Pool C

[nescac1]

I'm not trying to be snobbish.  I'm not saying NESCAC is uniquely the best and more deserving than any other conference.  In fact, I purposefully and pointedly did NOT say that.  I think you read that into my arguments, honestly, because that is what you and other folks think and expect of NESCAC posters.  Please instead read what I'm actually writing.  I think NESCAC is one of a small handful of conferences that routinely have 3-4 top 25 teams, sometimes even more, among their membership.  CCIW and WIAC are included in that group as well.  Maybe OAC in some years, UAA in some years, and previously, but not lately, ODAC.  Is that "snobbish" to say?  By your own top 25 poll, you have four NESCAC teams in the top 25.  Shouldn't a 64 team tournament aim to have the best 25 teams in the country represented, or at least the vast majority of those teams, every year?  If you agree that it should, then you agree that (at least this year) NESCAC should get four teams in.  Or do you not believe in your own Top 25 votes?  I honestly don't understand how you can equate my argument to a "bow down to NESCAC" mentality.  It's really an unfair and untrue critique for you to make, and YOU should do better. 

I also think it's unfair to NESCAC student-athletes to keep telling them they some of them don't belong in the tournament because of the lack of a double round robin (something entirely out of their control, and which has never existed in the league, even before NESCAC schools were even NCAA tournament eligible by the way).  Nor is it fair to, year in and year out, denigrate / minimize their accomplishments when they DO succeed in the tournament (and by the way, I think last year New England proved that it isn't just NESCAC, is that fair to say at least??).  And that is what I see every ... single ... year, without fail, coming from certain posters on this site.  There is simply no way for NESCAC teams to prove themselves, apparently, because even when they (a) get to the Final Four and (b) play very well there, they will be seen as not having fully "earned" it.  That is just egregiously unfair.  I don't ask for NESCAC to be held above any league.  I just ask for NESCAC not to always be targeted with particularized vitriol as, unique among all conferences, being undeserving of the bids it receives.  If that makes me some sort of NESCAC snob, apologies. 

Finally, you keep saying that my argument about NESCAC rings hollow against CCIW, WIAC, and some other leagues as if you haven't read anything I've posted.  I've said it before, I've said it again, I think those leagues deserve as many teams in the tourney as NESCAC in a typical year.  But I believe that should be accomplished not by having fewer NESCAC teams in the tournament, but by having MORE WIAC, CCIW, etc. teams.  I don't care one whit about a double round robin.  I do however believe the best teams in the country should be in the tourney, and sometimes, due to an overreliance on numeric criteria -- which I grant helps the NESCAC (but not unfairly) and hurts some other leagues (unfairly) -- that simply doesn't happen.  So I'm not really understanding, at all, what point you are trying to make by invoking these other leagues.  I'm in no way, shape, or form denigrating them relative to NESCAC.  I just think NESCAC is one of several true power conferences in Division 3, as reflected by the poll that you yourself participate in, and that all of the power leagues deserve to get a good handful of bids to a 64 team tourney. 

Let me frame this another way.  Over the past ten years, how many NESCAC teams do YOU believe did not belong in the D3 tourney?  Putting selection criteria, which we all agree is imperfect, aside ... do you really think there are any, or more than 1-2 teams in the aggregatel, NESCAC teams that didn't belong among the top 60-64 teams nationally, based on their actual QUALITY, in the tourney?  If you don't, what are we even arguing about?  Why is it left to me to say, no, it's not "ludicrous" that NESCAC has 4 teams represented?  It's not disrespectful to other teams to say that a team in the D3hoops top 25 deserves to be in the tourney more than teams that aren't receiving any votes at all, for example.  Or here is another question -- if NESCAC played a double-round robin, and as a result Williams, Wesleyan or Hamilton -- teams you have ranked in your top 20 -- failed to make the tourney, would that be better than the current system? 

And again, to be clear, I'm not saying that the double round robin has no impact on which teams get in.  I assume it probably does.  My point is that it shouldn't matter.  If playing a double round robin ends up hurting, say, CCIW teams, numerically, the selection criteria should be adjusted so that CCIW teams aren't punished for that.  Teams should be judged on their relative quality, as they are in Division 1.  I think folks on this site have managed to identify, in a fairly reliable way, who the best teams are in the country.  And that often does not correspond with the SOS rankings, which unfairly hurt certain conferences. 

Let me boil this all down and I hope we can drop it, not just this year, but EVERY year.  I understand that the current tourney selection system may be flawed in ways that are of benefit to NESCAC teams relative to teams from some other worthy conferences.  However, under a perfect system designed to select the best 64 teams, all available evidence suggests that NESCAC (among a few other leagues) would still deservedly receive multiple Pool C bids to the tourney nearly every year.  Accordingly, when arguing that conference x, y, or z is worthy of more bids (which may or may not prove to be true), can folks please not frame it as, "it's absurd that NESCAC gets so many bids," but instead simply as conference x, y, or z should earn more?  Thanks! 

