MBB: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[Miacmaniac33]

Congratulations SJU Mens Basketball on thoroughly dominating ust. Haters are gonna Hate. Go Johnnies!! A True Team and an Unbelievable Championship performance!

[Smitty Oom]

Will be interesting to see what the final regional ranks will be. It is somewhat important because realistically  only one of UST and SJU will be able to host, with NWU being the other team from the west. UST has a better resume with similar WP but much better SOS. St. John’s has the 2-1 series over them though, and so far in the regional ranks this year it looks like H2H is playing quite a large role. I could really see any order of those top 3 teams from the west. My prediction is this though

NWU
SJU
UST

Anyone else have a more educated assumption? Whatever pod gets UST/SJU (Platt, NWU, WashU?) to travel to them, will be a stacked second round game. Assuming no flights are used.

Also, a historically weak region this year. Only UST will be selected as an at large. Who ever is 5th in the ranks (begins Whitworth at 4) will be at the table for 16-18 rounds with really no chance at being selected.

[WUPHF]

St. Louis and the Twin Cities are more than 500 miles away. 

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I think all three probably host, along with Platteville and WashU

[Pat Coleman]

Big win for the Johnnies. Swathmore loses. First #1ranking in SJU history?

I think Swarthmore, with just one loss, to the No. 8 team, will probably still command a healthy number of No. 1 votes. Should be interesting.

[Smitty Oom]

I think all three probably host, along with Platteville and WashU

Dang, that would be a dream.

[Tesomas]

Congrats Johnnies. You've got a great basketball team. Good luck in the tourney.

Just a shame you're all still terrible people.

Right back atcha, 

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I think all three probably host, along with Platteville and WashU

Dang, that would be a dream.

So, I've been looking at it a bit more and St. John's hosting opportunity may be more a dream than I thought.  Geography could be a killer.  I think they'll still end up 3rd in the West, despite the conference tourney win and I'm not sure the Midwest is going to need five hosts.  Platteville, UST, and NWU are locks, so it comes down to St John's vs WashU.  I think WashU's got the better resume AND they're better located for geography.  They don't use the latter reasoning unless they're forced to (which they probably won't be), but it's not going to be on the side of the Johnnies either.

We'll obviously keep working on things as the day plays out, but it may be less of a lock than I thought.  That stinks all around, because it likely means a second round matchup with Platteville (they're not likely to send them to NWU or St. Thomas), but it is what it is.

Don't give up hope, but also don't get the hopes too high.

[faunch]

How on this earth could or would anyone still rank U$T ahead of SJU in regional or any rankings? We beat them twice and both times the game was decided w 5 minutes to spare?

Also Neb Wesleyan has kisses to U$T, River Falls (12-14) and Simpson (14-13).

Did a U$T player get injured during the first half? I was watching on my phone at Surly and wasn't listening to the radio broadcast at that time.

[Smitty Oom]

I think all three probably host, along with Platteville and WashU

Dang, that would be a dream.

So, I've been looking at it a bit more and St. John's hosting opportunity may be more a dream than I thought.  Geography could be a killer.  I think they'll still end up 3rd in the West, despite the conference tourney win and I'm not sure the Midwest is going to need five hosts.  Platteville, UST, and NWU are locks, so it comes down to St John's vs WashU.  I think WashU's got the better resume AND they're better located for geography.  They don't use the latter reasoning unless they're forced to (which they probably won't be), but it's not going to be on the side of the Johnnies either.

We'll obviously keep working on things as the day plays out, but it may be less of a lock than I thought.  That stinks all around, because it likely means a second round matchup with Platteville (they're not likely to send them to NWU or St. Thomas), but it is what it is.

Don't give up hope, but also don't get the hopes too high.

That's kind of what I was thinking originally about lack of teams to get to all those pods, outside of using flights. After your post I thought maybe Platt could draw enough from the Great Lakes or WashU from the south or East, this was without doing much research on distances. I think only 2 of the west's top 3 teams will host, so let's dive into the resumes that the regional committee will use to order these teams.
         
NWU: .889/.548/5-1 (WP/SOS/v Regionally Ranked Opponent)
UST: .889/.557/4-3
SJU: .926/.511/4-2

A lot of head to head matchups here though, which are secondary criteria, among other things.

SJU 2 - UST 1
UST 1 - NWU 0
NWU 1 - SJU 0

The SOS is just too much of a gap from NWU and UST down to SJU, with fairly similar WP across the board. Even though I think they are the best team of the trio, their resume and non-conf games against Marian, UMMorris and Williamette knocks that SOS down too much to be considered for one of the top two spots in the ranks. Even though they have the series win over UST, the convoluted head to head results that do not follow the transitive property above does not really come into play for SJU. Lock them in at 3. For completions sake, a head to head win and better sos by .010 with similar enough vRRO keeps UST at #1, even with their loss yesterday. Which probably won't sit right with casual observes who do not know the process or SJU fans (which I understand, but this is the criteria that is laid out by the NCAA).

