Pool C

[WUPHF]

OK, that does explain it.

500 miles from Augustana to Wooster.

501 miles from Wooster to Augustana.

If I remember correctly, the Quad Cities have a lot of one-way streets.

Is it Quad Cities have or has?

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

There was one of those last year when we were doing the mock bracket.  One way was under 500 and the other way was over.  The driveable direction was not the right one for the seedings.  Very frustrating.

[Gregory Sager]

So if they take the Wooster to Augustana route, but drive backwards Augustana can get to Wooster?

[sac]

That is a pretty long time ago ... and there were far less flights in those days. They very likely looked at it differently then. Furthermore, the mileage could have been slightly different (construction and such changes those things; I know the system has evolved since 2008).

That was the year St. Mary's upset Guilford in the first round and ended up getting flown to WashU in the second weekend - something no one saw coming.

No we used 500 miles then, there was a brief discussion on distances in the NCAC board.
http://www.d3boards.com/index.php?topic=4200.7635

[ronk]

So if they take the Wooster to Augustana route, but drive backwards Augustana can get to Wooster?

Great!  That looks like the national committee.

[Gregory Sager]

Well, that's probably how overcaffeinated they are on Selection Day.

[SaintPaulite]

There was one of those last year when we were doing the mock bracket.  One way was under 500 and the other way was over.  The driveable direction was not the right one for the seedings.  Very frustrating.

A few things.

1. Google has like 493 between Wooster and Augustana. I refuse to believe Google is off by 7 miles. I doubt it's off by .7 miles.
2. If teams that are over 500 miles are like "nah, we'll just drive", then to me that means that 500 mile limit is too low. The limit should be at a number where no one would prefer to drive. So maybe this is the real problem we have, the 500 miles doesn't accurately reflect the point at which it would be a clear impediment to ask a team to drive. Maybe it's 600, or 750. 
3. Does it matter that Fort Wayne is going to be in driving distance for more teams than Salem was? Very good chance of saving at least a flight if not two there.

[SaintPaulite]

Once again the numbers make it absolutely plain that the four top teams in the country are the two atop the Central Region rankings (Augustana and UW-Oshkosh) and the two atop the West Region rankings (Nebraska Wesleyan and Whitman). Of the four other teams in the country that have a WP over .900 (Nichols, Randolph-Macon, La Roche, and Pomona-Pitzer), none of them are anywhere near the vicinity of a .540 SOS, which all four of the top teams in the Central and West have. The one team that's really within shouting distance of the Big Four is Randy-Mac (.529 SOS), and the Yellow Jackets trail the Big Four in vRRO, at least as a counting stat:

UW-Oshkosh	5-1
Augustana	5-2
Nebraska Wesleyan	3-1
Whitman	3-1
Randolph-Macon	3-2

So Whitman and Randy Mac bracketed together, and the other 3 getting their own brackets (even if it's possible they might not host bc of who makes it through)? Is that possible?

I'm not sure. You'd have to move Augustana as far east as possible -- Augie's campus address is 495 miles from Wooster's on Google Maps, so it comes down to the software that the NCAA uses, and Columbus (Capital) appears to be about 485 miles away from Rock Island if I-74 and I-70 are used -- with that Great Lakes pod host then oriented towards the northeastern corner of the bracket in a sectional with, say, MIT, Amherst, and Rochester as the other pod hosts. It's much, much easier to do that with Wooster than with Capital, because you can bring any team listed in this week's East Region ranking into Wooster except for Skidmore, St. Lawrence, and Plattsburgh State. But, again, it's all contingent upon Augie being within 500-mile range of Wooster.

