Top 25 talk

[Greek Tragedy]

Teams like St. Norb's and Anderson; I think it's a lot harder to start the year with no votes and off everyone's radarand then get into the top 25, as opposed to some team that is ranked real high and loses to some quality opponents.

I am guessing voters still don't know what to do with the fact that Elmhurst is the only team to beat Wash U, and Wash U is ranked #3 and are the defending national champs who should theoretically be at least as good this year.

I don't know if it's so much about the fact that they are in the CCIW, but that their last two games were really close. A double overtime loss against a team that beat a provisional DI team, and a 1pt away loss to a higher ranked team isn't going to hurt them that much in people's minds... at least not enough to push them out of the polls.

I think this argument only goes so far.  Over in the MWC board, some were whining about Carroll and LU not getting some love and there was already talk about 2 or more teams getting in the NCAAs.  They noted LU's win against Point and Carroll's win against Point as the key factor.  Yeah, Elmhurst beat Washington, but looking at Carroll's and LU's cases, I stated that their losses to teams such as Oshkosh, La Crosse, Marian hurt a lot more than their win against Stevens Point.  Granted, Elmhurst's losses aren't that bad, but you can't use the argument that they lost to a team that beat a provisional D1 team

I'm more bothered by the fact that the pollsters penalized Ithaca for that dubious outcome. The Bombers dropped 34 points and one slot in the poll for losing a game on a buzzer-beater that didn't actually beat the buzzer.

I imagine a lot of voters don't know the details of that game and just see a score, saw that they lost and then drop them! 

[Gregory Sager]

I hate seeing the Carthage score against Cal U quoted as a part of having a good resume, especially since Carthage has 30votes and Cal U has none. 

Who is doing that? I must've missed it. The only resume tally that I've seen taken up on Carthage's behalf was Chuck's comparison between Carthage and North Central that he posted in here around noon today, and Chuck didn't even mention the Red Men's contest with Cal Lutheran.

I feel like what's happening is that this is a confusing year with the NCAC and the MIAA so down.

You mean, "this is a confusing year with Wittenberg and Wooster, and Hope and Calvin, so down." Those four programs are not synonymous with their respective leagues, and for all we know the leagues themselves may be just as good, or better, than they have been in previous years. In fact, sac's tracked the MIAA's non-conference record this year, and it appears to be roughly equivalent to what the league has done over the past few seasons. Let's not mistake greater balance within normally top-heavy leagues for overall slumps of those leagues.

People just have no clue what to do with those spots that are normally taken by perennial powers, and they're running to familiar teams who have a weight of history rather than looking at actual results.

You may be right, but I sure hope that you aren't. I really dislike the injection of brand-name bias into the Top 25 poll, especially when it appears as late as the Week Six poll. It's an unmerited reward for certain teams; the poll is supposed to be about this season, not previous seasons. I'm sure that there are people out there who feel that Illinois Wesleyan, to cite one obvious example, is getting votes that it shouldn't be getting, and brand-name bias looks like an easy way to explain it. On the other hand, Franklin & Marshall, which is another D3 brand name (albeit one that's been through a three-year slump) is only now cracking the Top 25 in spite of the fact that the Dips are one of three undefeated teams left in the entire division.

[sac]

Teams like St. Norb's and Anderson; I think it's a lot harder to start the year with no votes and off everyone's radarand then get into the top 25, as opposed to some team that is ranked real high and loses to some quality opponents.

Absolutely, which is why untill this week I'm willing to give a little leeway on some teams having more losses than the general poll.  However at some point the number of losses accumulated has to start trumping perceived talent or expectations and reality has to kick in.

Elmhurst may very well be one the 25 most talented teams in D3, but their W's and L's doesn't back that up compared to many other programs who haven't lost as much.  IWU's record most certainly does not.

