2012 Division III NCAA Tournament

[bouttime]

The tournament not only has provided us with great team match-ups but great player match-ups as well. The first one that really jumps out at me is CMU's Nate Mauer Vs. BW's Tori Davis. Both are 2 big, very athletic players. It should be a great game between the 2 teams with an even better individual battle.

[njlincolnlion]

Hoops Fan:

If both Lincoln and York make it through, the Lions and Spartans looks like a potentially good Mid-Atlantic match-up.

[Knightstalker]

Yeah, those two eight-team groups are just scary.

I didn't think they could do it, but the NCAA found a way to stack two whole brackets and then push all the best teams in the other two into the same side of their brackets.

Messiah down through WPU in the MA and the bottom half of the East bracket are both cake.  All York has to do is beat Catholic in their second round rematch and they can cruise to final eight.

First Catholic has to beat Widener which will not be easy.  That bracket is not as easy to get out of as you may think.  The teams in that bracket are basically the best of the Atlantic and Mid-Atlantic regions.  WPU can shut down any team on any night.  They play aggressive man to man pressure defense the whole game, they are on the ball as soon as it is inbounded and they do not let up, offensively they are not outstanding but they stay in games and win with defense.  Scranton is a very tough team, Baruch is also a good team, they slipped a little at the end of the season but this is that once in every ten years or so CUNY team that could win a game or two.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Hoops Fan:

If both Lincoln and York make it through, the Lions and Spartans looks like a potentially good Mid-Atlantic match-up.

I'd like to see that, but VA Wesleyan is a really good team.

[hugenerd]

Did CMU and BW just get matched up because of geographics reasons?  Because if they truly used rankings I don't see how they could rank CMU or BW #7 or #10 in in that regional (That's how I figured it with Wittenberg getting the #2. CMU for example has a 16-4 record and the 10th highest QOWI in the country).

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

They try to stick with rankings, but sometimes they have to change things around a bit to get everybody to a host site.

Miss Coll
Wittenberg
Hope
Wooster
Transy (I suspect they are hosting for geographic reasons)
Calvin
CMU
Maryville (TN)
Trinity
Baldwin-Wallace
LaCrosse
Bethany
Randolph-Macon
Wis Lutheran
Lake Erie
Maryville (MO)

That would be the ranked order.  Obviously the Maryville's throw it off because they are the only ones who can drive to Miss Coll.  Who else is in the wrong place?  It look like just Baldwin-Wallace, but they had to be switched with (Transy?) for geographic reasons.  It's a tough call, but they'll make it anyday.  The NCAA is ruthless.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

The big travesty is going to be Hope getting to host all the way through.  A huge home court advantage.  I guess this is the NCAA's way of telling us that schools who build expensive new athletic facilities get all the perks.

[Not that there's anything wrong with that!]

[pabegg]

Bracket question for any and all (or maybe for an insider source).

I'm looking at the brackets as posted and trying to figure out the #2 and #3 seeds in each regional. In the three-team regions, #2 is on the top (with the "at" a dead giveaway). In the four-team regions, #2 is apparently on the bottom (e.g. Tufts, William Paterson, etc.).

Is this always the case? UW-LaCrosse as #2 over Calvin looks like an anomaly. I can't see WLax rising enough and Calvin falling enough, relative to their last rankings, to make WLax the better seed.

All the others make sense (Wooster as #2 over Randolph-Macon is a toss-up, as they come from different regions), but this one bugs me.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I would think Calvin was up there too, but they never did get much love in the regional rankings, while LaCrosse did.  Also, I would assume that if the committee thought so highly of Calvin, they would not have put them in the same regional as a conference opponent.

Notice the same thing happens with York and Catholic (obviously the committee doesn't think Catholic is good enough to move to a different location in the first weekend).

By the same token you'll notice none of the CCIW schools can meet until round three.

As much as it doesn't make sense that LaCrosse would be favored over Calvin, the numbers say it could happen.

[smedindy]

Of course, those are different regions, and each regional committee are looking at a different pool of teams, so you can't compare LAX to Calvin, really. It's the GL and the Midwest are top heavy.

[TheFence]

I think B-W got screwed. Not so fast on them getting by the first week-end. They need to beat a tough CMU in round 1 (If CMU shots it well look out) then Wittenberg at Wittenberg the next night.  That gets them a shot at Calvin or Hope probably at Calvin or Hope.

Don't worry about Hope hosting all they way through.  Calvin gets then in round 2.

[pabegg]

Did CMU and BW just get matched up because of geographics reasons?  Because if they truly used rankings I don't see how they could rank CMU or BW #7 or #10 in in that regional (That's how I figured it with Wittenberg getting the #2. CMU for example has a 16-4 record and the 10th highest QOWI in the country).

BW-CMU is essentially the 8-9 matchup for the sectional. If you look at the last regional poll, BW was 5 in the Great Lakes and CMU was 6. When the sectional is created by merging with the South (with Transylvania a replacement for Virginia Wesleyan who departs to the east), BW and CMU become the 8 and 9 teams, matching up against #2 Wittenberg rather than #1 Mississippi College due to geography.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

OK, I lied.  The Championship handbook says:

"The higher seeded team will be listed at the top of the competition bracket."

It also states that teams are grouped by geographic proximity first and then seeded.  So they just pick four teams that are near each other and then seed them.  So in the case of Baldwin-Wallace and CMU, they could be 5 and 4 respectively in the region, but grouped together based on geography.

That also means Calvin is higher than LaCrosse and Endicott is higher than Tufts. (I guess the committee gave a lot of weight to winning a conference tournament title).  Although, they could just have misprinted the brackets, like the misspelled North Cenral(Ill.).

[Matt Letourneau]

Yeah, those two eight-team groups are just scary.

I didn't think they could do it, but the NCAA found a way to stack two whole brackets and then push all the best teams in the other two into the same side of their brackets.

Messiah down through WPU in the MA and the bottom half of the East bracket are both cake.  All York has to do is beat Catholic in their second round rematch and they can cruise to final eight.

First Catholic has to beat Widener which will not be easy.  That bracket is not as easy to get out of as you may think.  The teams in that bracket are basically the best of the Atlantic and Mid-Atlantic regions. 

It won't be easy for Catholic to beat Widener, but Catholic is playing its best basketball of the season right now and rolled through the (York-less) CAC tourney.  It looks like Widener might not be.

In terms of York, I would point out that Catholic did beat them once this year.  Now, York was on the road, and at home York blew them out, but I can't imagine that York playing Catholic is much of an advantage for York.  I'm sure they'd rather face a similarly ranked team that won't be familiar with York and the crazy tile gym like CUA is.

[TheFence]

Thanks pabegg, that makes sense. But I'm shocked that there are 7 teams seeded/ranked higher that CMU and B-W in that bracket.  I can see the following:

Miss Coll
Wooster
Hope
Calvin
Wittenberg

who else? I guess you'd add Bethany (CMU beat them) and Trinity Texas?