Pool C

[sac]

Also, if this Lancaster Bible team is as good as we suspect they are, there is almost literally (outside of some mass disease) no way for them to lose in their conference.  The NEAC is far and away the worst conference in the country.  This isn't like Albertus Magnus of recent years where we were worried about one decent team clipping them and them missing out.  If Lancaster Bible loses in their conference tournament this year, I won't feel bad about it.

In some sense it is unfair.  The only thing they can control is who they play non-con.  That F&M game is likely the best they could do (and I doubt G-Rob schedules them outside a tourney like that).  No one wants to play them because the chance of losing overwhelms the benefit.

I'd be interested to see the numbers on how a conference impacts an SOS.  The NEAC's out of conference winning percentage is .256.  That's awful, but it would be interesting to know what their OOP is and how that impacts things overall.  Dave and I had a little back and forth the other day about what effect a bad conference has on overall SOS.  I was trying to argue that the NEAC is so bad, it's actually going to bring down LBC's SOS (even though typically conference play moves the SOS number towards .500).

I just don't know for sure, because I didn't run the number.  I don't know if there's an easy way for Matt or somebody else to run those numbers and get an overall conference SOS for each conference, just to see how that impacts things.

For double-round robin leagues the conference play pulls SOS to .500 but the NEAC is unbalanced.  They play double-round robin against your division, single game against the other.

If one division has a win-loss advantage over the other, which is always likely, the difference in records now creates an imbalance so the theory that league play equates to pulling SOS towards .500 does not apply to leagues with divisions and non-full round-robins. 

The multiplier for home and road games also throws in an imbalance.   Lancaster gets the 1.25 multiplier vs Morrisville St, but only the .75 multiplier vs SUNYIT.  But someone else in their own division might get the opposite.   Its almost easier to think of those other division games as non-conference games.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Also, if this Lancaster Bible team is as good as we suspect they are, there is almost literally (outside of some mass disease) no way for them to lose in their conference.  The NEAC is far and away the worst conference in the country.  This isn't like Albertus Magnus of recent years where we were worried about one decent team clipping them and them missing out.  If Lancaster Bible loses in their conference tournament this year, I won't feel bad about it.

In some sense it is unfair.  The only thing they can control is who they play non-con.  That F&M game is likely the best they could do (and I doubt G-Rob schedules them outside a tourney like that).  No one wants to play them because the chance of losing overwhelms the benefit.

I'd be interested to see the numbers on how a conference impacts an SOS.  The NEAC's out of conference winning percentage is .256.  That's awful, but it would be interesting to know what their OOP is and how that impacts things overall.  Dave and I had a little back and forth the other day about what effect a bad conference has on overall SOS.  I was trying to argue that the NEAC is so bad, it's actually going to bring down LBC's SOS (even though typically conference play moves the SOS number towards .500).

I just don't know for sure, because I didn't run the number.  I don't know if there's an easy way for Matt or somebody else to run those numbers and get an overall conference SOS for each conference, just to see how that impacts things.

For double-round robin leagues the conference play pulls SOS to .500 but the NEAC is unbalanced.  They play double-round robin against your division, single game against the other.

If one division has a win-loss advantage over the other, which is always likely, the difference in records now creates an imbalance so the theory that league play equates to pulling SOS towards .500 does apply to leagues with divisions and non-full round-robins. 

The multiplier for home and road games also throws in an imbalance.   Lancaster gets the 1.25 multiplier vs Morrisville St, but only the .75 multiplier vs SUNYIT.   Its almost easier to think of those other division games as non-conference games.

I was wondering if a conference could be so bad, that even the movement towards .500 wouldn't happen or be significantly weakened.  There are so many 3-18 teams that got that way playing other 6-15 teams, that it seems difficult to think it's really going to improve their SOS at all.

[gordonmann]

I just noticed on the East Region data sheet that Lancaster Bible is being credited with only a 17-0 record.  Through Sunday they were 19-0 and I don't see the two D3 games that shouldn't be counting for them.    http://web1.ncaa.org/champsel_new/exec/pdf/staticpdfrank?doWhat=publicrankings&sportCode=MBB&region=10&division=3

Is there a conference team that is going through the provisional process
?

Yes... Wilson is provisional.

