2012 Division III NCAA Tournament

[Ralph Turner]

Thanks for the response, nescac1.

Many of us wonder about the preponderance of WIAC teams at the top of many Massey Ratings, but most fans outside the northeast believe that the NESCAC teams have an unfair advantage.  The members of the entire conference overwhelm their weaker competition.  By the regional nature of D-III, the advantage is significant.

The "average" Northeast Region team is #37 of the 74 teams in the region.  The number of teams in that part of the country that are within 500 miles permits the NCAA to create brackets that separate the NESCAC teams so as to allow them.  The entire membership of the NESCAC is in the top of the region on Massey, and the NESCAC is the #2 conference in Massey's ratings of D-III.


http://www.masseyratings.com/rate.php?lg=cb&yr=2011&sub=NCAA%20III&mid=1

The last regular season Top 25 had 5 teams from the Northeast.   That is a fair representation.  

[nescac1]

Thanks Ralph, fair enough.  I should probably refrain from commentary on Massey since as noted I am far from an expert on it.  Clearly, the current Massey rankings are more than fair to the New England teams, after last weekend especially!

[woosterbooster]

nescac, trust me, I for one am hoping to see Troy play and have an impact on the game.  Because I would rather see Wooster beat Williams at 100% as opposed to seeing the Scots beat a Williams team not at 100% and then have to hear the excuses about how different it would have been with a healthy Whittington.

I, on the other hand, would rather see Williams forced to field a team of intramural scrubs.  Not that I would wish the pain of injury upon any of their players.  Rather, it would seem to me that at such a vaunted academic institution the time is right for the athletes, this weekend, to do some extra work in the library.  After all, finals will be arriving in but a matter of months.  Or perhaps they should spend some time studying abroad; the south of France is nice this time of year. 

[nescac1]

Hah.  Well, it IS mid-terms week at Williams, and I am not normally one to ever suggest that academics shouldn't come first, but I have a feeling the players are pretty-well focused on hoops right about now .   Of course, Wooster guys might be too busy solving Rubik's Cubes themselves ... as I noted on the NESCAC board, this may be the only team that can out-dork Williams or Middlebury ...

I was stunned that Wooster sold out a 3000 person stadium, that is quite impressive.  Do Wooster fans travel well?  At last year's Final Four, Stevens Point fans were the dominant force, with a far larger presence than local favorite Guilford, which really surprised me. 

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Hah.  Well, it IS mid-terms week at Williams, and I am not normally one to ever suggest that academics shouldn't come first, but I have a feeling the players are pretty-well focused on hoops right about now .   Of course, Wooster guys might be too busy solving Rubik's Cubes themselves ... as I noted on the NESCAC board, this may be the only team that can out-dork Williams or Middlebury ...

I was stunned that Wooster sold out a 3000 person stadium, that is quite impressive.  Do Wooster fans travel well?  At last year's Final Four, Stevens Point fans were the dominant force, with a far larger presence than local favorite Guilford, which really surprised me. 

Wooster fans can get to Salem in about 6 hours.  If 3,000 people showed up for their last home game, I suspect a decent number will make the drive for the Final Four.

[kiltedbryan]

I was stunned that Wooster sold out a 3000 person stadium, that is quite impressive.  Do Wooster fans travel well?  At last year's Final Four, Stevens Point fans were the dominant force, with a far larger presence than local favorite Guilford, which really surprised me. 

Wooster's basketball fan base rivals the top fan bases in all of DIII (Hope, Calvin, Illinois Wesleyan, etc.). Wooster traveled well to both previous Final Fours, and I've already heard about several carpools/buses being organized for the trip to Salem. I'd expect a pretty good crew of people decked out in black and old gold this weekend.

[fantastic50]

I was stunned that Wooster sold out a 3000 person stadium, that is quite impressive.

Timken Gym seats roughly 3,400, and the attendance was over 2900 four each of the Scots' four home NCAA tournament games this year.  Much of the fan support comes from the community, rather than those directly associated with the college.

