Pool C

[Titan Q]

Highly inbred...ASC and SCAC!

Two of the lowest three.   SCAC -- Southwestern, Trinity, Colorado College, Austin College, Hendrix, Millsaps and Sewanee all played games versus the ASC schools.

+1 hugenerd!

Correction --

I mis-read the original post that hugenerd had included all of the conferences.  My subsequent review shows me that the ASC and SCAC are in the middle of all of the conferences in D3.

See my next assessment below.

I think your assessment was correct.  The ASC and SCAC have two of the 3 lowest OWP HI/LO, which is the criteria I created to judge the extent of "inbreeding" in the schedule.  They both are in the middle of the pack for overall OWP, but that is for the reason we discussed a few days ago (nearly all their games are in conference or against common opponents say their OWP and OOWP are very close to 0.500).

Remember, there is an advantage to the "inbreeding" situation too.  While no ASC team can achieve an OWP of .600+, they also can't end up with one of .450 or so and below.  The average ASC OWP is .505 -- that is exactly the OWP of Elmhurst of the CCIW.

[Hugenerd]

Highly inbred...ASC and SCAC!

Two of the lowest three.   SCAC -- Southwestern, Trinity, Colorado College, Austin College, Hendrix, Millsaps and Sewanee all played games versus the ASC schools.

+1 hugenerd!

Correction --

I mis-read the original post that hugenerd had included all of the conferences.  My subsequent review shows me that the ASC and SCAC are in the middle of all of the conferences in D3.

See my next assessment below.

I think your assessment was correct.  The ASC and SCAC have two of the 3 lowest OWP HI/LO, which is the criteria I created to judge the extent of "inbreeding" in the schedule.  They both are in the middle of the pack for overall OWP, but that is for the reason we discussed a few days ago (nearly all their games are in conference or against common opponents say their OWP and OOWP are very close to 0.500).

Remember, there is an advantage to the "inbreeding" situation too.  While no ASC team can achieve an OWP of .600+, they also can't end up with one of .450 or so and below.  The average ASC OWP is .505 -- that is exactly the OWP of Elmhurst of the CCIW.

Yeah, but Elmhurst isnt going to impress anyone with the OWP and get an advantage from it.  0.500 is not a good OWP for a bubble team and is going to cause you to be at a disadvantage against other bubble teams with 0.6+ or even 0.55+.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Re: the Hope example.  While they cannot benefit from losing, they are a lock anyway and a loss would certainly help the MIAA!  How altruistic are the Dutch feeling?

[Ralph Turner]

I think that we are highlighting the value of the other criteria such as the "In-region results against regionally ranked teams" (evaluating the willingness to play the cream of the cream).

I have one other nagging question.

If I were doing a research paper in Sociology 101 on the validity of the OWP and OOWP to designate superiority of a NESCAC school over an SCAC or WIAC school, would my sociology professor accept the validity of the statistical tool?   

[Mr. Ypsi]

I think that we are highlighting the value of the other criteria such as the "In-region results against regionally ranked teams" (evaluating the willingness to play the cream of the cream).

I have one other nagging question.

If I were doing a research paper in Sociology 101 on the validity of the OWP and OOWP to designate superiority of a NESCAC school over an SCAC or WIAC school, would my sociology professor accept the validity of the statistical tool?   

Most sociology professors don't know squat about statistics.  If you were unfortunate enough that I was your prof, you'd be wise to staple a benjamin to your paper!

[Hugenerd]

1) OWP and OOWP standard deviations are generally very low for teams within their conference, meaning that teams, on average, have similar OWP within conferences (there are some exceptions).

Great work on this...thank you!

Here are the CCIW's OWP's...

Illinois Wesleyan 0.610
Wheaton: 0.577
Augustana: 0.575
Carthage 0.573
North Central: 0.573
North Park 0.535
Millikin: .515
Elmhurst: 0.505

The CCIW is a pretty "standard" league - 8 teams, a double round robin format, and geographically located in an area with plenty of non-conference, in-region games to play.  It seems clear to me the CCIW teams can influence their OWP significantly via their non-conference schedule - there is a big gap between Illinois Wesleyan (.610) and Elmhurst (.505).

