2012 Division III NCAA Tournament

[Ralph Turner]

The NCAA's DIII Men's Basketball Committee proposed the format for the expanded playoffs.  The proposal was submitted to the Championships Committee meeting, Sept. 18-21 in Peoplapolis, Peopliana (just trying to observe the NCAA's policy on "hostile and abusive" terms ).

2006 Men's Basketball Tourney

The format for a 58 team tourney would have 10 sites featuring 4-teams playing single elimnation on Friday and Saturday nights and the remaining 18 teams playing in 6 sub-brackets of the familiar visitor-home-bye format on Thursday and Saturday.

My first thought is that this places a very high premium on hosting the 4-team bracket.  Also, the NCAA will use the 3-team bracket for the "geographically isolated", e.g., the NWC, the SCIAC, the ASC and any place else that they can put 3 teams without a plane flight.

More to follow as this goes thru the adoption process...

Sorry..I haven't figured out the hyperlink shortcut yet.

[Pat Coleman]

Aargh. I really hate this concept and have already said my piece on it.

Ralph, hyperlinks are a little tricky. Create the text you want to link, select it, hit the globe icon on the tags list, then go into the first tag and change it from {url} to {url=http://whateveryourlinkis}.

Also, notice I changed the brackets in my demonstration so the board wouldn't interpret them as code. Don't change the brackets from the [ that the board provides.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Ralph,

Are you suggesting that there is a certain irony in the NCAA's stance so soon after they relocate to Indianapolis?!

I never pictured you as such a cynic!   

[Ralph Turner]

Thanks, Pat!  I will practice the hyperlinks, and thank you for linking to your Daily Dose comments on the subject.

Mr Ipsi, I am just being pro-active in my adaptation to the NCAA world after Indian mascots.

Unfortunately, the cynical side does rear its ugly head occasionally...or when I make a very lame attempt at subtle, cerebral humor.

[David Collinge]

Thanks, Ralph, for the tournament information, and thanks, Pat, for the instructions.  Both are very interesting and useful.

In trying a hyperlink, I am happy to see that it works like the "newurl" tag in the old version of PU.  That is, if you click on it, the link opens in a new window.  As it should.

Have you (Ralph) become a member of the PU HOF, or am I seeing your status from PP?  I guess the chatroom merger has merged the Halls as well.  Regardless, you belong in the PU HOF, so if this means you're in, I'm glad.  And always remember our motto:  "Let me be clear, Senator; I have never used spellcheck in my posts.  Never!"   

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I like the hyperlink thing; it works well.  No more of those messy long strings of unintelligable characters.

[diehardfan]

  savetoby.com? Crazy website... just crazy.

I too was glad when Ralph's status merged. Yay Ralph! 

[sac]

I don't like this tournament format at all.

[Coach C]

I remain impressed with the ability of the NCAA to mess up just about anything it gets near.  It favors the geographically isolated and the teams that host dramatically.  It also puts even more weight on the NCAA's bizarre selection criteria. 

How long will it be before the NCAA buys out the other D3 Post season tournament?

[smedindy]

I just wish (hope, pray) that one day the conference champs and then the best available teams will make the tourney and not just who has the most points in a ludicrous system.

Oh, please!

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

For once the 2006 D3 handbook is out before the season and before D1...amazing.

Anyway, there are some interesting changes, including the extra teams in the tourney.

Pool A- 37 bids
Pool B- 4 bids
Pool C- 18 bids

I guess with the increase in post-season teams, comes the increase in regionally ranked teams as well.  New rankings will be as follows:

Atlantic and East Regions- 5 teams each
Great Lakes Region- 6 teams
Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, South and West Regions- 8 teams each
Northeast Region- 10 teams

I know the NE always did 8 teams plus two HM to get a top ten of sorts.  I wonder if this will do away with the HM spots or create a defacto top twelve?

Another interesting note: there will only be three regional rankings this year, February, 8th, 15th and 22nd.

The SOSI is now officially the QOWI (Quality of Wins Index) which is far more accurate a name, even if the acronym is tougher to type.  They've also added a provision for a tied game.  I'm not aware of any problems last year involving ties or why any game would end in a tie, but there must be some reason for the addition.

A big change in the QOWI comes in the final selection criteria concerning performance against ranked opponents.  The old system considered a ranked team to be any team which appeared in the rankings at any point.  The new system defines a ranked team as only the teams in the final ranking (which in the past has been kept secret and revealed only to the selection committee).

Also, there is an addition of 3rd and 4th year provisionals to the ranking system.  Games against these schools will count towards the QOWI.  Pat is there any way to get an official list of which schools are 3rd and 4th year provisionals?

There are some interesting additions to the secondary criteria as well.  In addition to out of region head-to-head, overall d3 win percentage, results versus common non d3 opponents and results versus d3 teams ranked in other regions, the committee has added:

Overall win percentage
Results versus common out-of-region opponents

and then the big ones

Quality of wins for the overall D3 games
If necessary and approved by the championships committee, the selection committee can use win/loss percentage from the last 25% of the season.

There could be some big implications from these additions.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I guess I don't know the whole story about why the NIIC no longer has a Pool A bid.  I heard merger, but never got the details.  I'd love to have someone fill me in.

I forgot to actually give the make-up of the tournament:

It's a 59 team tourney, so your model was one off, Ralph.

5 teams get first round byes, five two-team playoffs determine the opponents of the bye teams.    The remaining 44 teams play in 11 four-team tournaments to result in 16 teams for sectionals.  The five two-team first round games are played thursday, then the 11 groups do a friday-saturday thing, with all 16 second round games occurring on that same saturday.

I totally missed this new section with further qualifications for elligibility for post-season play:

Only games on the original schedule will be counted in the rankings.  Anything added after the initial schedule submission do not count.

Teams must play 50% of their schedule against in-region d3 opponents.  There is a waiver available for teams unable to meet this requirement to plead their case... so who knows if this will be held to all that seriously or not.

Other changes I noticed from 2005 to 2006:

They pulled the automatic home team label from the host school at sectionals.  That means that a host school might have to wear road unis or play in the early game.  I'm not sure if they've seeded teams for sectionals before, but they will definately have to this time, as the higher seed gets to choose whether to play the early game or the late game.  They will also be listed first on the bracket and be the home team.  It even goes so far as to specify that the higher seeded team will sit on the bench to the right of the scorer's table, when facing the field of play.

The ASC, SCAC, AMCC, NEAC, and UAA all get to be evaluated by geographic region instead of the region of conferece. 

The listing of each region and which teams fall in that region, including pool B elligible are in the handbook.  There's even an empty bracket for us to fill out... how fun.

[Pat Coleman]

Thanks for the heads-up, we'll have to do a story on this tomorrow.

Couple answers: Dominican left the NIIC, so they have just six schools this year.

The provisions for tie games and added games to the schedule are not really aimed at basketball. Looks like these guidelines are for all Division III sports, including sports such as soccer and baseball, one of which has tie games, and one of which has teams that tend to add games late in the season in order to improve their tourney résumé.

[Pat Coleman]

Also, those conferences were evaluated by geographical region in the past, that actually isn't a change.

[Knightstalker]

There were no honorable mention teams last season in the regional rankings.  I think they should list teams also receiving votes on the regional rankings, that way fans and teams know where they stand.