Pool C

[AppletonRocks]

Oshkosh and Eau Claire played each other 2x this year, may have influenced the committee.

[AO]

My two misses were UW-Oshkosh and St. Thomas and I had UW-Eau Claire and Mt. St. Joseph in.

Personally, I think Mt. St. Joseph has a beef.  They had a really good 20-6 D3 record (with a loss to an average D1 Evansville team) and a decent SOS.  They should have been ahead of St. Thomas which had another D3 loss and not much of an SOS advantage.

I don't have a problem with Oshkosh getting a pick, but I just didn't think the committee would go there.  I remember when Carthage had a similar WP and SOS and didn't get in because they 'didn't beat' anyone (they had beaten Top 3 Wash U that year).  I honestly just didn't think the committee would put Oshkosh ahead of Eau Claire, so I assumed a different order in the Central when I made my picks.  With full knowledge, I think it is the right choice.

I'd give the committee an A- for their Pool C picks.

#1 thing I got from Dave's interview with the Vande Streek is they didn't stop counting quality wins at the end of the regional rankings list.  So while St. Thomas might have only gone 2-1 against the top 10 in the region, they won a bunch more games against quality teams like Carleton, St. John's and Stevens Point.  That seems to be pushing the bounds of the criteria, but it's definitely a more accurate way to count quality wins.

[bopol]

#1 thing I got from Dave's interview with the Vande Streek is they didn't stop counting quality wins at the end of the regional rankings list.  So while St. Thomas might have only gone 2-1 against the top 10 in the region, they won a bunch more games against quality teams like Carleton, St. John's and Stevens Point.  That seems to be pushing the bounds of the criteria, but it's definitely a more accurate way to count quality wins.

I should say that I don't think St. Thomas is a bad pick.  They were likely my 22nd pick.  It's more that Mt. St. Joseph seems to be ahead on the stated criteria.

It's interesting that they are looking at quality wins outside of the RRO.  An interesting aspect of the Central was the CCIW craziness where you can reasonably argue that Carthage and North Park would have been the top 2 teams outside of the final regional rankings.  They was way too much dependence on ending up the last team in the regional rankings for the RRO.  Including one or both would have drastically changed the RRO of Augie, IWU and UW-Oshkosh.  I would be happy to look at the quality of teams more holistically (say, defeating #1 in the region is much, much better than defeating #9 in the region and even that is not that much better than defeating a team that is just outside the regional rankings. 

And, again, I think the committee did a very good job this year for the Pool C picks.  It isn't like years past where we are all scratching our collective heads wondering what the heck was going on in the committee.

[Pat Coleman]

My two misses were UW-Oshkosh and St. Thomas and I had UW-Eau Claire and Mt. St. Joseph in.

Personally, I think Mt. St. Joseph has a beef.  They had a really good 20-6 D3 record (with a loss to an average D1 Evansville team) and a decent SOS.  They should have been ahead of St. Thomas which had another D3 loss and not much of an SOS advantage.

I don't have a problem with Oshkosh getting a pick, but I just didn't think the committee would go there.  I remember when Carthage had a similar WP and SOS and didn't get in because they 'didn't beat' anyone (they had beaten Top 3 Wash U that year).  I honestly just didn't think the committee would put Oshkosh ahead of Eau Claire, so I assumed a different order in the Central when I made my picks.  With full knowledge, I think it is the right choice.

I'd give the committee an A- for their Pool C picks.

#1 thing I got from Dave's interview with the Vande Streek is they didn't stop counting quality wins at the end of the regional rankings list.  So while St. Thomas might have only gone 2-1 against the top 10 in the region, they won a bunch more games against quality teams like Carleton, St. John's and Stevens Point.  That seems to be pushing the bounds of the criteria, but it's definitely a more accurate way to count quality wins.

They've talked about wins vs. teams above .500 and wins vs. teams above .600 before -- I took that to be what he was referencing.

[RedHotFalcon]

Happy that 3 WIAC teams got in. But certainly surprised. I would always like to get 3 in. It is a tough league. However, Dave, your argument is right on. You have 8 quality wins, but lose 10 games. How do you ignore the losses. Many of them were not quality losses. Slippery slope the NCAA committee took here and I can understand why there would be questions. Of course, there are always teams on the bubble that are left out. It's like reffing be consistent.  I would hate to sit in a room at the table saying, well I feel they are a better team.  You could argue well maybe that feeling was from the game against UWO and Calvin earlier in the year. I'm sure that wasn't the case, but picks like this make a guy wonder. I just hope that in the future the team I route for gets looked at and put in the tournament with 10 losses. Good luck to all the teams that made it. Have fun! Enjoy, play your hearts out!