[scottiedawg]

You may be right, but I sure hope that you aren't. I really dislike the injection of brand-name bias into the Top 25 poll, especially when it appears as late as the Week Six poll. It's an unmerited reward for certain teams; the poll is supposed to be about this season, not previous seasons.

The name brand bias/over-reliance on last year's conclusion was pretty evident in this year's preseason poll.  Preseason polls are fickle however, and usually sort themselves out quite well and quite quickly.  I do agree that it should be gone by the week six poll.  It would be great to see some type of strength-of-schedule numbers.  5 losses doesn't automatically mean that IWU isn't one of the top 25 teams in the country (Sac, I realize that record was not all you're basing your argument on).  For example, Chapman has only two losses (one of which was to Whitworth) and a few quality wins over Oxy and Claremont.  But no one is complaining about their lack of votes.  

[sac]

Oxy Bob made a post on the SCIAC board and sent me a pm about Claremont.  He has very good points.

[Gregory Sager]

You may be right, but I sure hope that you aren't. I really dislike the injection of brand-name bias into the Top 25 poll, especially when it appears as late as the Week Six poll. It's an unmerited reward for certain teams; the poll is supposed to be about this season, not previous seasons.

The name brand bias/over-reliance on last year's conclusion was pretty evident in this year's preseason poll.  Preseason polls are fickle however, and usually sort themselves out quite well and quite quickly.  I do agree that it should be gone by the week six poll.  It would be great to see some type of strength-of-schedule numbers.  5 losses doesn't automatically mean that IWU isn't one of the top 25 teams in the country (Sac, I realize that record was not all you're basing your argument on).  For example, Chapman has only two losses (one of which was to Whitworth) and a few quality wins over Oxy and Claremont.  But no one is complaining about their lack of votes.  

You raise an important point. The methodology I always see cited by pollsters such as Pat and Q is that the d3hoops.com poll is supposed to be a power poll, not a results poll. In other words, pollsters supposedly rank what they surmise are the 25 best teams in the country, ranked best to 25th best, rather than ranking teams based strictly upon record. That means that a 10-3 team could easily outrank a 13-0 team, if enough pollsters are convinced that the 10-3 team has played a tough schedule while the 13-0 team has raided the pantry and stuffed itself on cupcakes. Does that mean that the pollsters are accurately weighing strength of schedule vs. actual results? Not necessarily. The pollsters are fallible. But they're not operating with firsthand information, either, for the most part; they're reduced to conjecture when it comes to comparing the relative strength of that 10-3 team versus the relative strength of that 13-0 team if they haven't actually seen either team play.

I'd love to see some measuring stick for strength of schedule at this point of the season as well, but, alas, I think that we're going to have to wait until we get deeper into the season for that -- and even then, it'll be a strength-of-schedule database that only reflects games that are germane to the NCAA's regional ranking process (games played in region). The Top 25 poll, of course, reflects all games played, not just the ones in which the D3 selection committee is interested.

[cardinalpride]

I have a particular problem with North Central and Illinois Wesleyan getting any votes.  I won't even touch Millikin.

IWU has lost two in a row and 3 of 5, and now has FIVE losses, look at the top 25, its all 0, 1, or 2 loss teams.

North Central didn't receive any votes last week, this week they beat North Park and the struggling Illinois Wesleyan.........the week before they lost to Baldwin-Wallace (who's also struggling and has a loss to Grace Bible.)

What the heck did NCC do this week to merit a vote or two in the top 25?

This love affair with the CCIW on this site has just gotten out of hand guys, and I don't mind saying that.

Sac,
It's just one of those years that's tough to explain!  However, IWU only has 3 Division III losses!  Two of them on the road to the #1 team in the country and the other to NCC at home!  All three were close games for the most part.  So, if you have a problem with IWU receiving votes now, you probably should have voiced this opinion when they were in the top twenty!

