. How many standard deviations above the mean is a .643 in Region 1 over the last 2 decades, versus a .521 for Trinity. From how many total opponents were the SOS's calculated for the 11 members of the NESCAC versus the 9 members of the SCAC. That is a number I would love to see.

All pigs are equal. Some pigs are more equal. (The Selection Committee failed us in Region 10.)

[Pat Coleman]

I noted in the story, so I'll note it again, that that ranking was from mid-February.

[Ralph Turner]

I noted in the story, so I'll note it again, that that ranking was from mid-February.

I acknowledge Pat's disclaimer that the rankings were from Mid-February, but the NCAA made a big deal about the rankings.
When one compares those data points from mid February to those through Saturday night, I see no evidence for Tufts to have jumped 2 positions to go ahead of Trinity.

[scottiedawg]

We now have enough data over the past 2 decades to give perspective to the SOS, because the geographical constraints of scheduling distorts the absolute value of those numbers. How many standard deviations above the mean is a .643 in Region 1 over the last 2 decades, versus a .521 for Trinity. From how many total opponents were the SOS's calculated for the 11 members of the NESCAC versus the 9 members of the SCAC. That is a number I would love to see.

For just this year:
Tufts SOS was +1.9064 standard deviations above the Region 1 SOS mean.
Trinity Texas SOS was +0.3829 standard deviations above the Region 10 SOS mean.

We all know it's easier/harder for some programs to schedule to get strong SOS and RRO opportunities.  (geography, conference, money)

But that reality doesn't necessarily mean we want to discount those criteria right?

It does seem like the NCAA wants to keep a lot of stuff regional, hence the 7 ranked teams per region, regardless of region size or strength.

I think removing some of that regionality would better gauge teams. In general the strength of Regions 7-10 gets undervalued via the Regional Rankings, and the strength of Regions 1-6 gets overvalued.

[Pat Coleman]

Dubuque is in Region 9, not Region 10.

[Ron Boerger]

We now have enough data over the past 2 decades to give perspective to the SOS, because the geographical constraints of scheduling distorts the absolute value of those numbers. How many standard deviations above the mean is a .643 in Region 1 over the last 2 decades, versus a .521 for Trinity. From how many total opponents were the SOS's calculated for the 11 members of the NESCAC versus the 9 members of the SCAC. That is a number I would love to see.

For just this year:
Tufts SOS was +1.9064 standard deviations above the Region 1 SOS mean.
Trinity Texas SOS was +0.3829 standard deviations above the Region 10 SOS mean.

We all know it's easier/harder for some programs to schedule to get strong SOS and RRO opportunities.  (geography, conference, money)

But that reality doesn't necessarily mean we want to discount those criteria right?

It does seem like the NCAA wants to keep a lot of stuff regional, hence the 7 ranked teams per region, regardless of region size or strength.

I think removing some of that regionality would better gauge teams. In general the strength of Regions 7-10 gets undervalued via the Regional Rankings, and the strength of Regions 1-6 gets overvalued.

Important to note that SOS is *not* the only primary criteria.  The very first one listed in the pre-championship manual is win-loss record, not that much attention was paid to it this year.  The issue is when a committee decides to focus on one of the criteria and basically discount others, and the fact that the pre-championships manual simply says "here's a bunch of criteria but we're not going to tell you which ones are more important, and God forbid we tell you even after we make our selections" leads to situations like this.  We won't even go into committees changing what they consider important from year to year and possibly region to region due to the deliberate vagueness and opacity built into the process. 

[HOPEful]

Any chance that the Final Four being in Dallas was a consideration to sending Trinity on the road so they didn't get to play every tournament game in Texas?

[scottiedawg]

I think that has zero impact.

(Also semis are in Hartford, CT)

[Ralph Turner]

We now have enough data over the past 2 decades to give perspective to the SOS, because the geographical constraints of scheduling distorts the absolute value of those numbers. How many standard deviations above the mean is a .643 in Region 1 over the last 2 decades, versus a .521 for Trinity. From how many total opponents were the SOS's calculated for the 11 members of the NESCAC versus the 9 members of the SCAC. That is a number I would love to see.

For just this year:
Tufts SOS was +1.9064 standard deviations above the Region 1 SOS mean.
Trinity Texas SOS was +0.3829 standard deviations above the Region 10 SOS mean.

We all know it's easier/harder for some programs to schedule to get strong SOS and RRO opportunities.  (geography, conference, money)

But that reality doesn't necessarily mean we want to discount those criteria right?

It does seem like the NCAA wants to keep a lot of stuff regional, hence the 7 ranked teams per region, regardless of region size or strength.

I think removing some of that regionality would better gauge teams. In general the strength of Regions 7-10 gets undervalued via the Regional Rankings, and the strength of Regions 1-6 gets overvalued.

+1! for the data points.

We can congratulate Tufts for their brilliant scheduling. The NESCAC only has 10 conference games, so the Jumbos scheduled 12 non-conference games against foes from 7 different conferences. The opponents were valuable because of the projected impact to the SOS by a very savvy coach. Every game was played within 250 miles of the campus except for the trip to Emory where they scheduled games against Emory (UAA, 17-8) and Piedmont (CCS, 17-11).

The highest Region 10 SOS was UC Santa Cruz (C2C) at #44 and 0.565. UCSC (17-7) played 15 D3 foes, but only CNU (28-0) and Mary Washington (22-6) in C2C play. The Banana Slugs did not play C2C opponents such as Pratt (1-23) Salisbury (7-19) or Mount Mary (2-17 vs D-3) to drag down the SOS. UCSC lost to both UMHB and ETBU by double-digit margins in early January.