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

My two misses were UW-Oshkosh and St. Thomas and I had UW-Eau Claire and Mt. St. Joseph in.

Personally, I think Mt. St. Joseph has a beef.  They had a really good 20-6 D3 record (with a loss to an average D1 Evansville team) and a decent SOS.  They should have been ahead of St. Thomas which had another D3 loss and not much of an SOS advantage.

I don't have a problem with Oshkosh getting a pick, but I just didn't think the committee would go there.  I remember when Carthage had a similar WP and SOS and didn't get in because they 'didn't beat' anyone (they had beaten Top 3 Wash U that year).  I honestly just didn't think the committee would put Oshkosh ahead of Eau Claire, so I assumed a different order in the Central when I made my picks.  With full knowledge, I think it is the right choice.

I'd give the committee an A- for their Pool C picks.

#1 thing I got from Dave's interview with the Vande Streek is they didn't stop counting quality wins at the end of the regional rankings list.  So while St. Thomas might have only gone 2-1 against the top 10 in the region, they won a bunch more games against quality teams like Carleton, St. John's and Stevens Point.  That seems to be pushing the bounds of the criteria, but it's definitely a more accurate way to count quality wins.

They've talked about wins vs. teams above .500 and wins vs. teams above .600 before -- I took that to be what he was referencing.

Yeah, but those aren't technically part of the criteria.  I know we've had private conversations about this, but the question remains whether they should be using data that's not part of the criteria if the whole purpose of the criteria was to mandate a certain amount of objectivity?  I'm not sure there's a correct answer to that question, but it's worth discussing.

[AO]

Happy that 3 WIAC teams got in. But certainly surprised. I would always like to get 3 in. It is a tough league. However, Dave, your argument is right on. You have 8 quality wins, but lose 10 games. How do you ignore the losses. Many of them were not quality losses.

The only game on Oshkosh's schedule resembling a "bad loss" was Stout.  Stout would be one of the better teams on an average D3 schedule.  On Mt. St. Joe's schedule I'd only put Hanover and John Carroll above Stout.

[Gregory Sager]

Since Drew's chart is referenced in Pat's d3hoops.com story on UW-Oshkosh making the tourney as a Pool C surprise, I thought I'd go back and look at the actual performance of his statistical outliers (which I've bolded):

Warning: long, nerdy post!

I analyzed the data regarding Pool C selections over the last four seasons (2013-2016).  This graph shows WP & SOS of teams that were candidates for Pool C, and whether or not they were selected.  Moving up or to the right indicates a stronger resume.

The top left represents teams with good records but soft schedules, and the bottom right includes teams with so-so records versus tough schedules.  We could find lots more mediocre teams that didn't make the field to fill out the bottom and left portions (except for the extreme top-left), but I included only about 40 per season. 


If the image doesn't display above, it's located here: http://imgur.com/a/5UxNp

The solid line is the generic bubble mark (50% shot at getting a Pool C berth), and the dashed lines above and below represent 90% and 10% chances, respectively (without considering the number of qualified bubble teams that year)  The moderately-sloped portions toward the center of the 50% and 90% lines represent the "2 wins [or .080 WP] equals .030 SOS" principle.  Moving toward the edges, the slopes change in ways that represent that the committee values a balanced resume more than one with either a weak SOS (and a great record) or a weak WP (against a tough schedule). 

For any engineers, etc. interested in the gory details, the formula is as follows:
P = SOS - 3/8*(1-WP) - 1.2*max(.720-WP,0) - 1.5*max(.510-SOS,0)
The first two terms are .030 SOS = .080 WP, the next term penalizes WP<.720 and the last penalizes SOS<.510. 
Fitting a single-variable logistic regression model to the outcomes (bid or no bid) yields the probabilities.

The outliers of teams that would appear less qualified but got in were as follows:
Randolph '13 (.714, .520, 4-5), which the model gives only a 5% chance
Bowdoin '14 (.792, .503, 1-3) 10%
Wittenberg '14 (.750, .517, 3-6) 21%

On the flip side, the teams that appear deserving but didn't get in were:
Albright '13 (.769, .546, 3-1) 88%
Buena Vista '13 (.720, .563, 1-2) 87%
Carroll '16 (.800, .530, 0-3) 83%
Thomas More '13 (.846, .512, 1-3) 82%

Overall, it's interesting that there were very few outliers in the last couple of years, perhaps indicating a shift to a more quantitative approach by the national committee.  This model does reasonably well despite not including results versus regionally ranked opponents (and Carroll's lack of a vRRO win last year helps explain why they got left out), although my current one does consider that.