I think it's Bryn Athyn that's provisional. They are a second year provisional member of NCAA Division III.

Wilson is a new program too, but they are full members of the NCAA. They've had women's sports for years so the men's programs are automatically full members too, even as new programs.

[gordonmann]

The NEAC's out of conference winning percentage is .256. 

In that case it's a little better than last year when it was .234. The UMAC posted a .147 winning percentage last year but its champion went to the Sweet 16.

[AO]

The NEAC's out of conference winning percentage is .256. 

In that case it's a little better than last year when it was .234. The UMAC posted a .147 winning percentage last year but its champion went to the Sweet 16.

[coachrcal]

AS a coach of a NEAC team I can say the league is not as bad as people think.  The top 3 teams are all good D3 teams. Morrisville State has been in a sweet 16 and elite 8 in the past 5 years and LBC has a chance to make a deep run this year.  Also Gallaudet is a good team after getting one of there best players back for the second semester.  LBC, Morrisville and Gallaudet can play with anyone in the region.  The problem is the size and the teams at the bottom of the league.  The size wont get any better with a Saint Elizabeth adding MBB next year.  So now each team will have 20 NEAC games. 

[magicman]

The NEAC's out of conference winning percentage is .256. 

In that case it's a little better than last year when it was .234. The UMAC posted a .147 winning percentage last year but its champion went to the Sweet 16.

Along the same vein as Gordon's mention of the UMAC and Northwestern's run last year,are these facts about the NEAC that folks may have forgotten.

In 2012-13 Morrisville State, from the same conference as Lancaster Bible, won the NEAC's automatic bid. They defeated Ramapo in the first round and then Rhode Island College to advance to the Sweet 16 where they ultimately lost to St. Mary's (Md).

In 2013-14 Morrisville again went dancing and beat Brockport State, at Brockport, in triple overtime, after being down by 20 points early in the 2nd half. Then they beat Hobart to advance to the Sweet 16 for the 2nd year in a row. They got to play another NJAC team, Richard Stockton, (before they dropped the Richard) and won that game to go to the Elite Eight. They had to play Amherst in Amherst and the Lord Jeffs I mean the "no names" beat them by an 84-74 final score, but the NESCAC Champs knew they were in a game.

Previously in 2009-10 the NEAC conference had SUNYIT advance to the Sweet 16.The year before that SUNYIT won a 1st round game.

So in 3 of the past 6 years, a team from the "weak" NEAC conference has advanced to the Sweet 16. I'm willing to bet there are probably at least 25 conferences (and maybe more) that haven't had that level of success.   You just never know.

  Edit: It looks like coachrcal had the same idea while I was typing my post.   

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Yeah, I made the statement strictly for this year.  I believe the NEAC is pretty down this year, even at the top.  Galludet is playing better, but Morrisville isn't.  I don't like to make conference generalizations outside of year-to-year play - it just doesn't always hold up (cough, cough, ODAC).

[pg04]

As Dave mentioned, I very much hope if Lancaster Bible wins all but the conference title game that they'd get in with only one loss. If not then it's probably gone too far to the numbers game.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Yeah... but this year's committee has hinted (on air and some people off air) that they may be pushing to .060 equals 4 despite clearly the words from the committee last year saying as it pushes out they lose a little faith that it as even. The NCAA Stats people have apparently poured over the numbers with them the last few years per the equation .030 SOS = 2 games.

Did the stats people study the broken multiplier?  I noticed they still haven't changed the championships manual to reflect the way they actually calculate SoS.  Do we think that most committee members are aware of how the multiplier is currently used to give more weight to road games rather than make them appear in the SoS as tougher?

Yes, the committee is fully aware of the weighted SOS. They are the ones who approve it and it is always a topic of conversation. There are only a handful of committees who have a weighted SOS, basketball is one of them, and they know how that works. The weighted measure was put in to get teams like F&M out of their gyms and not reward them for racking up wins at home.

The stat people do study it, but KnightSlappy has had an argument that when they changed the math from each individual game/team getting the multiplier to it being given to the overall record for all away games and all home games it changed in a way he isn't pleased about. We have presented that to the NCAA, but so far the stats people have been deaf to the point.