You can get a good sense of the environment in this highlight video from the Whitworth game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7DUuEYC9YE&hd=1

[sac]

I am no expert on Massey's methodology, so I can't comment on any methodological flaws.  I just see his results, and they always seem skewed to Western teams (even some mediocre Western teams), especially teams that play WIAC, or play anyone who play WIAC.  I am not sure where Massey had Williams, Midd and Amherst entering the tourney, but I feel confident those are two top three, and then a top ten, teams respectively, and I think the NCAA results bore that out ... where did Massey rank them?  Basically, I am saying, whatever his methodology is, his results always seem to skew too much in favor of the West.  But admittedly, I don't know enough about what that methodology is to comment beyond that. 

I would say the biggest difference between Northeast and Midwest/West/Great Lakes schedules is the number of D2 and D1 and NAIA games scheduled for the MW/W/GL schools is much higher.  Games vs D2 and D1 can really boost a schools strength of schedule in massey as can games vs the top NAIA I or II programs, and therefore can boost a teams power rating.

How much of a difference this makes in his rankings is unclear, but I'm sure it plays a factor.  Is it enough to make the Northeast under represented in the Massey ratings?  I kind of doubt it.

Massey's biggest flaw right now is counting games vs D2 and D1 where the D1/D2 school can count the game but its an exhibition for the D3 program.  You'll find a few of these among GL/West/MW schools and was noted a few weeks ago that the Northwest Conference had more of these matchups than most.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I don't think its so much the ratings themselves that are problematic, but Massey sort of assumes a cross-section of common opponents as there in in D1.  When most schools play only regional schools, it's difficult to accurately judge across regions.

[Gregory Sager]

Thanks for the response, nescac1.

Many of us wonder about the preponderance of WIAC teams at the top of many Massey Ratings, but most fans outside the northeast believe that the NESCAC teams have an unfair advantage.  The members of the entire conference overwhelm their weaker competition.  By the regional nature of D-III, the advantage is significant.

Plus, the NESCAC is the only league in D3 that plays a single round-robin rather than either a full or modified double round-robin. That means that each NESCAC team gets an extra dollop of games to strategically schedule against upper-echelon teams from those weak northeastern leagues of which Ralph spoke.

Also, the geographical compactness of the northeastern corner of the country lends itself to separating teams from the same league come tourney time by putting them into different corners of the bracket. It's thus much, much easier to slot two NESCAC teams into different sections than it is to get, say, CCIW or ODAC teams separated, to say nothing of the WIAC. And, yes, I know that CCIW and ODAC teams have been separated into different sections in the past; what I'm saying is that it takes a lot more work on the part of the committee to do it, and you have to have the right combination of teams available in order to make it happen. It's even harder to separate two WIAC teams. On the other hand, there's never a problem with separating a Williams from an Amherst, or both from a Middlebury. You could take out a map, put the compass point on Williamstown, MA, draw a circle with a 500-mile radius, and you'd envelop more than half of D3's membership.

Believe me, I have plenty of respect for the NESCAC and its top teams. They have, indeed, proven themselves in Salem quite often. But let's not overlook some of the factors that've made it an easier road for them to get to Salem, or to get more than one team there.

I am no expert on Massey's methodology, so I can't comment on any methodological flaws.  I just see his results, and they always seem skewed to Western teams (even some mediocre Western teams), especially teams that play WIAC, or play anyone who play WIAC.  I am not sure where Massey had Williams, Midd and Amherst entering the tourney, but I feel confident those are two top three, and then a top ten, teams respectively, and I think the NCAA results bore that out ... where did Massey rank them?  Basically, I am saying, whatever his methodology is, his results always seem to skew too much in favor of the West.  But admittedly, I don't know enough about what that methodology is to comment beyond that.  

I would say the biggest difference between Northeast and Midwest/West/Great Lakes schedules is the number of D2 and D1 and NAIA games scheduled for the MW/W/GL schools is much higher.  Games vs D2 and D1 can really boost a schools strength of schedule in massey as can games vs the top NAIA I or II programs, and therefore can boost a teams power rating.

How much of a difference this makes in his rankings is unclear, but I'm sure it plays a factor.  Is it enough to make the Northeast under represented in the Massey ratings?  I kind of doubt it.

