Pool C

[toad22]

If it is really the Bowdoin bid that is at issue, then I think we can get pretty complete agreement that a mistake was made. Based on my reading of the selection criteria, it doesn't seem like they should have been picked. The conversation has gone very far afield of that.

[FCGrizzliesGrad]

I'm going to derail the NESCAC talk for a bit here

Unfortunately there is no D3 NIT tournament where regular season champs get automatic bids if they don't make the NCAA tourney. For a lot of conferences it's just a one bid league and so doesn't matter as much what happens during conference play as long as you get hot for 2 or 3 games.

What would be an interesting format for conference tournaments would be a staggered bracket. Thursday night have 5 seed vs 8 seed and 6 seed vs 7 seed. Friday night have the 5/8 winner play the 4 seed and the 6/7 winner play the 3 seed. Saturday have the 3/6/7 winner play the 2 seed and the 4/5/8 winner play the 1 seed. Sunday have those winners play for the title.

5 Seed                   1 Seed     
       | 5/8 Winner                |  1/4/5/8 Winner
8 Seed |           |  4/5/8 Winner |                 |
          4 Seed   |                                 |
                                                     | Pool A Team
6 Seed                   2 Seed                      |
       | 6/7 Winner                |  2/3/6/7 Winner |
7 Seed |           |  3/6/7 Winner |
          3 Seed   |


In this format it would certainly increase the value of conference play while still keeping the bid open to those who struggled a bit.
1: Host and 2 games from title
2: 2 games from title
3/4: 3 games from title
5-8: 4 games from title
>8: eliminated

[Pat Coleman]

The OAC does this. This year both 1 and 2 men's seeds lost in the semifinals after getting that double bye.

[smedindy]

If it is really the Bowdoin bid that is at issue, then I think we can get pretty complete agreement that a mistake was made. Based on my reading of the selection criteria, it doesn't seem like they should have been picked. The conversation has gone very far afield of that.

but it's a symptom of the problem...that's not easy to fix but there are nuggets around here that can solve it.

[kiltedbryan]

To me, the "unfair" math of a NESCAC-like schedule stems from teams only playing 10 in-conference games out of 25. The thing about conference games, from an SOS perspective, is that the impact of playing one tends to be around .500, since every conference win for you is a loss for someone else in the conference. It's a closed loop.

Take this year, for example: 110 conference games were played in the NESCAC, and the conference had a 55-55 record against itself. Same as last year, same as the year before, etc. It's a closed system, zero-sum game - every win equals a loss for someone else, so from a conference-wide perspective, the winning percentage of each game is .500. Now the math won't be perfect due to home/away multipliers or the slightly different records of teams within the conference each year, but it seems obvious that the net impact of conference games on your SOS is that playing a lot of them will tend to regress your SOS closer to .500.

But a non-conference game is an outside-of-system event. If, say, Amherst beats Anna Maria, the NESCAC gains a 1.000 to its WP while the GNAC gains 0.000. And, I guess, the "unfair" part, to me, is that only playing 10 conference games gives the NESCAC both: 1) many more opportunities to boost the overall winning percentages of its member teams, and 2) *avoids* the conference game penalty whereby each conference matchup would, on average, tend to bring your SOS closer to .500.

Consider a NESCAC team with a .530 SOS vs. an OAC team with a .530 SOS going into Selection Monday. The NESCAC team generated that SOS with 10 conference games and 15 non-cons, plus (probably) two NESCAC tourney games. The OAC team, by contrast, played 18 conference games, 7 non-cons, plus (probably) 2-3 OAC tournament games. So the OAC team had many fewer games to use to move their SOS into the .530 range as compared to the NESCAC team.

And what's true for a single team in the conference is true for the league as a whole. Again, the NESCAC played 110 conference games out of 275 total regular season games. Exactly 40% of their schedule were conference games. But the OAC played 180 conference games out of 250 total games - 72% of their schedule.

That means that, for an OAC team, nearly twice as many of their games come from playing games that net out, in an SOS calculation, to a .500 record (every conference win is also a conference loss, and everybody plays everybody twice). In effect, every OAC team competing for a tournament slot has a 90-90 (OAC record against itself) weighed into their SOS whereas the NESCAC team they're being compared against only has a 55-55 (NESCAC record against itself) weighed in. I think that's a huge advantage coming from conference scheduling practices that isn't captured in the evaluation of the selection criteria.

It's totally possible I'm wrong, and this analysis is wrong - I wasn't a math or stats major, by any stretch - but this is the way it seems to me. And it seems like there really would be an SOS penalty to playing lots of conference games as opposed to fewer, and that NESCAC teams could get a real benefit from it.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

If it is really the Bowdoin bid that is at issue, then I think we can get pretty complete agreement that a mistake was made. Based on my reading of the selection criteria, it doesn't seem like they should have been picked. The conversation has gone very far afield of that.

There were some questions about Dickinson early on, I imagine that talk has probably been long forgotten by this point.

[Mr. Ypsi]

kiltedbryan, your basic point is correct, but a slight correction.  6 NESCAC teams each play two games against members of the NESCAC which are non-con games.  CONFERENCE games have to end 55-55, but CONFERENCE SOS is computed including 61-61.

BTW, I wasn't a math or stat major either, but I did teach stat for over 3 decades at the university level.