It might actually be more feasible to fly NebWes or UW-Oshkosh east than Whitman, because NWU isn't much less of an island school than is Whitman. You can construct a fly-in pod around Whitman, even if you have to send the Blues to Texas in order to do so. But NWU is a headache, because the only schools likely or semi-likely to be in the D3 tourney that can get to Lincoln without a flight are Augustana (which, of course, isn't going to be put in the same pod as NebWes), Loras (which isn't likely to share a pod with its fellow ARC team, either), the UMAC rep, the SLIAC rep, the MIAC team(s), UW-LaCrosse, North Central, and maybe Wheaton (which is 499 miles from Lincoln, according to Google Maps). It can't share a pod with either of the likely teams to come out of the NACC, since they're both from greater Milwaukee, which is out of range of Lincoln. There's a tremendous amount of overlap there with the teams from which the Oshkosh pod would be culled, and the number of schools that can reach UWO is pretty limited, too. And if you go with what you have available within 500 miles of Lincoln when constructing the bracket, you might find yourself stuck with sending both the UMAC rep and the SLIAC rep to the NebWes pod -- and that would skew the competitive balance across the entire bracket pretty greatly.

If NebWes stays #1 West and UWO stays #2 Central, and you can construct a coherent and competitive pod in Lincoln (with, let's say, St. John's, North Central, the SLIAC champ, and host NWU), you could see UWO fly eastward in order to reward NWU for having the #1 spot in its region.

There's not going to be an Oshkosh pod, more than likely.

There are enough teams that can get to Nebraska for a pod. I don't think that's a big problem. For the second weekend, it might be.

I can't see how flying Oshkosh for no reason helps anyone. The winner of Whitman's pod flies bc they have no choice, so you might as well fly them east.

[AndOne]

Saint,

Gotta pretty strongly disagree on the 500 mile figure being too low. In a bus, that's like a 8 hour drive. It just seems inherently unfair to force a team to ride for 8 hours and then be able to perform at peak efficiency the next day. Just because one team may be crazy enough to want to ride that far in a bus doesn't mean all teams do. I have always felt anything over 400 should merit a plane ride. And yes, I realize that probably isn't realistic, because everything comes down to money and the NCAA isn't about to spend more than a relative pittance on anything other than D1. JMHO.

[SaintPaulite]

Saint,

Gotta pretty strongly disagree on the 500 mile figure being too low. In a bus, that's like a 8 hour drive. It just seems inherently unfair to force a team to ride for 8 hours and then be able to perform at peak efficiency the next day. Just because one team may be crazy enough to want to ride that far in a bus doesn't mean all teams do. I have always felt anything over 400 should merit a plane ride. And yes, I realize that probably isn't realistic, because everything comes down to money and the NCAA isn't about to spend more than a relative pittance on anything other than D1. JMHO.

Apparently the teams disagree bc they choose to bus even when they could fly. And it's not just one.

Not everyone is 20 minutes from O'Hare either, or 15 min if that from MSP like St. Thomas. If it takes you 2 hours just to get to an airport, and then you have to check in 90 min prior or whatever it would take to be sure you get a team and all your equipment on the plane, probably might as well bus it unless it would be an overnight bus trip.

Seems the way it is now you're giving advantage to teams close to large airports bc 500 miles is clearly easier for them flying, whereas a rural team 500 might not make sense to fly. It should be a number for any team it would be better to fly than bus.

[Gregory Sager]

Once again the numbers make it absolutely plain that the four top teams in the country are the two atop the Central Region rankings (Augustana and UW-Oshkosh) and the two atop the West Region rankings (Nebraska Wesleyan and Whitman). Of the four other teams in the country that have a WP over .900 (Nichols, Randolph-Macon, La Roche, and Pomona-Pitzer), none of them are anywhere near the vicinity of a .540 SOS, which all four of the top teams in the Central and West have. The one team that's really within shouting distance of the Big Four is Randy-Mac (.529 SOS), and the Yellow Jackets trail the Big Four in vRRO, at least as a counting stat:

UW-Oshkosh	5-1
Augustana	5-2
Nebraska Wesleyan	3-1
Whitman	3-1
Randolph-Macon	3-2

So Whitman and Randy Mac bracketed together, and the other 3 getting their own brackets (even if it's possible they might not host bc of who makes it through)? Is that possible?