Looking in more detail...

Illinois Wesleyan (in-region non-conf games)
Occidental  .812
Wash U  .800
Webster  .773
Chicago .696
Dominican .583
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps .556
Hanover .522
Illinois College  .381

Elmhurst (in-region non-conf games)
Hope  .882
UW-Oshkosh  .667
Anderson .542
Benedictine  .476
Tri-State  .389
Eureka .348
Mount St. Joseph  .273
Simpson  .261
Manchester  .143
MacMurray .056

Titan Q illustrates the geographic isolation of the SCAC and the ASC.

The SCAC plays a 16-game schedule.  They play double round robin inside each 6-team division and single round robin in the inter-division schedule.  (Because the NCAA does not count the games with first-year provisional team, Birmingham- Southern, in the in-region records, you only get 14 or 15 in-region games from the conference play.)

SCAC teams also usually play one ASC team as part of their in-region schedule as I cited above.  the ASC's OOWP is .5047; the SCAC's .4985.  I interpret the "OOWP HI/LO" of the ASC 1.0947 and the SCAC 1.0987 to be a measure of the geographic isolation.

(I interpret the Centennial Conference's OOWP HI/LO of 1.0885 to reflect "league parity" in a geographic area of robust statistical activity.)

Comments are appreciated.

hugenerd answered some of my concerns in his post just previous to this one.

hugenerd is really helping us understand what the numbers are telling us!  +1! Again!  Thanks! 

The main reason the centennial conference has a low OWP HI/LO is: 1) they play 18 conference games (a pretty high number compared to most other conferences) and 2) the teams in this conference seem to play alot of out of region games (which causes their in-region records to be comprised mainly of their conference games: Ursinus has only 3 non-conference in region games, gettysburg 3, hopkins 6, mcdaniel 6, dickinson 1, muhlenberg 4, franklin and marshall 5, haverford 4, swarthmore 4, and washington college 6).  That means only 42 of their 222 regional games count for OWP (<19%).

[Hugenerd]

I think that we are highlighting the value of the other criteria such as the "In-region results against regionally ranked teams" (evaluating the willingness to play the cream of the cream).

I have one other nagging question.

If I were doing a research paper in Sociology 101 on the validity of the OWP and OOWP to designate superiority of a NESCAC school over an SCAC or WIAC school, would my sociology professor accept the validity of the statistical tool?   

I would say No, the OWP doesnt tell you much.  I think it has as much to do with the way the schedules are set up (16 out-of conference games) and that there are so many d3 schools to choose from in the northeast so there isnt as much overlap between schedules.

[HopeConvert]

Anytime you start asking if it'd be better to lose than win, you're over-thinking!

True. Useful in my vocation, deadly in my avocations (especially on the golf course).

So it's not a matter of winning or losing; Hope drops in this category simply by playing the game.

Of course, all of that is dwarfed by the potential of dropping the RWP from .882 to .833 if they lose the game (it goes up to .889 if they win).

This happened to Mass-Dartmouth last night as they beat their last place sister school Mass-Boston and dropped in the numbers.

D1 hockey has a provision for ignoring games like these, where the net impact on the RPI (a weighted average of RWP, OOP, and OOWP) is negative, then the game is ignored.

I guess that's what I'm getting at. How can you be penalized after a victory? I think that goes to Ralph's point about the validity of the tool itself. I was wondering out loud whether there might be an extreme circumstance where it might be better to lose, simply because I'm not convinced that it's a good measure either.

Re: the Hope example.  While they cannot benefit from losing, they are a lock anyway and a loss would certainly help the MIAA!  How altruistic are the Dutch feeling?

Evidently you haven't spent much time in West Michigan. "Dutch" and "altruistic" rarely appear in the same sentence. 

