Top 25 talk

[KnightSlappy]

I have Williams' schedule as being a bit tougher than either St. Thomas or St. Johns. Massey has the St.'s both being a bit tougher than Williams.

[nescac1]

Playing number 23 (x2), number 27 (x2), two others in the top 80, plus Hamilton (which is another top-20 Massey team) seems like plenty of opportunities to evaluate Williams against good-to-very-good competition.  Colby and Trinity are also pretty solid squads.  That's five games against teams in the top ten percent of D3 and a few more against teams in the top twenty percent.  And that's before the NESCAC tournament in which the top NESCAC teams are likely to face each other again.  There are teams who play almost no one of consequence in posting gaudy records, and that is certainly not Williams.  Of course, Williams has plenty of those games still to play, so they have to actually win them; if they lose a bunch more, this is all moot.  But if they head into the NCAA tourney with between 1-3 losses, I think they have legitimized their top 10 ranking.  Especially when you consider the efficiency rankings (very good for Williams) and recent program history (including a Final Four two years ago with many of the same players). 

[toad22]

How far does Williams move down? One of the weaker if not weakest schedules in the top 10-15 and lost to one of the few pretty good teams on their schedule. So you're probably not going to get many really useful data points.

I feel like if they were in the midwest/north, they'd have 3 or 4 losses and be nowhere near the top. Several too-close games against meh teams that would have been punished with losses out here.

Sounds a lot like standard regional bias to me. We fans in the East are used to it.

[SaintPaulite]

How far does Williams move down? One of the weaker if not weakest schedules in the top 10-15 and lost to one of the few pretty good teams on their schedule. So you're probably not going to get many really useful data points.

I feel like if they were in the midwest/north, they'd have 3 or 4 losses and be nowhere near the top. Several too-close games against meh teams that would have been punished with losses out here.

Sounds a lot like standard regional bias to me. We fans in the East are used to it.

It's not bias if it's real.

Tell ya what, go back and find the last time Williams won a game against a team from Wisconsin or Minnesota. Even last year they lost to Hamline. I notice they didn't schedule that again.

You want to talk about bias, giving eastern teams a cakewalk to the final four every year, then just waiting for them to run into a midwestern team and go home. Imagine if they had to play a potential Final Four team in the first round like we do out here.

So you want to talk about bias, let's talk about that. Let's talk with the NCAA about sending Williams out of New England if you're so confident it's all bias.

[SaintPaulite]

Playing number 23 (x2), number 27 (x2), two others in the top 80, plus Hamilton (which is another top-20 Massey team) seems like plenty of opportunities to evaluate Williams against good-to-very-good competition.  Colby and Trinity are also pretty solid squads.  That's five games against teams in the top ten percent of D3 and a few more against teams in the top twenty percent.  And that's before the NESCAC tournament in which the top NESCAC teams are likely to face each other again.  There are teams who play almost no one of consequence in posting gaudy records, and that is certainly not Williams.  Of course, Williams has plenty of those games still to play, so they have to actually win them; if they lose a bunch more, this is all moot.  But if they head into the NCAA tourney with between 1-3 losses, I think they have legitimized their top 10 ranking.  Especially when you consider the efficiency rankings (very good for Williams) and recent program history (including a Final Four two years ago with many of the same players).

Not even getting into all that mess. All of that is biased by the fact that the regions are so unbalanced and we see it almost every year in the postseason (not just with Williams, but especially with Williams). No computer ranking can account for that when a team (and not just one) hardly ever plays outside a few hundred miles.

Why is Williams gets 3 mulligans but St. Thomas had to fight from the bottom? If St. Thomas loses 2 more are they top 10?

[SaintPaulite]

Just as a reference point for this conversation, here's the Massey ratings for Williams and the opponents of the Ephs that have been mentioned:

Williams	6
Amherst	23
Wesleyan	27
Middlebury	60
Montclair State	79
Moravian	119
Yeshiva	186

There are 428 teams listed by Massey as D3 (which includes provisionals as well as exploratories such as Pratt).

If we're gonna talk about Massey, Massey has Williams 84% to beat Middlebury. Doesn't seem like much of a challenge to me.

If you claim to be top 10, games against 60, 80, and for goodness sakes definitely outside the top 100, are nothing special.