NCC has only two Division III losses!  The first was to UWW at home (a 3pt game inside 30sec. before a bad call backed up by a bad technical was whistled that pretty much cost NCC any chance they had at victory.  UWW was #2 in the county at the time).  The second lost was to B-W!  Another close game to a team that you called "struggling" but has won 4 straight!  Now, I may not know much, but I don't know any team in any sport that anyone would call "struggling" that have won 4 consecutive games! You ask what NCC has done to merit any votes this week.  Well, anytime a team can get a win at the Shirk Center against a good IWU team that was ranked #19 in the country, I think some eyes will be opened!  

Millikin has only two Division III losses as well!  While I can't begin to explain the twenty point loss to York(NY), I do know it was after a 3 week period of no game activity.  Not to mention, if the Big Blue are following the NCAA rules(I have no reason to believe other wise), then they probably took a full week off during the holidays meaning no practice at all (many teams must take a week off that start on 10/15 if they play in conferences that offer post season tournaments-not unusual) just before they headed east!  The other lost is to Carthage at home in a close game.  By the way, Carthage just beat the #7 team in the county! Millikin turns around and defeats the #10 team in the country ON THE ROAD three nights later!  Like I said earlier just one of those years thats tough to explain!    So Sac, all I can say is "don't hate the playa hate the game"!

[OxyBob]

By the way, Carthage just beat the #7 team in the county!

I saw Carthage play. Cal Lutheran manhandled them and won easily. Carthage was wholly ordinary. If the Red Men beat the so-called "#7 team in the county!" then the CCIW is even more overrated than I already knew.

OxyBob

[sac]

The second lost was to B-W!  Another close game to a team that you called "struggling" but has won 4 straight!  Now, I may not know much, but I don't know any team in any sport that anyone would call "struggling" that have won 4 consecutive games!

At the time BW beat NCC they were 3-7 and just coming off a win over Thomas More, BW's first in a month..........so yeah saying they were struggling is completely accurate.

Since beating NCC they've won 2 more games over 2 more OAC teams with losing records.

You all keep quoting all these fancy rankings of CCIW teams beating others, but the question should be how great would these wins look if there weren't so many of them ranked?

Telling me NCC beat a #19 team means nothing when the question should be asked why was that team even ranked #19 in the first place.

[cardinalpride]

By the way, Carthage just beat the #7 team in the county!

I saw Carthage play. Cal Lutheran manhandled them and won easily. Carthage was wholly ordinary. If the Red Men beat the so-called "#7 team in the county!" then the CCIW is even more overrated than I already knew.

OxyBob

OB,
Let me know the next time Cal Lutheran comes to the midwest and manhandles a CCIW team!  From looking at this year's roster, that's the same CLU team minus its leading scorer from a year ago that beat my 10-15 cardinals last year in overtime.  It took a game tying three pointer to force the overtime by the way!  Did I mention NCC was without its best player at the time.  So, spare me the overrated comments!

[cardinalpride]

The second lost was to B-W!  Another close game to a team that you called "struggling" but has won 4 straight!  Now, I may not know much, but I don't know any team in any sport that anyone would call "struggling" that have won 4 consecutive games!

At the time BW beat NCC they were 3-7 and just coming off a win over Thomas More, BW's first in a month..........so yeah saying they were struggling is completely accurate.

Since beating NCC they've won 2 more games over 2 more OAC teams with losing records.

You all keep quoting all these fancy rankings of CCIW teams beating others, but the question should be how great would these wins look if there weren't so many of them ranked?

Telling me NCC beat a #19 team means nothing when the question should be asked why was that team even ranked #19 in the first place.

So, the two close road losses to Wash U. and Wheaton mean nothing as well? Are Wheaton and Wash U. overrated also?

[OxyBob]

By the way, Carthage just beat the #7 team in the county!

I saw Carthage play. Cal Lutheran manhandled them and won easily. Carthage was wholly ordinary. If the Red Men beat the so-called "#7 team in the county!" then the CCIW is even more overrated than I already knew.

