Top 25 talk

[Pat Coleman]

One look at the poll vs. the Massey ratings and it seems to me that it is very clear that the poll is a complete joke this year.

Me thinks some folks are mailing it in this year.

I can see where this would be attacking the integrity of voters ... perhaps a different set of words would be taken differently?

[me]

Well too late for that.

This week is a good opportunity to prove those words wrong. No excuse for not going back to square one now.

[Mr. Mo]

I think the quant models are interesting input for the voters, but are not the sole answer.

I think the college football playoff is a good example of why the numbers alone are not enough.  UCF's strength of schedule leaves it out of the playoff, then it lays the wood to Auburn (who beat two of the playoff teams).

I think informed humans will still give you the best result.

If you want to improve the D2 and D3 basketball championships, I would suggest getting rid of the regional model, and filling the brackets with the best teams (regardless of geography).

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I think the quant models are interesting input for the voters, but are not the sole answer.

I think the college football playoff is a good example of why the numbers alone are not enough.  UCF's strength of schedule leaves it out of the playoff, then it lays the wood to Auburn (who beat two of the playoff teams).

I think informed humans will still give you the best result.

If you want to improve the D2 and D3 basketball championships, I would suggest getting rid of the regional model, and filling the brackets with the best teams (regardless of geography).

There's really no regional influence in d3 anymore.  Since they went to "every d3 game is regional so long as you play 75% of games in your region" a teams whole schedule is selected, so every team gets a fair shot.  There's no spots guaranteed (other than conference AQs).  I'm not sure how D2 does it, but geography only plays into things for d3 in bracketing - and that's never going to change.

[deiscanton]

I think the quant models are interesting input for the voters, but are not the sole answer.

I think the college football playoff is a good example of why the numbers alone are not enough.  UCF’s strength of schedule leaves it out of the playoff, then it lays the wood to Auburn (who beat two of the playoff teams).

I think informed humans will still give you the best result.

If you want to improve the D2 and D3 basketball championships, I would suggest getting rid of the regional model, and filling the brackets with the best teams (regardless of geography).

There's really no regional influence in d3 anymore.  Since they went to "every d3 game is regional so long as you play 75% of games in your region" a teams whole schedule is selected, so every team gets a fair shot.  There's no spots guaranteed (other than conference AQs).  I'm not sure how D2 does it, but geography only plays into things for d3 in bracketing - and that's never going to change.

D2 still does the regional model for their NCAA basketball tournaments, as well as practically all of their team sports. The Northeast 10, which is the local d2 conference where I live, is in the East Region.  The East Region has their 3 conferences with AQs, and 5 at large bids go to the top 5 teams in the final East Region rankings that did not win their league tournaments.  The #1 team in the region gets to host the regional tournament, and the winner of that regional tournament goes to the Elite Eight.  The regional champions are reseeded at the Elite Eight.  Each region has 3 conferences, so there are only 24 AQs for the d2 tournament.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

DIII got rid of regional selections a long, long time ago (even though I refuse to believe it has been that long; I am not getting that old!). We have regional rankings, but those exist across the NCAA in all divisions. However, selections are not slotted per regions (specific number) like they do in DII.

[smedindy]

Hey Pat, I think I've debunked this before - you first brought it up when a MIAC team beat the undefeated D2 defending national champs, and boosted themselves and everyone touching it.

I think generally the weakness for Massey is that it tends to highly rate Minnesota/Wisconsin teams, more so than they deserve. Not really sure why, but it's enough for me to not really pay much attention to Massey.

Like all of the computer ratings that rate across all of college basketball/football, Massey is fine-tuned so it makes sense at the Division I level. That doesn't mean it's going to continue to be well tuned at the other end of the spectrum.

[smedindy]

The system is what's rigged against UCF, not the metrics.

They should move to an 8 or 16 team playoff. In fact, a 32 team playoff emulating the D3 model would really really be the best, but, yanno, bowl games.