So, my best guess is this, after delving into the numbers:

1. UST (At large lock)
2. NWU (Clinched AQ)
3. SJU (Clinched AQ)
4. Whitworth (Bubble Team, would be nice to avoid upsets from bubble teams in today's remainder of games)
5. ?? No one else has a decent enough resume to speak of.

[Tesomas]

So UST has better SOS and has H2H over NWU, so clearly NWU can't be the #1.  And NWU has H2H and SOS over SJU, so clearly SJU can't be the #1.  And SJU has RR and H2H over UST, so clearly UST can't be the #1


But seriously, thanks for the explanations. This must be how the casual D3fb fan feels when trying to figure out that playoff bracket!

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I think all three probably host, along with Platteville and WashU

Dang, that would be a dream.

So, I've been looking at it a bit more and St. John's hosting opportunity may be more a dream than I thought.  Geography could be a killer.  I think they'll still end up 3rd in the West, despite the conference tourney win and I'm not sure the Midwest is going to need five hosts.  Platteville, UST, and NWU are locks, so it comes down to St John's vs WashU.  I think WashU's got the better resume AND they're better located for geography.  They don't use the latter reasoning unless they're forced to (which they probably won't be), but it's not going to be on the side of the Johnnies either.

We'll obviously keep working on things as the day plays out, but it may be less of a lock than I thought.  That stinks all around, because it likely means a second round matchup with Platteville (they're not likely to send them to NWU or St. Thomas), but it is what it is.

Don't give up hope, but also don't get the hopes too high.

That's kind of what I was thinking originally about lack of teams to get to all those pods, outside of using flights. After your post I thought maybe Platt could draw enough from the Great Lakes or WashU from the south or East, this was without doing much research on distances. I think only 2 of the west's top 3 teams will host, so let's dive into the resumes that the regional committee will use to order these teams.
         
NWU: .889/.548/5-1 (WP/SOS/v Regionally Ranked Opponent)
UST: .889/.557/4-3
SJU: .926/.511/4-2

A lot of head to head matchups here though, which are secondary criteria, among other things.

SJU 2 - UST 1
UST 1 - NWU 0
NWU 1 - SJU 0

The SOS is just too much of a gap from NWU and UST down to SJU, with fairly similar WP across the board. Even though I think they are the best team of the trio, their resume and non-conf games against Marian, UMMorris and Williamette knocks that SOS down too much to be considered for one of the top two spots in the ranks. Even though they have the series win over UST, the convoluted head to head results that do not follow the transitive property above does not really come into play for SJU. Lock them in at 3. For completions sake, a head to head win and better sos by .010 with similar enough vRRO keeps UST at #1, even with their loss yesterday. Which probably won't sit right with casual observes who do not know the process or SJU fans (which I understand, but this is the criteria that is laid out by the NCAA).

So, my best guess is this, after delving into the numbers:

1. UST (At large lock)
2. NWU (Clinched AQ)
3. SJU (Clinched AQ)
4. Whitworth (Bubble Team, would be nice to avoid upsets from bubble teams in today's remainder of games)
5. ?? No one else has a decent enough resume to speak of.

The extra problem this year, with eight teams in Ft Wayne, is that you're going to need to keep all eight teams in a pair of pods within 500 miles of each other to avoid flights the second weekend.  So you can't just pull Wittenberg and Adrian to Platteville like we would in a normal year.  You're going to have to keep the first weekend more regional.  That St. John's SOS is just so low, it's going to be hard to justify giving them hosting duties.

[Pat Coleman]

Did a U$T player get injured during the first half? I was watching on my phone at Surly and wasn't listening to the radio broadcast at that time.

Tommy Anderson got hurt three minutes in.

[AO]

 NWU, UST and SJU all clearly deserve to host.  I'd put the Johnnies first in the region as the SoS differential is overstated by the broken home/away multiplier.  The committee is well within their right to value win pct as the most important criteria in this situation.   All that said, maybe the Johnnies won't mind going on the road for the first two considering what happened the last two years  . If they get out of the first weekend, maybe they can host a sweet sixteen game when their students will be back from spring break.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

NWU, UST and SJU all clearly deserve to host.  I'd put the Johnnie's first in the region as the SoS differential is overstated by the broken home/away multiplier.  The committee is well within their right to value win pct as the most important criteria in this situation.   All that said, maybe the Johnnies won't mind going on the road for the first two considering what happened the last two years  . If they get out of the first weekend, maybe they can host a sweet sixteen game when their students will be back from spring break.

Ordinarily there'd be a case for this, but the committee's been overlooking the head to head for SOS in this particular instance in all the ranking so far.  No reason to believe they'd change now.  I do think St John's would be in line for the 16th hosting spot, but geography is likely to force the committee's hand.  There just aren't enough teams far enough west to make that happen.  I think the only way it does is if the committee decides to bump St. John's ahead of St. Thomas in the rankings and I just don't think the criteria justifies it.