I appreciate the contributions I read on this page. Good work!

[Titan Q]

By the way, I've learned that in the CCIW's annual post-season meeting yesterday, a coach actually proposed moving to a single round robin format to create a level playing field with the NESCAC and to give more CCIW teams a chance to make the tournament.  It was dismissed after some discussion, but I found it very interesting that it came up.

As it see it, the NESCAC is the one league that has a huge advantage with the way the metrics work.  The way they operate is their business, but I hope the national committee considers their inherent advantages in selecting Pool C teams and in seeding.

[Ralph Turner]

Re: the Hope example.  While they cannot benefit from losing, they are a lock anyway and a loss would certainly help the MIAA!  How altruistic are the Dutch feeling?

Evidently you haven't spent much time in West Michigan. "Dutch" and "altruistic" rarely appear in the same sentence. 

I appreciate the contributions I read on this page. Good work!

Greetings Hope Convert!

Our friend, Mr Ypsi, is from Michigan.  I am not sure if it is "West" enough!

I was "ROTFLMAO" at his poignancy! 

[pabegg]

I've done my latest comparison of the records listed for OWP on the D3 site with my own numbers. Here are the issues that I have:

2/20 Oswego-SUNYIT is regional
Milwaukee Engineering has 16 wins on their schedule through Sunday (now 17), all regional, but the OWP calc shows them at 15-9.
Maranatha Baptist has 17 losses on their schedule through Sunday (2 non-D3), but the OWP calc shows them at 3-14.
Southern Maine is missing the 2/12 Mass-Boston game from their schedule. Weirdly enough, it's on UMB's.
Thiel - Geneva is not regional
Regis looks like 7-16 to me, so I'm not sure why the OWP page has 6-16
Wheelock looks like 1-24 to me (all games regional), so I'm not sure why the OWP page has 1-23.
Finlandia's 3 regional games should count.

Middlebury-Hamilton is apparently regional according to Middlebury's record published in regional rankings.

With the exception of the Middlebury and perhaps Oswego, none of this makes a big difference.

[pabegg]

I guess that's what I'm getting at. How can you be penalized after a victory? I think that goes to Ralph's point about the validity of the tool itself. I was wondering out loud whether there might be an extreme circumstance where it might be better to lose, simply because I'm not convinced that it's a good measure either.

Just to make sure I made myself clear. Losing always hurts the numbers. It has no mathematical impact on the OWP/OOWP and harms the RWP.

What is harmful is the act of playing bad teams. Even with a win tonight, Hope's combined numbers go down a little. But if they lose, they go down a lot.

[Knightstalker]

By the way, I've learned that in the CCIW's annual post-season meeting yesterday, a coach actually proposed moving to a single round robin format to create a level playing field with the NESCAC and to give more CCIW teams a chance to make the tournament.  It was dismissed after some discussion, but I found it very interesting that it came up.

As it see it, the NESCAC is the one league that has a huge advantage with the way the metrics work.  The way they operate is their business, but I hope the national committee considers their inherent advantages in selecting Pool C teams and in seeding.

I think what the NJAC did splitting a ten team conference into two divisions is the best of both worlds.  While it is not gaming the system like the NESCAC does, it also eliminates 5 conference games and the teams don't beat each other up as much.  They also did a nice job of splitting the traditional powers between the two, although the north is the stronger division overall with NJCU, Ramapo, WPU and MSU in it.  I would think more conferences would be looking at a solution like this.

[sac]

Anytime you start asking if it'd be better to lose than win, you're over-thinking!

Esp when Alma's involved.

.......but thats the Calvin grad in 'Convert'.

[Hugenerd]

Just to make sure I made myself clear. Losing always hurts the numbers. It has no mathematical impact on the OWP/OOWP and harms the RWP.

I would agree, if you put the word "significant" in front of "mathematical", because it does have a miniscule impact (you are giving your opponent a victory so their WP will increase), but, in reality, the result of a single game on your OWP is pretty much negligible (and even less so on your OOWP).