Edited to fix image embed -- you almost had it, but you need to have the actual filename in there, not the page it lives on. Click the image to enlarge./pc

Here's how they did in the dance:

2013: Emory 77, Randolph 56
2014: Stockton 72, Bowdoin 66
2014: Calvin 66, Wittenberg 51

Three outliers, three first-round exits ... and only one of them was competitive.

UW-Oshkosh does not have a high bar to hurdle.

[ronk]

Did the committees allow Moravian to take the selection table home - between the men and women, they were there for ~ 20 selections for Pool C?

[AppletonRocks]

Happy that 3 WIAC teams got in. But certainly surprised. I would always like to get 3 in. It is a tough league. However, Dave, your argument is right on. You have 8 quality wins, but lose 10 games. How do you ignore the losses. Many of them were not quality losses.

The only game on Oshkosh's schedule resembling a "bad loss" was Stout.  Stout would be one of the better teams on an average D3 schedule.  On Mt. St. Joe's schedule I'd only put Hanover and John Carroll above Stout.

Stout beat Whitewater soon thereafter. Stout didn't finish they way they started.

[Greek Tragedy]

Happy that 3 WIAC teams got in. But certainly surprised. I would always like to get 3 in. It is a tough league. However, Dave, your argument is right on. You have 8 quality wins, but lose 10 games. How do you ignore the losses. Many of them were not quality losses.

The only game on Oshkosh's schedule resembling a "bad loss" was Stout.  Stout would be one of the better teams on an average D3 schedule.  On Mt. St. Joe's schedule I'd only put Hanover and John Carroll above Stout.

Stout beat Whitewater soon thereafter. Stout didn't finish they way they started.

In what year?

[RedHotFalcon]

Would we say then 8 quality wins, 9 quality losses? It's ok. As I said, I hope this trend continues. Not remembering last year as much, did we have a Wiac team that could have been considered? I remember thinking we were a 1 team at bid because of l's.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Did the committees allow Moravian to take the selection table home - between the men and women, they were there for ~ 20 selections for Pool C?

Women absolutely hit the table. There was no way any other team behind them jumped ahead of them and I think the rankings prove that (don't have them in front of me).

And I am pretty sure the men hit the table as well, they did in our mock rankings. Women had stronger criteria and chance then the men did, but neither really stood out.

[AppletonRocks]

Happy that 3 WIAC teams got in. But certainly surprised. I would always like to get 3 in. It is a tough league. However, Dave, your argument is right on. You have 8 quality wins, but lose 10 games. How do you ignore the losses. Many of them were not quality losses.

The only game on Oshkosh's schedule resembling a "bad loss" was Stout.  Stout would be one of the better teams on an average D3 schedule.  On Mt. St. Joe's schedule I'd only put Hanover and John Carroll above Stout.

Stout beat Whitewater soon thereafter. Stout didn't finish they way they started.

In what year?

You're right, it was LaCrosse.  Sorry.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

It is nearly time to tip up the ball on the NCAA Division III Basketball Tournaments. Who will end up in Grand Rapids and Salem with a chance at a national title?

On Thursday's nights Hoopsville, Dave McHugh gives his preview of the two tournaments and who may be the surprises, who can pull off an upset, who are the favorites to make a run, and who just might walk away with the walnut and bronze.

Hoopsville is presented by D3hoops.com and airs LIVE starting at 7:00 PM ET from the WBCA/NABC Studio. You can watch the show here: http://www.d3hoops.com/hoopsville/archives/2016-17/mar2 --- or via the simulcast on Facebook Live. If you miss the show live, you can watch it On Demand or listen to the podcasts.

The show is jammed packed with guests, but Dave will also have time for your questions. Make sure to email them to hoopsville@d3hoops.com. You can also tweet them to us.

And please consider helping Hoopsville stay on the air like you might help your public television station. The annual fundraising campaign was extended a few days because we had only raised 52% of our goal. Click the following link for more information and to make a donation: Hoopsville Fundraising Page

Guests scheduled (in order of appearance):
- Carl Danzig, Scranton men's coach
- Abby Pyzik Smith, Lynchburg women's coach
- Brad Fischer, No. 13 UW-Oshkosh women's coach
- Michael Blaine, Medialle men's coach
- Jeff Brown, No. 6 Middlbury men's coach
- Cameron Hill, No. 7 Trinity (Texas) women's coach

You can also tune into the podcast(s) after the show has aired:
SoundCloud: www.soundcloud.com/hoopsville
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hoopsville/id1059517087

Don't forget you can always interact with us:
Website: www.d3hoopsville.com
Twitter: @d3hoopsville or #Hoopsville
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Hoopsville
Email: hoopsville@d3hoops.com
YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/d3hoopsville
Fundraiser: https://igg.me/at/hoopsville-fundraiser-2017