[nescac1]

Calm down, SaintPaulite.  If you check I'm the one who said St. John's should be a top six team. And Williams has certainly played more tough teams than St. Thomas this year.  And they certainly didn't lose to one like Brooklyn.

Run into a Midwest team and then lose?  Whatever.  Tell it to the four New England teams who won national titles in the past 15 years, and the four others who won games in the Final Four.  New England teams have proven again and again that they belong when they make it to Final Fours.  Even when they lose it's almost always close.  Losing to two WIAC teams on last second shots in national title games hardly screams "lucky to be there," either.  Nor did Midd's last second semis loss to St. Thomas. When New England teams finish the regular season ranked in the top five, they nearly always play to those rankings in the NCAA tourney.  Period.  That is not incompatible by the way with acknowledging that on the average year Midwest teams generally have tougher brackets.   

But of course some segment of the D3 populace will never acknowledge that good hoops is also occasionally played outside of the Midwest.  It's a broken record every year.  And totally one-sided since NE folks always express admiration for the caliber of hoops played in other regions.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

One of the major themes in this argument seems to be that Williams doesn't travel to play good teams the way some of the MIAC schools do.  From a competitive standpoint, that might be an argument to make, but one of the tenets of Division III has always been that a school doesn't get overly rewarded or punished for a decision like that.  Could Williams afford to travel more?  Of course, but a lot of schools couldn't and they deserve an equal shot at things.

St. John's is very good.  The gap between them and Williams in the poll is negligible.  When you get that high, it's a matter of nitpicking.  There's often an argument about NE vs Midwest teams, but often that's about size.  You're not going to find a bigger team anywhere in d3 this year than Williams.  If they have a weakness, it's depth, not toughness.

I love the back and forth, but let's stick to actual issues, with concrete arguments about actual teams as opposed to the old cliches that get thrown back and forth.

[toad22]

Calm down, SaintPaulite.  If you check I'm the one who said St. John's should be a top six team. And Williams has certainly played more tough teams than St. Thomas this year.  And they certainly didn't lose to one like Brooklyn.

Run into a Midwest team and then lose?  Whatever.  Tell it to the four New England teams who won national titles in the past 15 years, and the four others who won games in the Final Four.  New England teams have proven again and again that they belong when they make it to Final Fours.  Even when they lose it's almost always close.  Losing to two WIAC teams on last second shots in national title games hardly screams "lucky to be there," either.  Nor did Midd's last second semis loss to St. Thomas. When New England teams finish the regular season ranked in the top five, they nearly always play to those rankings in the NCAA tourney.  Period.

But of course some segment of the D3 populace will never acknowledge that good hoops is also occasionally played outside of the Midwest.  It's a broken record every year.  And totally one-sided since NE folks always express admiration for the caliber of hoops played in other regions.

D3 is really a regional sport until the NCAA tournament rolls around. It is nearly impossible to get a handle on how teams from distant regions match up. For me that is part of the fun of it, like MLB when the American and National leagues didn't play each other until the World Series. I second Nescac1s admiration for the quality of play across the country. However, I feel like Northeast fans are forever having to defend the quality of their basketball. In the 1990s the bias was complete, after Williams won in 2003, things improved a little. Now, there shouldn't be much. Other than the WIAC, in my opinion the best league in D3 most years, the talent is pretty well spread around the country.

[toad22]

Ryan's comments above are on the money. I harbor no illusions about where Williams stands nationally. Having watched the last 25 years of Williams basketball quite closely, I know the current team ranks in the top 5-6. So, I know they will be competitive at the national level. At this point, that's about all I know. The team and coaches will have to determine just how good they are.

[sac]

hmm always felt the bias was against Atlantic/Mid-Atlantic who have traditionally been one and done in the FF or not there at all.


NESCAC's have earned their good reputation since allowed to compete in the tournament starting in 1998(?).  They've really dominated that half of the bracket.

[Titan Q]

There is no question the "midwest" is where the balance of D3 MBB power is. 30 of 44 national championship have come from these states...

- Wisconsin 12
- Illinois 6
- Ohio 4
- Michigan 2
- Missouri 2
- Minnesota 2
- Indiana 1
- Nebraska 1

9 of the last 11 have come from these states.

Looking at the 44 national titles by current region...