Let me know the next time Cal Lutheran comes to the midwest and manhandles a CCIW team!  From looking at this year's roster, that's the same CLU team minus its leading scorer from a year ago that beat my 10-15 cardinals last year in overtime.  It took a game tying three pointer to force the overtime by the way!  Did I mention NCC was without its best player at the time.  So, spare me the overrated comments!

Ah, the oh so typical twisted logic and hubris of the CCIW fan. Let's see, I posted about a game I saw this season between Carthage and Cal Lutheran in which CLU easily beat the Red Men. Except for Press Maravich's son, Carthage had nothing. Andy Meier ran roughshod over Adam Tolo, Richard Williams, Adam Stuart and anyone else Carthage trotted out there. Your reply? To bring up the result of a game from last season between CLU and a completely different team, which Cal Lutheran also won. Brilliant argument.

OxyBob

[Gregory Sager]

I'd love to see some measuring stick for strength of schedule at this point of the season as well, but, alas, I think that we're going to have to wait until we get deeper into the season for that -- and even then, it'll be a strength-of-schedule database that only reflects games that are germane to the NCAA's regional ranking process (games played in region). The Top 25 poll, of course, reflects all games played, not just the ones in which the D3 selection committee is interested.

I should explain further that at this point I'm not fully convinced that Massey is actually going to step up and do a computer ranking for D3. I'd love to see him do it, of course, but we're in the middle of January already.

Sac,
It's just one of those years that's tough to explain!  However, IWU only has 3 Division III losses!  Two of them on the road to the #1 team in the country and the other to NCC at home!  All three were close games for the most part.  So, if you have a problem with IWU receiving votes now, you probably should have voiced this opinion when they were in the top twenty!

NCC has only two Division III losses!  The first was to UWW at home (a 3pt game inside 30sec. before a bad call backed up by a bad technical was whistled that pretty much cost NCC any chance they had at victory.  UWW was #2 in the county at the time).  The second lost was to B-W!  Another close game to a team that you called "struggling" but has won 4 straight!  Now, I may not know much, but I don't know any team in any sport that anyone would call "struggling" that have won 4 consecutive games! You ask what NCC has done to merit any votes this week.  Well, anytime a team can get a win at the Shirk Center against a good IWU team that was ranked #19 in the country, I think some eyes will be opened!  

Millikin has only two Division III losses as well!  While I can't begin to explain the twenty point loss to York(NY), I do know it was after a 3 week period of no game activity.  Not to mention, if the Big Blue are following the NCAA rules(I have no reason to believe other wise), then they probably took a full week off during the holidays which means no practice (many teams must take a week off that start on 10/15 if they play in conferences that offer post season tournaments-not unusual) just before they headed east!  The other lost is to Carthage at home in a close game.  By the way, Carthage just beat the #7 team in the county! Millikin turns around and defeats the #10 team in the country ON THE ROAD three nights later!  Like I said earlier just one of those years thats tough to explain!    So Sac all I can say is don't hate the playa hate the game!

These are good points, except that:

1) All games are supposed to be reflected in the d3hoops.com Top 25 poll, not just D3 games. Therefore, IWU doesn't get a free pass for its losses to Olivet Nazarene (7-9) and St. Xavier (10-9). If it did, then you likewise couldn't reward Millikin for beating a D1 team. So the "only x number of D3 losses" argument doesn't have merit.

2) Yes, Baldwin-Wallace has won four straight, but the Yellowjackets are nevertheless only 6-7 and in seventh place in the OAC. That loss to Bald Wally was a bad one for NCC, and unless the Yellowjackets continue on their winning streak for a couple more weeks it can't really be spun otherwise.

3) Your NCC/IWU argument is circular. You can't really build your case for the Cardinals upon a win over IWU while at the same time you're trying to build a case for the Titans. Somebody has to pay a price for that game in the poll; either it's a bad loss for a good Titans team, or it's not quite an earth-shaking win for a good Cardinals team because it was over an IWU team that has been overrated.