I just noticed on the East Region data sheet that Lancaster Bible is being credited with only a 17-0 record.  Through Sunday they were 19-0 and I don't see the two D3 games that shouldn't be counting for them.    http://web1.ncaa.org/champsel_new/exec/pdf/staticpdfrank?doWhat=publicrankings&sportCode=MBB&region=10&division=3

Is there a conference team that is going through the provisional process
?

Yes... Wilson is provisional.

I think it's Bryn Athyn that's provisional. They are a second year provisional member of NCAA Division III.

Wilson is a new program too, but they are full members of the NCAA. They've had women's sports for years so the men's programs are automatically full members too, even as new programs.

First off, when I posted about Wilson, I incorrectly was looking at the 2015 book. Looking at this year's book and the following teams are provisional: Bryn Athyn, Penn College, and Wilson. Now there is a rule that a team in it's third and fourth year of provisional status does have their games count towards criteria for everyone else. Team in their first and second year does not count at all.

AS a coach of a NEAC team I can say the league is not as bad as people think.  The top 3 teams are all good D3 teams. Morrisville State has been in a sweet 16 and elite 8 in the past 5 years and LBC has a chance to make a deep run this year.  Also Gallaudet is a good team after getting one of there best players back for the second semester.  LBC, Morrisville and Gallaudet can play with anyone in the region.  The problem is the size and the teams at the bottom of the league.  The size wont get any better with a Saint Elizabeth adding MBB next year.  So now each team will have 20 NEAC games. 

Coach, I hear a lot of coaches say their conferences are better than people think and while I agree the top three are least respectful (or in LBC's case, darn good), the rest of the conference isn't. That is clear in the out-of-conference schedule, that is clear in the bottom team's records and stats, etc. It is also clear in the SOS numbers. No NEAC team is going to get an at-large when the bottom of the conference keeps putting up poor records against poor schedules. Remember, LBC has missed out on the tournament the last few years when they had pretty decent teams because they lost in the conference title game (otherwise, Morrisville State would NEVER have gotten it's chance at a Sweet 16 run).

The truth is, the NEAC and the way it is made up hurts the top teams from having any buffer. When you play that many league games and are not a strong league... at-large chances are pretty much zilch.

I understand the "run in the NCAA tournament" theory - but that is one team. The only team to advance from the conference. We are talking the ENTIRE conference because the ENTIRE conference is what is hurting LBC's chances right now.

Yeah, I made the statement strictly for this year.  I believe the NEAC is pretty down this year, even at the top.  Galludet is playing better, but Morrisville isn't.  I don't like to make conference generalizations outside of year-to-year play - it just doesn't always hold up (cough, cough, ODAC).

If you are going to go there, you better start including the WIAC, too. The ODAC has been a Top 5 conference for a number of years now. Just because this year is a bit down doesn't mean that title doesn't still apply to the ODAC. We certainly wouldn't say the WIAC isn't a Top 5 conference because the top is down this year, would we?

Also, if this Lancaster Bible team is as good as we suspect they are, there is almost literally (outside of some mass disease) no way for them to lose in their conference.  The NEAC is far and away the worst conference in the country.  This isn't like Albertus Magnus of recent years where we were worried about one decent team clipping them and them missing out.  If Lancaster Bible loses in their conference tournament this year, I won't feel bad about it.

The difference being that Albertus Magnus has a loss against the best team on it's record most years... thus entering the conference tournament with one or two losses already on it's resume. The simple fact that Lancaster Bible isn't carrying a loss... with a chance their only loss comes in the conference title game (good chance the third time they are facing the opponent)... I would feel sorry for them.

In some sense it is unfair.  The only thing they can control is who they play non-con.  That F&M game is likely the best they could do (and I doubt G-Rob schedules them outside a tourney like that).  No one wants to play them because the chance of losing overwhelms the benefit.

The sense I get is that the Lancaster Bible/F&M series will stay. Both teams seem to understand that it is a great inter-Lancaster battle that the community appreciates. This isn't St. Mary's or some other regional team that Glenn can easily duck if he wants to. This is an inter-town game and I think that changes the equation. I feel I have been told, or at least given a significant hint, that this will remaining on everyone's schedules.

As Dave mentioned, I very much hope if Lancaster Bible wins all but the conference title game that they'd get in with only one loss. If not then it's probably gone too far to the numbers game.