I'm not sure. You'd have to move Augustana as far east as possible -- Augie's campus address is 495 miles from Wooster's on Google Maps, so it comes down to the software that the NCAA uses, and Columbus (Capital) appears to be about 485 miles away from Rock Island if I-74 and I-70 are used -- with that Great Lakes pod host then oriented towards the northeastern corner of the bracket in a sectional with, say, MIT, Amherst, and Rochester as the other pod hosts. It's much, much easier to do that with Wooster than with Capital, because you can bring any team listed in this week's East Region ranking into Wooster except for Skidmore, St. Lawrence, and Plattsburgh State. But, again, it's all contingent upon Augie being within 500-mile range of Wooster.

It might actually be more feasible to fly NebWes or UW-Oshkosh east than Whitman, because NWU isn't much less of an island school than is Whitman. You can construct a fly-in pod around Whitman, even if you have to send the Blues to Texas in order to do so. But NWU is a headache, because the only schools likely or semi-likely to be in the D3 tourney that can get to Lincoln without a flight are Augustana (which, of course, isn't going to be put in the same pod as NebWes), Loras (which isn't likely to share a pod with its fellow ARC team, either), the UMAC rep, the SLIAC rep, the MIAC team(s), UW-LaCrosse, North Central, and maybe Wheaton (which is 499 miles from Lincoln, according to Google Maps). It can't share a pod with either of the likely teams to come out of the NACC, since they're both from greater Milwaukee, which is out of range of Lincoln. There's a tremendous amount of overlap there with the teams from which the Oshkosh pod would be culled, and the number of schools that can reach UWO is pretty limited, too. And if you go with what you have available within 500 miles of Lincoln when constructing the bracket, you might find yourself stuck with sending both the UMAC rep and the SLIAC rep to the NebWes pod -- and that would skew the competitive balance across the entire bracket pretty greatly.

If NebWes stays #1 West and UWO stays #2 Central, and you can construct a coherent and competitive pod in Lincoln (with, let's say, St. John's, North Central, the SLIAC champ, and host NWU), you could see UWO fly eastward in order to reward NWU for having the #1 spot in its region.

There's not going to be an Oshkosh pod, more than likely.

There are enough teams that can get to Nebraska for a pod. I don't think that's a big problem. For the second weekend, it might be.

I can't see how flying Oshkosh for no reason helps anyone. The winner of Whitman's pod flies bc they have no choice, so you might as well fly them east.

If the committee is taking seeding seriously, it has to break up the trio of Nebraska Wesleyan, Augustana, and UW-Oshkosh should the status quo remains intact over the next eight days. As others besides me have pointed out, there's a huge gap in terms of criteria credentials between the top four teams in the nation (NebWes, Augie, UWO, and Whitman) and everybody else.

Of course, the status quo might not remain intact. UWO, f'rinstance, lost on Wednesday to UW-LaCrosse. The Titans could stumble again prematurely and come back to the pack enough to warrant assigning them as a #2 seed in a section within the bracket that features NWU, Augie, Whitman, or an as-yet-unidentified fourth team as the section's #1. But, for now, sticking UWO into a section with Augie or with NebWes creates what we midwestern D3 veterans refer to as a "Bracket of Death". It's happened before, and the committee should do everything necessary within the range of feasibility to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

[SaintPaulite]

Once again the numbers make it absolutely plain that the four top teams in the country are the two atop the Central Region rankings (Augustana and UW-Oshkosh) and the two atop the West Region rankings (Nebraska Wesleyan and Whitman). Of the four other teams in the country that have a WP over .900 (Nichols, Randolph-Macon, La Roche, and Pomona-Pitzer), none of them are anywhere near the vicinity of a .540 SOS, which all four of the top teams in the Central and West have. The one team that's really within shouting distance of the Big Four is Randy-Mac (.529 SOS), and the Yellow Jackets trail the Big Four in vRRO, at least as a counting stat:

UW-Oshkosh	5-1
Augustana	5-2
Nebraska Wesleyan	3-1
Whitman	3-1
Randolph-Macon	3-2

So Whitman and Randy Mac bracketed together, and the other 3 getting their own brackets (even if it's possible they might not host bc of who makes it through)? Is that possible?