[KnightSlappy]

I wonder if this is something that would be easy to simulate by our friend Fantastic50? What would the NESCAC Pool C situation look like if they played a double round robin schedule? I might be able to toy with some numbers but I'm not able to simulate like he is.

My gut tells me that we make too much of the single round robin. It's an advantage for the top teams, but I'm not convinced how big it is.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

I'll try and be simple... I think the SOS has done a very nice job of creating a way of making sure the best teams who are still available make the tournament. It certainly is better than the "old boy's network" and the QOWI, but maybe the bar is too low. LOL

The SOS does do a good job, but at the same time more and more NESCAC schools have found how they can influence that SOS that no other school can do. It has resulted in numbers that are hard to deal with. Very high SOS numbers despite what all the other data is saying and because of the huge SOS advantage, teams are selected anyway.

I argued last year that Amherst should not be in the NCAA tournament. Their SOS helped get them in. I wasn't a huge fan of Wesleyan being in either, but it wasn't as grotesque. There have been a handful of NESCAC teams in the past few years that I have said I don't think should be in because their SOS numbers were so high it wasn't accurately presenting them as what kind of team they really where. To some degree, I had the same argument with Oshkosh last year.

The SOS simply says: here is the schedule we played. I think, for some reason, people (and maybe I have been guilty of this at times) use it as a strength of the team itself. That feels like a mistake. Thus why I have argued that the SOS and WL% at some point have to no longer be compared.

When Lancaster Bible was in jeopardy of not making the tournament if they suffered their only loss in the conference championship (or tournament). Not even in jeopardy. We knew they wouldn't make the tournament. Their SOS was abysmally low. I didn't think leaning on the SOS that hard in their situation was fair considering how much their conference hurts that number (though, their out-of-conference didn't help either). I argued that the SOS compared to WL% had to be more of a bell curve and not a linear comparison. The committee has shifted in how linear it makes the comparison when discussing it, but I haven't seen that in actuality. At some point, I think the SOS being too high or too low needs to be considered. At some point, it comes down to how teams actually play and not only the strength of their schedule.

Amherst last year was 10-8 after the Babson gam... overall they were 17-8. Yes, they beat Williams, Tufts, and Babson, but that was it. Their SOS was built against teams three-quarters of the division should beat. If we lessened the impact of the SOS which was one of the highest in the country (if memory serves), they wouldn't have even been in the conversation. Same is true with Oshkosh. This isn't a NESCAC-only argument for me.

Adjustments have been made over the years when things in the criteria don't work right. We had "once ranked; always ranked" for a little bit of time. Then suddenly the ODAC got a ton of teams in the tournament including Randolph who made it based on the fact they played SO many of their games against regionally ranked opponents. They wouldn't have made the tournament if the current vRRO model was used.

I don't see a reason why we can't look at all numbers and at some point say, okay... that's too high/low, we aren't going to get any good information from that. We need to lessen it's impact here. A bell-curve of some kind (like a graph showing where the SOS sits compared to everyone else in the division) may make some sense.

I am spit-balling a bit... not sure any of that makes sense. I am sure people will find some flaws. I am just trying to say, sometimes the criteria is taken too literally and the true story of those numbers are not considered. I have an issue when a team's SOS is used to basically ignore the WL%... and thus, it seems we are somehow saying the SOS shows us the strength of the team and not what it is really telling us.

[nescac1]

I don't have any issue with anything that you are saying other than one comment: "more and more NESCAC schools have found how they can influence that SOS that no other school can do."  There is no evidence for that, and I'd say it's flat-out untrue based on what I know about NESCAC.  It suggests a degree of manipulation by NESCAC schools that simply does not exist.  The single round robin has nothing to do with SOS.  As I noted, NESCAC teams have played a single round robin for as long as I can remember.  It is not implemented in order to game the system, it is how the league has always operated, for reasons wholly unrelated to D3 tourney criteria. 

And at least for Williams, SOS is not what is driving scheduling decisions for non-league opponents.  They want to play in tourneys in December where their players' families can see them.  So this year, they play in a Cal Lutheran tourney which doesn't help SOS at all.  They want to play regional rivals every year (and minimize travel time for student-athletes) so the schedule typically includes schools from within a 90 minute radius regardless of how that will impact SOS (if Williams cared about SOS, for example, it certainly would NOT play MCLA every year, a game that almost always hurts Williams' schedule rating severely).  And that pretty much covers almost the entire Williams schedule.  A cursory look at other NESCAC schools shows similar schedules, which are packed full of regional rivalry games regardless of tourney implications.  Look at the Maine schools, which play a Maine-heavy schedule.  Or Middlebury, which plays lots of schools from Vermont/New Hampshire typically.  To the extent the SOS helps NESCAC, and it seems that it certainly does, that is entirely coincidental, not a purposeful gaming of the system.

So, your argument should be with overreliance on SOS, not a suggestion that NESCAC teams are doing something untoward.  I wholeheartedly agree with you that SOS is a useful tool but is relied upon far too much right now. 