- Central = 20
- Great Lakes = 7
- Mid-Atlantic = 4
- Northeast = 4
- East = 3
- West = 3
- Atlantic = 1
- South = 1

(Lemoyne-Owen, 1975, not in D3 now...not included here.)


It's also true that the NESCAC is a powerhouse conference and the best NESCAC team each season is usually on par with the best 3-4 teams in the country.

[Titan Q]

This season I believe there are two teams better than everyone else - Nebraska Wesleyan and Augustana.  For me, this is a dead tie...and there is separation between these two teams and everyone else.  These two teams have everything needed to win the national title and no significant flaws.  If the bracket is set up the right way, that's probably your national championship game.

After that gap between Augustana and Nebraska Wesleyan, there are are bunch of great teams that are pretty close -- like Whitman, Williams, UW-Oshkosh, UW-Stevens Point, whoever the best in the MIAC is, etc. 

Some will want to put Whitman in that Augustana/Nebraska Wesleyan grouping and don't agree with that. 

[Gregory Sager]

There is no question the "midwest" is where the balance of D3 MBB power is. 30 of 44 national championship have come from these states...

- Wisconsin 12
- Illinois 6
- Ohio 4
- Michigan 2
- Missouri 2
- Minnesota 2
- Indiana 1
- Nebraska 1

9 of the last 11 have come from these states.

Looking at the 44 national titles by current region...

- Central = 20
- Great Lakes = 7
- Mid-Atlantic = 4
- Northeast = 4
- East = 3
- West = 3
- Atlantic = 1
- South = 1

(Lemoyne-Owen, 1975, not in D3 now...not included here.)


It's also true that the NESCAC is a powerhouse conference and the best NESCAC team each season is usually on par with the best 3-4 teams in the country.

I agree with that statement, and I'll add to it that the NEWMAC deserves respect as well; Babson and MIT have fielded very strong Final Four teams in this decade, with Babson taking home the Big Doorstop two years ago, and WPI and Springfield have sent pretty good teams out onto the floor of late as well. But the Northeast, which is by far the most populous region of the eight in terms of the number of member schools, has a truckload of dross beyond those two leagues. That's not to say that the Northeast is totally devoid of talent beyond those two leagues -- Eastern Connecticut and Brandeis, for example, would be pretty competitive with much of the rest of the nation on a year-in, year-out basis, as the Judges, for example, have held their own in UAA play -- nor is it to say that the midwestern-based regions don't have dross of their own. Nobody here in flyover country is going to boast about the prowess of the SLIAC, the UMAC, the NACC, or the MWC. But the sheer volume of meh teams in the Northeast -- as well as the region's proximity to, and thus frequent crossover competition against, the very weak East Region -- mitigates against arguments on behalf of the region as a whole, as opposed to arguing on behalf of the NESCAC as a league or of Williams as a team within that league.

D3 is really a regional sport until the NCAA tournament rolls around. It is nearly impossible to get a handle on how teams from distant regions match up. For me that is part of the fun of it, like MLB when the American and National leagues didn't play each other until the World Series.

Yep. I'm definitely with you on that.

I second Nescac1s admiration for the quality of play across the country. However, I feel like Northeast fans are forever having to defend the quality of their basketball. In the 1990s the bias was complete, after Williams won in 2003, things improved a little. Now, there shouldn't be much. Other than the WIAC, in my opinion the best league in D3 most years, the talent is pretty well spread around the country.

I don't agree with that at all. Some regions -- the East, for example -- are really lamentable. The Atlantic's no prize, either; even though the top teams in the NJAC command respect, postseason performance indicates that the NJAC really isn't the power conference that it used to be. Last season's Ramapo team was the first NJAC squad to get to the Final Four in a decade, and the Roadrunners lost to UW-Oshkosh by 17 in the semis.

[SaintPaulite]

Well now. Williams gets beaten soundly at home, and St. John's gets caught looking ahead to Monday by Carleton on Green Dot Day (one of the absolute coolest programs/promotions going, by the way). Unfortunately, the Williams mulligan rule is no longer in effect.

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3 of the top 10 down.

Neb Wesleyan, Augustana, Whitman and Oshkosh the clear top 4 for me. Williams outside of top 10, maybe even top 15 on this week's evidence.