I'm not sure. You'd have to move Augustana as far east as possible -- Augie's campus address is 495 miles from Wooster's on Google Maps, so it comes down to the software that the NCAA uses, and Columbus (Capital) appears to be about 485 miles away from Rock Island if I-74 and I-70 are used -- with that Great Lakes pod host then oriented towards the northeastern corner of the bracket in a sectional with, say, MIT, Amherst, and Rochester as the other pod hosts. It's much, much easier to do that with Wooster than with Capital, because you can bring any team listed in this week's East Region ranking into Wooster except for Skidmore, St. Lawrence, and Plattsburgh State. But, again, it's all contingent upon Augie being within 500-mile range of Wooster.

It might actually be more feasible to fly NebWes or UW-Oshkosh east than Whitman, because NWU isn't much less of an island school than is Whitman. You can construct a fly-in pod around Whitman, even if you have to send the Blues to Texas in order to do so. But NWU is a headache, because the only schools likely or semi-likely to be in the D3 tourney that can get to Lincoln without a flight are Augustana (which, of course, isn't going to be put in the same pod as NebWes), Loras (which isn't likely to share a pod with its fellow ARC team, either), the UMAC rep, the SLIAC rep, the MIAC team(s), UW-LaCrosse, North Central, and maybe Wheaton (which is 499 miles from Lincoln, according to Google Maps). It can't share a pod with either of the likely teams to come out of the NACC, since they're both from greater Milwaukee, which is out of range of Lincoln. There's a tremendous amount of overlap there with the teams from which the Oshkosh pod would be culled, and the number of schools that can reach UWO is pretty limited, too. And if you go with what you have available within 500 miles of Lincoln when constructing the bracket, you might find yourself stuck with sending both the UMAC rep and the SLIAC rep to the NebWes pod -- and that would skew the competitive balance across the entire bracket pretty greatly.

If NebWes stays #1 West and UWO stays #2 Central, and you can construct a coherent and competitive pod in Lincoln (with, let's say, St. John's, North Central, the SLIAC champ, and host NWU), you could see UWO fly eastward in order to reward NWU for having the #1 spot in its region.

There's not going to be an Oshkosh pod, more than likely.

There are enough teams that can get to Nebraska for a pod. I don't think that's a big problem. For the second weekend, it might be.

I can't see how flying Oshkosh for no reason helps anyone. The winner of Whitman's pod flies bc they have no choice, so you might as well fly them east.

If the committee is taking seeding seriously, it has to break up the trio of Nebraska Wesleyan, Augustana, and UW-Oshkosh should the status quo remains intact over the next eight days. As others besides me have pointed out, there's a huge gap in terms of criteria credentials between the top four teams in the nation (NebWes, Augie, UWO, and Whitman) and everybody else.

Of course, the status quo might not remain intact. UWO, f'rinstance, lost on Wednesday to UW-LaCrosse. The Titans could stumble again prematurely and come back to the pack enough to warrant assigning them as a #2 seed in a section within the bracket that features NWU, Augie, Whitman, or an as-yet-unidentified fourth team as the section's #1. But, for now, sticking UWO into a section with Augie or with NebWes creates what we midwestern D3 veterans refer to as a "Bracket of Death". It's happened before, and the committee should do everything necessary within the range of feasibility to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

I can't imagine it happening. That's the point of sending Whitman east. But the only way you can have pods progged for UWO, Augustana and Neb Wesleyan is to be prepared to fly a significant number of teams into them. Flying UWO for a first-weekend pod just doesn't seem like a committee move.