[wally_wabash]

Take this year, for example: 110 conference games were played in the NESCAC, and the conference had a 55-55 record against itself. Same as last year, same as the year before, etc. It's a closed system, zero-sum game - every win equals a loss for someone else...

Time is indeed a flat circle. 

[madzillagd]

When I saw that Bowdoin got in I cynically thought it was for one reason and one reason only: because the NEWMAC got 4 teams in.  The NESCAC is supposed to be the top NE conference and they were looking at having 2 teams in while the NEWMAC, the supposed 2nd best NE conference, was getting in 4.  I think in a very touch-feely, subjective way that may have pushed Bowdoin over the top and gotten them in the tournament.  I could be completely off base but that was my initial thought and I haven't seen anything to date that would lead me to think there is some other type of mathematical explanation as to why they got in.  As everyone has pointed out, the numbers just don't add up for them.

But then again, I'm just the guy who told the AMC fans that to get ranked higher they needed a better SOS and to build some tournament history - only to be shot down by everyone on the board that tournament history wasn't part of the criteria the committee considered.  Which reminds me, how did that turn out? 

[FCGrizzliesGrad]

Time is indeed a flat circle.

I thought time was more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff 

[amh63]

GCGrizzG........Like your discription of TIME.  In truth your wording is closer to the latest "truth" than flat circle for time.  The latest being the every changing world of nobel prize winners and quantum physicisits/math nerds.  The leader of the bunch latest bomb shell is that there maybe no such thing as a "black hole".  Sort of where the discussions of SOS in the NESCAC seems to be going   But we know better

[smedindy]

We've kvetched a lot about the Pool C process since, well, forever.

But at least we have a semi-national way to do things and a semi-national tournament.

In D2, everything is regional to the max. The men got just one entrant into the field because of upsets in two of the three conferences that make up the region. So the CCAA and the Pac West got an extra team in because of those upsets.

The women got four teams out of the eight in the region, and the conference championship game between Simon Fraser and Western Washington will be a rematch in the first round of the NCAA tourney and even though Western Washington won that game, their still the #6 seed vs. #3 Simon Fraser.

So, I guess we count our D3 blessings.

[sac]

We've kvetched a lot about the Pool C process since, well, forever.

But at least we have a semi-national way to do things and a semi-national tournament.

In D2, everything is regional to the max. The men got just one entrant into the field because of upsets in two of the three conferences that make up the region. So the CCAA and the Pac West got an extra team in because of those upsets.

The women got four teams out of the eight in the region, and the conference championship game between Simon Fraser and Western Washington will be a rematch in the first round of the NCAA tourney and even though Western Washington won that game, their still the #6 seed vs. #3 Simon Fraser.

So, I guess we count our D3 blessings.

[toad22]

One slight correction to the math of the NESCAC is that they play only 24 games, not 25. For some reason, Bowdoin only played 23 this year, but I don't believe that is a Bowdoin rule for their bball teams. I would not want the NESCAC to move to a 20 game league schedule, leaving only 4 out of conference games, so some kind of subgroupings would be required. It all seems kind of convoluted, and certainly unfair inside the league, so I doubt they will ever change. That possibility was looked at a few years ago and rejected.

[Ralph Turner]

From the way-back-stack,  this debate about the inherent advantages that accrue to the NESCAC for its single round robin was discussed on Hoopsville back in 2006.

Interesting comments from Coach Andrist of UW-Stout on Hoopsville tonight.  He said the WIAC has actually discussed moving away from the conference tournament since it leads to additional losses for Pool C candidates.  This has been Scott Trost's position on the conference tournament concept.

Under the present system of in-region winning % and Quality of Wins Index, as I see it, it really does not make sense for "power conferences" to play more games against each other than they have to.  The regular season league slate is damaging enough in terms of in-region losses and hits to the QOWI...why subject your Pool C candidates to more games vs the powerful teams atop the league?

Amherst coach David Hixon conceded on Hoopsville tonight that the NESCAC benefits from not playing a double round robin.  In other words, they're better off since Amherst, Bates, Tufts, Williams, and the top teams every year do not play each other twice in the conference season - more opportunity to go beat up on the other Northeast Region teams and boost the in-region winning % and QOWI.

While I do not like the way the NESCAC does things (a double round robin is the only way to go), I think leagues like the CCIW and WIAC should take a page out of the NESCAC's book and keep their teams the heck away from each other when possible.  I still think the conference tournament makes no sense as billed by the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin...

"Implementing the tournament is a significant step in the history of the CCIW," said Martin. "We hope that showcasing our top teams in the tournament will help us get a second, at-large bid, to the NCAA field each year.

http://www.cciw.org/winter_bball_m/cciwtournamentapproved.php


I don't buy it.

I agree with you, Q. 

To emulate the other half of the NESCAC success is for the CCIW members to identify as many Midwest Region opponents as possible that should finish the season >.500 and schedule them.

The NESCAC does have 58 teams in six other conferences vs. 42 teams in 4 other conferences plus WashStL and UChicago in the Midwest from which to pick.

And a road game is worth an extra point!

(I have tried to make my point clearer by adding the italicized words.  Thanks to my friends who suggested that I clarify that posting. )

You gotta get up pretty early in the morning to get ahead of Dave McHugh.