I think the quant models are interesting input for the voters, but are not the sole answer.

I think the college football playoff is a good example of why the numbers alone are not enough.  UCF's strength of schedule leaves it out of the playoff, then it lays the wood to Auburn (who beat two of the playoff teams).

I think informed humans will still give you the best result.

If you want to improve the D2 and D3 basketball championships, I would suggest getting rid of the regional model, and filling the brackets with the best teams (regardless of geography).

[Greek Tragedy]

I really don't care about D1 football. They have a 4-team playoff and there's complaints that it should be 8. The 9th place team will complain that it should be 16 and then the 17th place team will complain that it should be 24. Sooner or later, that 5-5 bowl eligible team will make the 64-team playoffs! Maybe they'll add play-in games called "1st round" games because they don't want to call them "play-in" games. Personally, I think it's dumb to have a regular season and then wait 6 weeks to play the playoffs. 

[me]

I think the D1 football playoffs are pretty much as they should be now.

Still a lot of emphasis on the regular season, and getting into the playoff is tough enough that there's a lot of focus and interest on that (as opposed to D1 basketball). And the time in between end of regular season and start of playoffs just gives time for everyone to take a breather, and then get fired up for the playoff games. And they've managed to keep at least some interest in some of the bowls, though you'll never convince me that Auburn was as motivated to play UCF as they were Alabama and Georgia.

Let's be honest, D3 football playoffs are usually a massive snoozefest until semis anyway. No one should want to recreate that.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Apparently the first round was missed by someone...

Do you just like to be negative? Where is the support of these teams, student-athletes, etc?

I think many would want to recreate playoffs considering the ONLY sport the NCAA has that doesn't have some kind of legit championship is CFP - and thus no NCAA title is given out and the NCAA is barely involved.

[4samuy]

Regarding the CCIW, I believe IWU should be the 2nd team voters are looking at (behind Augustana).  North Central (9-4, 3-2) was the only other CCIW team to get votes in the Week #5 poll, but IWU (11-3, 4-1) won at North Central.  With IWU's win vs Augustana this week, it seems IWU should clearly be the CCIW team with the second most poll points.

Good Wins
at Wheaton
at North Central
vs #2-Augustana
vs Elmhurst

Losses
vs Carthage
vs #10-Wash U
at Emory

Q,

I would agree with you for the most part, and the new poll seems to agree. But,  I would look at both wheaton 10-3 (4-1) with wins over two top 25 teams Baldwin Wallace and at Whitworth and winners of 5 of their last 6 as well as North Central 9-4 (3-2) who look to really have started putting things together, winners of their last 6.  Wheaton could really put their mark on the polls with a positive result at Augustana on Wednesday. 

[me]

I voted for Wheaton and Illinois Wesleyan in my poster poll. I think I was the only one to vote for Wheaton.

[D3ball1845]

Does anyone have some insight into why Salem State is still getting votes for the Top 25 sitting at 10-3? Sure, record wise they're a having a strong season. However, they had a 10+ loss to Williams, 48 point loss to MIT, and 17 point loss to Endicott. While two of these teams are ranked, and Endicott is a decent team, how can you ignore the 48 point loss? Additionally, their only wins that stand out to me are the wins against Tufts and Babson (who is barely sitting above .500 this season and is nowhere near the championship caliber team they were last year). Maybe it's just me, but something doesn't seem to be adding up right.

[gordonmann]

I'm just guessing here, but I think the voters voting for Salem State are basically discounting the MIT result as an anomaly.

I've done that in casting my ballot on the women's side where that's the only way I could make sense of Tufts losing to Albright or CNU getting crushed by Thomas More. If I rely too heavily on those two results, then I'm not voting for two teams that I believe are among the 25 best in the country.

Similarly these voters might be saying, "I know MIT is better than Salem State but not 48 points better. So I'll keep MIT in front of Salem State but ignore the margin of victory."