The highest "conventional" Region 10 SOS belonged to UMHB at #65 (0.557). The SOS's by Region and by conference vary drastically by all the reasons that scottiedoug has listed. In fact, 10 of the 11 members of the NESCAC have higher SOS's than UMHB. (Only Wesleyan at #99 is lower than UMHB). Therefore, the SOS is not necessarily valid across the conferences and regions in D3. We have strong debates on the football boards about 7, 8,9 and 10 mandated conference games on the SOS.

If we are going to use SOS, and we have 2 decades of data to look for errors that we have not considered, why not put some analysis into the validity of the SOS as to tool to be used by the committee?

[scottiedawg]

This is a tweet of mine from Feb 6: https://twitter.com/scott_peterson4/status/1622614761677500418

It uses Massey (only other way I know that values all 430 teams) and compares % of a region that is over 0.500 WP to the average massey rating of all teams in the region.

Trying to use data to demonstrate how a lot of Reg 1-2 teams play games against high WP teams from weak conferences.

Region 1 was a "bad" outlier and Region 9 was a "good" outlier.

I do think there are better ways to determine SOS, but I imagine they would be too complicated/arcane for the NCAA to want to adopt.

[FCGrizzliesGrad]

And then there were four.
Pioneers vs Pioneers
Captains vs Anchorwomen

[FCGrizzliesGrad]

I posted this over on the mens boards but it's appropriate here too


Teams that made both the men and women tournaments:

Babson                    M: Pool A, L (n) Utica 72-60;                    W: Pool C, W vs ME Maritime 69-44
                                                                                                            W vs SUNY New Paltz 76-66
                                                                                                            W vs Marietta 73-59
                                                                                                            L vs Rhode Island College 47-60


Chris Newport       M: Pool A, W (n) Farmingdale St 61-60;     W: Pool A, W vs Brooklyn 89-52
                                             W @ Hampden-Sydney 72-59;                   W vs Elizabethtown 66-55
                                             W vs Mary Hardin-Baylor 72-60;                 W (n) Wartburg 60-51
                                             W vs Wheaton 76-70;                                W @ Tufts 72-56
                                                (n) Swarthmore                                      (n) Rhode Island College
Emory                     M: Pool C, L @ Hampden-Sydney 59-63;     W: Pool C, L (n) Millikin 70-76

Hope                     M: Pool A, W (n) Bethany Lutheran 79-65;  W: Pool A, W vs St Norbert 82-61
                                              L @ UW-Oshkosh 50-51;                           L vs Wartburg 67-81

Johns Hopkins         M: Pool C, W vs Mitchell 89-71;                  W: Pool C, L (n) Skidmore 59-62
                                             W vs Hamilton 81-71
                                              L (n) UW-Whitewater 82-83 OT

La Roche                 M: Pool A, L @ Stockton 70-86;                  W: Pool A, L @ Ithaca 42-58

Mary Washington     M: Pool C, W (n) St Lawrence 69-42;          W: Pool C, W (n) Roger Williams 69-60
                                              L @ Stockton 65-68;                                 W @ DeSales 75-69
                                                                                                             L @ Smith 65-68 OT


Marymount              M: Pool A, L @ Oswego St 62-80;               W: Pool A, L (n) St John Fisher 72-80

Mitchell                   M: Pool A, L @ Johns Hopkins 71-89;          W: Pool A, L @ DeSales 60-78

NYU                        M: Pool C, L (n) Lancaster Bible 64-67;       W: Pool A, W (n) Greensboro 71-54
                                                                                                             W @ Messiah 62-41
                                                                                                             W (n) Trine 66-49
                                                                                                             L @ Transylvania 63-79

Rowan                     M: Pool A, W vs Cal Lutheran 83-77;          W: Pool A, L (n) RI College 59-67
                                              W vs Utica 83-72
                                               L (n) UW-Oshkosh 72-91

Scranton                  M: Pool A, W (n) NC Wesleyan 65-64;        W: Pool A, W vs St Joseph's (ME) 64-45
                                               L @ Randolph-Macon 41-63;                     L vs Rhode Island College 55-62

St John Fisher         M: Pool A, W (n) Whitworth 74-59;            W: Pool A, W (n) Marymount 80-72
                                               L @ Swarthmore 78-101;                          L @ Smith 64-65

St Norbert               M: Pool A, W (n) Carleton 81-77;                W: Pool A, L @ Hope 61-82
                                              L @ Wheaton 71-75

Tufts                       M: Pool C, W (n) Widener 78-66;                W: Pool A, W vs Merchant Marine 72-57
                                              L @ Keene St 72-77;                                 W vs Skidmore 59-50
                                                                                                             W vs Trinity (TX) 65-52
                                                                                                              L vs Chris Newport 56-72

UW-Oshkosh           M: Pool C, W vs Fontbonne 86-58;              W: Pool C, W (n) Wash & Lee 58-55
                                             W vs Hope 51-50;                                      L @ Ohio Northern 60-71
                                             W (n) Rowan 91-72
                                             L @ Mount Union 67-78

UW-Whitewater    M: Pool A, W (n) Wabash 90-83;                 W: Pool A, W vs Webster 69-50
                                             W @ Case Western Reserve 78-75;              W vs Gustavus Adolphus 68-63   
                                             W (n) Johns Hopkins 83-82 OT;                    L (n) Trinity (CT) 56-63
                                             W (n) Oswego St 77-74
                                                 (n) Mount Union
WashU                    M: Pool C, W vs Coe 69-48;                         W: Pool C, L (n) Trine 69-79
                                              L vs North Park 69-72

18 made both fields
2 still have teams playing
6 men advanced farther
4 women advanced farther
7 lost same round

Interestingly, both Mary Washington teams were eliminated by a score of 68-65.