The long and the short of it is this... win the conference and all of this talk (and a future OpEd) will be a moot point. They are dominating this conference winning by pretty sizeable margins every night. They need to keep that up and not lose focus. Win out... and we can not worry about it.

[KnightSlappy]

Here is the average SOS (total and non-conference) for each conference thru last Sunday's games (sorted by total):

D3SOS NCSOS CONF
0.559   0.537   CCIW
0.534   0.521   MIAC
0.544   0.535   SUNYAC
0.556   0.549   WIAC
0.548   0.502   NESCAC
0.536   0.527   USAC
0.552   0.493   UAA
0.533   0.559   MIAA
0.532   0.529   OAC
0.521   0.536   NATHC
0.513   0.562   LL
0.526   0.519   CAC
0.534   0.528   LEC
0.531   0.511   ODAC
0.524   0.487   LAND
0.496   0.525   IIAC
0.530   0.473   NWC
0.513   0.514   NJAC
0.508   0.515   CC
0.512   0.495   MACF
0.505   0.533   MASCAC
0.515   0.450   NCAC
0.516   0.498   MACC
0.516   0.483   NEWMAC
0.501   0.514   E8
0.493   0.496   CUNYAC
0.487   0.504   CCC
0.468   0.535   NECC
0.468   0.492   IND
0.465   0.533   SKY
0.494   0.474   MWC
0.473   0.506   SAA
0.473   0.481   GNAC
0.493   0.434   SCAC
0.474   0.439   SCIAC
0.461   0.500   NAC
0.452   0.502   PrAC
0.464   0.478   AMCC
0.457   0.487   CSAC
0.456   0.498   NEAC
0.457   0.468   HCAC
0.442   0.484   SLIAC
0.509   0.430   ASC
0.430   0.419   UMAC

[ronk]

The two committees use different things to determine how many should be ranked. MBB and WBB haven't agreed on this for a long time, unfortunately.

Seems like something that shouldn't be allowed-that the men's team at a school has a different chance at being regionally ranked than the women's team at the same school in the same region. This(vrro) could be a positive or a negative for a team; it just shouldn't differ by gender.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

I believe the NCAA's stance is that as long as the minimum number of teams are ranked by either the 6.5:1 ratio or a specific minimum number (6?), a committee can choose to rank more or not. As long as they are consistent WITHIN the gender with that application, I am sure it isn't that big a deal.

However, I will check on it.

[AO]

Yeah... but this year's committee has hinted (on air and some people off air) that they may be pushing to .060 equals 4 despite clearly the words from the committee last year saying as it pushes out they lose a little faith that it as even. The NCAA Stats people have apparently poured over the numbers with them the last few years per the equation .030 SOS = 2 games.

Did the stats people study the broken multiplier?  I noticed they still haven't changed the championships manual to reflect the way they actually calculate SoS.  Do we think that most committee members are aware of how the multiplier is currently used to give more weight to road games rather than make them appear in the SoS as tougher?

Yes, the committee is fully aware of the weighted SOS. They are the ones who approve it and it is always a topic of conversation. There are only a handful of committees who have a weighted SOS, basketball is one of them, and they know how that works. The weighted measure was put in to get teams like F&M out of their gyms and not reward them for racking up wins at home.

The stat people do study it, but KnightSlappy has had an argument that when they changed the math from each individual game/team getting the multiplier to it being given to the overall record for all away games and all home games it changed in a way he isn't pleased about. We have presented that to the NCAA, but so far the stats people have been deaf to the point.

I know we are making this an annual argument, but I still can't believe this hasn't been changed yet.

Under the current calculation F&M is motivated to stay in their gym and play poor teams they can beat.  Much better to play terrible teams at home where the games don't mean as much than on the road against a .500 team that could beat you.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

I don't necessarily agree. F&M is actually an example of a team that has actually changed its scheduling over the years to improve it AND get out of their gym. Now, they normally have four games at home based on two tournaments (one of those tournaments wasn't held this season). Outside of that, they get out of town more often and play.

Also, playing poor teams, whether the record is weighted or not, is still playing poor OWP and OOWP numbers. Sure, the home games are not as dinged, but the ding is still there and F&M, despite improvements, still doesn't have the most stellar SOS in the world (.506 this season).