It's going to be loaded out here regardless. It always is. Don't expect anything different.

[Gregory Sager]

We have no way of knowing how many island teams there will be. There will be a minimum of four (Whitman, Pomona-Pitzer, ASC rep, SAA rep) that would make for a nice portable pod that could be shipped anywhere after the first weekend (which would either be spent in Texas or, if the committee has saved on flights, in Walla Walla) -- or there could be as many as seven island teams, which would gum up everything. All of which is to say that there's no guarantee that Whitman can be shipped to the northeastern corner of the country to balance out the top four teams.

[SaintPaulite]

We have no way of knowing how many island teams there will be. There will be a minimum of four (Whitman, Pomona-Pitzer, ASC rep, SAA rep) that would make for a nice portable pod that could be shipped anywhere after the first weekend (which would either be spent in Texas or, if the committee has saved on flights, in Walla Walla) -- or there could be as many as seven island teams, which would gum up everything. All of which is to say that there's no guarantee that Whitman can be shipped to the northeastern corner of the country to balance out the top four teams.

Um...yes there is. Like you said, there's a minimum of 4. a pod has 4 teams, all of which are going to have to fly for the second weekend anyway, wherever they go. Where they go, doesn't matter. Put the pod in the Randolph-Macon or Amherst or MIT or whoever side of the bracket and there you go.

Same as like someone else said about them going to Marietta in the past.

And I don't think it's possible to have 7 island teams, as long as Centre is a viable pod location. They can pretty much clean up the south, and possibly bring in a Wooster or Marietta as well if needed to strengthen it up.

[7express]

There was one of those last year when we were doing the mock bracket.  One way was under 500 and the other way was over.  The driveable direction was not the right one for the seedings.  Very frustrating.

A few things.

1. Google has like 493 between Wooster and Augustana. I refuse to believe Google is off by 7 miles. I doubt it's off by .7 miles.
2. If teams that are over 500 miles are like "nah, we'll just drive", then to me that means that 500 mile limit is too low. The limit should be at a number where no one would prefer to drive. So maybe this is the real problem we have, the 500 miles doesn't accurately reflect the point at which it would be a clear impediment to ask a team to drive. Maybe it's 600, or 750. 
3. Does it matter that Fort Wayne is going to be in driving distance for more teams than Salem was? Very good chance of saving at least a flight if not two there.

I think 500 is a perfectly fine set point.  That's about an 8.5 to 9 hour bus ride.  The reason a lot of these teams choose to bus instead is because either:
A) they aren't close to any airports so it's just easier to drive to the destination
B) The airports they are close to are only regionals, so they'd have to take a connecting flight or flights, in which case it is just easier to bus.

Take Maine-Presque Isle for example: Let's say for hypothetical case they made the tournament and got sent to a pod at Western Connecticut.  The NCAA milage chart shows the schools at being 541 miles away from each other which means Presque Isle would be entitled to a flight.  But there's a pretty good chance Presque Isle wouldn't take it, and would just bus the 10 hours or so down to Danbury, Connecticut.  Why??  Because the airport in Presque Isle only has flights to Boston I believe, and than from Boston you'd have to connect to either New York's JFK or LaGuardia airport, so with the connecting flights, and than the inevitable traffic not only on the airport grounds, but once you get onto the New York roads it would just be easier for them to bus down from Maine. 
Or take the other end of the spectrum: St. Mary's of Maryland in a pod at Plattsburgh State.  St. Mary's is about as far south in Maryland as you can go without ending up in the Chesapeake Bay, and Plattsburgh is about as far north in New York you can get without ending up in Canada.  Even though that's over the 500 mile distance, and St. Mary's would be entitled to a flight they'd probably bus as well because there is no major or even regional airport close to either of those 2 cities, so it would be probably just be faster for them to drive.  That's why a lot of these schools end up bussing instead, even at 550 or 560 or 600 miles.