4) Your explanations for Millikin's loss to York (NY) are valid -- I've raised them myself -- but at the same time, there aren't enough explanations in the world that can erase that debacle. In my mind, it wiped out whatever goodwill that the Big Blue had earned for their upset win over SIUE.

I'm pleased that the CCIW has seven teams that are receiving votes, but I just don't see the merit in it. On the other hand, I don't see it as a conspiracy, or as some sort of sign that the pollsters are in utter awe of the CCIW. I think that it's a combination of one or more of the following possibilities:

a) Scattershot conclusions on the part of the pollsters. Some think that IWU is overrated and unworthy of recognition, but that NCC is an up-and-comer worthy of a #24 or #25 slot. Some like what Carthage has done thus far in January, and they're banking on a resurgence by the two MIAA powers to buttress Carthage's case, but they think that it's ridiculous to keep giving Millikin any love, especially with Elmhurst crashing; some are still sold on IWU but not yet on Carthage; some figure that they can slip NCC and Millikin onto their ballots while at the same time balancing things out by drastically dropping Elmhurst, IWU, and Augie; etc.

b) The McHugh theory. As I've cited it before, it basically means that pollsters are loading the bottoms of their ballots with CCIW teams, because they're unsure of which ones are the good ones and they're just waiting for league play to sort it all out for them.

c) Name-brand bias. As April alluded, there may be pollsters out there who are just incapable of keeping historically strong programs off of their ballots. This is a charge that would seem to be particularly applicable to IWU (8-5, 0-2); it might reflect upon Elmhurst (9-4, 0-2) a bit as well, but the Bluejays have that great win over Wash U on their resume that is hard for pollsters to forget.

d) That intimidating non-con record. The CCIW as a whole is going to break its all-time record this season for winning percentage outside of the circuit; it's currently an eye-popping 70-17 (.805) with one game left (next Monday's Millikin @ Knox contest). It's obviously a league loaded with great teams this season; who wants to guess wrong as to which of them is nationally legit and which one of them is as hollow as a chocolate soldier? Or, indeed, if any of them at all are hollow?

I think that what we're seeing is a cautious group of pollsters who haven't really received enough information yet to sort out who is a contender and who is a pretender in the CCIW.

[Gregory Sager]

Ah, the oh so typical twisted logic and hubris of the CCIW fan.

Sure, because all of us CCIW fans think exactly alike. Right? Nevermind the fact that I just ate up a sizeable portion of Pat's bandwidth arguing that the CCIW really doesn't deserve to have seven teams receiving votes in the latest poll.

Doesn't your head ever get hot wearing that tinfoil hat in the southern California sun?

[cardinalpride]

By the way, Carthage just beat the #7 team in the county!

I saw Carthage play. Cal Lutheran manhandled them and won easily. Carthage was wholly ordinary. If the Red Men beat the so-called "#7 team in the county!" then the CCIW is even more overrated than I already knew.

Let me know the next time Cal Lutheran comes to the midwest and manhandles a CCIW team!  From looking at this year's roster, that's the same CLU team minus its leading scorer from a year ago that beat my 10-15 cardinals last year in overtime.  It took a game tying three pointer to force the overtime by the way!  Did I mention NCC was without its best player at the time.  So, spare me the overrated comments!

Ah, the oh so typical twisted logic and hubris of the CCIW fan. Let's see, I posted about a game I saw this season between Carthage and Cal Lutheran in which CLU easily beat the Red Men. Except for Press Maravich's son, Carthage had nothing. Andy Meier ran roughshod over Adam Tolo, Richard Williams, Adam Stuart and anyone else Carthage trotted out there. Your reply? To bring up the result of a game from last season between CLU and a completely different team, which Cal Lutheran also won. Brilliant argument.

OxyBob

Bob,
I watched the Cal LU/Carthage game online.  Maybe if Cal Lu came east of vegas the rest of the country would see how good they are or aren't!