Massey's biggest flaw right now is counting games vs D2 and D1 where the D1/D2 school can count the game but its an exhibition for the D3 program.  You'll find a few of these among GL/West/MW schools and was noted a few weeks ago that the Northwest Conference had more of these matchups than most.

I wouldn't say it's the biggest difference, but it is a significant one. However, sac, you neglected to say why D3 teams west of the Allegheny River find themselves playing scholarship schools more often than do the D3 schools in the northeastern corridor. It's geography. Many of the midwestern and western teams are geographic isolates. The MIAA's stuck on a large peninsula, far away from most schools in its region while a large handful of Chicagoland schools are just out of reach of the 200-mile limit for the league's westernmost representatives. The NWC, SCIAC, UC-Santa Cruz, and Chapman are two time zones removed from the rest of D3. And so on. None of the schools in the northeastern corridor have similar problems, not even the Maine schools. You've gotta fill your non-conference schedule somehow, and if there aren't a sufficient number of neighboring D3 schools outside of your league for you to fill up the slate, you need to look elsewhere.

And I'll pre-empt Ralph by saying that the same isolation syndrome holds true for much of the South Region, the ASC in particular.

I don't think its so much the ratings themselves that are problematic, but Massey sort of assumes a cross-section of common opponents as there in in D1.  When most schools play only regional schools, it's difficult to accurately judge across regions.

Agreed.

[Ralph Turner]

+1 GS!

You have recited the collective wisdom from playoffs past.

I tend to forget that newbies on the site have not read these discussions, and we have a new group of fans every year.

[Greek Tragedy]

Timken Gym seats roughly 3,400, and the attendance was over 2900 four each of the Scots' four home NCAA tournament games this year.  Much of the fan support comes from the community, rather than those directly associated with the college.

You can get a good sense of the environment in this highlight video from the Whitworth game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7DUuEYC9YE&hd=1

Much of Stevens Point's support come from the community as well.  We do have a "student" section, but its more of a meeting place and a social gathering.  The Luther student section was chanting, "where's your students?"  We didn't care because our crowd was 5 times the size of theirs!

[Gregory Sager]

Timken Gym seats roughly 3,400, and the attendance was over 2900 four each of the Scots' four home NCAA tournament games this year.  Much of the fan support comes from the community, rather than those directly associated with the college.

You can get a good sense of the environment in this highlight video from the Whitworth game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7DUuEYC9YE&hd=1

Much of Stevens Point's support come from the community as well.  We do have a "student" section, but its more of a meeting place and a social gathering.  The Luther student section was chanting, "where's your students?"  We didn't care because our crowd was 5 times the size of theirs!

One common denominator among all schools that draw large crowds in D3 is extensive townie support. That only stands to reason, of course, since the vast majority of D3 schools have small student populations.

The other common denominator, of course, is that they're all consistently winning programs over an extended period of time.

[with age came?]

I am surprised by comments that ST Thomas had the toughest bracket.  I believe they had the most impressive win over UW sp (at least the biggest upset) in my mind but I called the Whitworth/Wooster bracket the "bracket of death". Whitworth path for instance #12 Chapman #11 Marietta and then on the road to face #5 Wooster.  That to me is tougher path than not facing a ranked opponent until UW sp.  I'm a east guy and I do not know as much as most of you but I need to be convinced that the top left bracket wasn't the toughest.   I'd say Middlebury had the easiest path.  Williams and St Thomas about equal and the Upper left bracket deserved my "nickname".

[ScotsFan]

I was stunned that Wooster sold out a 3000 person stadium, that is quite impressive.  Do Wooster fans travel well?  At last year's Final Four, Stevens Point fans were the dominant force, with a far larger presence than local favorite Guilford, which really surprised me. 

How is the following of the other Final Four participants.  I think it's already been established that Wooster should be well represented.  I'm just curious how many fans we can expect from the other 3 schools.

I heard Williams had arguably their largest contingent of fans last year and I'm assuming we can expect the same sort of turnout from their fans in Salem this year.  So, that leaves the question surrounding Midd and UST and how many fans we can expect from them?