I thought Amherst (but not Wesleyan) was certainly a very borderline choice last year.  I would not have picked them based on how they finished the season.  On the other hand, they DID beat eventual national champ Babson when Babson was still at full strength, so it's not like that selection was indefensible.  But that's one of the very, very few truly questionable NESCAC choices in my mind.  And we are talking about the fifth NESCAC team to make it in, making last year a true outlier.  This year, I think NESCAC will get four, maybe five if there is an upset in the league tourney, and all will be more clearly deserving. 

[fantastic50]

I wonder if this is something that would be easy to simulate by our friend Fantastic50? What would the NESCAC Pool C situation look like if they played a double round robin schedule? I might be able to toy with some numbers but I'm not able to simulate like he is.

My gut tells me that we make too much of the single round robin. It's an advantage for the top teams, but I'm not convinced how big it is.

Yes, I could simulate it, but it would take some time to set it up; it might be something to look at after the season. 

I don't hear anyone arguing that an 11-team conference should be playing a full double-round; the only reasonably strong conference that plays more than 18 conference games is the MIAC.  However, it wouldn't be hard to play 14-15 conference games via divisional play (perhaps with the three Maine schools plus Tufts & Middlebury in one division, and Hamilton joining the five remaining CT/MA schools in the other).  Because of the trios that already play home-and-home, over half the league plays 12 games against conference opponents now. 

Going to 14-15 games wouldn't have a huge impact, but the presumed extra losses would hurt some bubble teams; the NESCAC would still get four teams in this year, but wouldn't be in the running for a 5th.  Because their SOS is already "maxed out", as alluded to, a full 20-game double round would crush WP numbers with little benefit except even higher vRRO totals; my guess is that the league would be down to 2-3 bids, like the WIAC & CCIW.

[AO]

I wonder if this is something that would be easy to simulate by our friend Fantastic50? What would the NESCAC Pool C situation look like if they played a double round robin schedule? I might be able to toy with some numbers but I'm not able to simulate like he is.

My gut tells me that we make too much of the single round robin. It's an advantage for the top teams, but I'm not convinced how big it is.

Yes, I could simulate it, but it would take some time to set it up; it might be something to look at after the season. 

I don't hear anyone arguing that an 11-team conference should be playing a full double-round; the only reasonably strong conference that plays more than 18 conference games is the MIAC.  However, it wouldn't be hard to play 14-15 conference games via divisional play (perhaps with the three Maine schools plus Tufts & Middlebury in one division, and Hamilton joining the five remaining CT/MA schools in the other).  Because of the trios that already play home-and-home, over half the league plays 12 games against conference opponents now. 

Going to 14-15 games wouldn't have a huge impact, but the presumed extra losses would hurt some bubble teams; the NESCAC would still get four teams in this year, but wouldn't be in the running for a 5th.  Because their SOS is already "maxed out", as alluded to, a full 20-game double round would crush WP numbers with little benefit except even higher vRRO totals; my guess is that the league would be down to 2-3 bids, like the WIAC & CCIW.

If we find the NESCAC would get about a .050 reduction in SOS with a double round robin,  maybe we could just gently point that out to the committee chair and see what happens.   

[fantastic50]

Slightly off-topic, but perhaps interesting ... here are the records for each conference vs non-conference regionally ranked opponents:

NCAC 7-7 (0.500)
NWC 3-3 (0.500)
CAC 6-7 (0.462)
WIAC 5-6 (0.455)
NESCAC 10-13 (0.435)
UAA 7-10 (0.412)
CC 4-6 (0.400)
NEWMAC 5-9 (0.357)
NJAC 6-13 (0.316)
CCIW 5-11 (0.313)
ODAC 6-14 (0.300)
MIAC 4-10 (0.286)
OAC 4-10 (0.286)
LL 5-15 (0.250)
MACC 3-9 (0.250)
HCAC 2-6 (0.250)
LEC 4-13 (0.235)
SCAC 4-15 (0.211)
CUNYAC 2-8 (0.200)
IIAC 2-8 (0.200)
MWC 2-8 (0.200)
CSAC 1-4 (0.200)
E8 2-9 (0.182)
CCC 1-6 (0.143)
SUNYAC 2-13 (0.133)
SKY 1-7 (0.125)
LAND 2-15 (0.118)
NACC 1-8 (0.111)
NECC 1-8 (0.111)
MACF 2-18 (0.100)
AMCC 1-9 (0.100)
USAC 1-9 (0.100)
MIAA 2-20 (0.091)
MASCAC 1-12 (0.077)
SAA 1-15 (0.063)
ASC 0-1 (0.000)
NAC 0-3 (0.000)
PAC 0-8 (0.000)
ACAA 0-10 (0.000)
SLIAC 0-11 (0.000)
SCIAC 0-12 (0.000)
NEAC 0-14 (0.000)
UMAC 0-14 (0.000)
GNAC 0-15 (0.000)

[nescac1]

Regarding NESCAC divisional play, I like it in theory, and I've thought about it. I think it would be VERY tricky to accomplish in a way that doesn't really anger some schools.  Personally, I love that Williams plays Amherst and Wesleyan twice, and I'd love to see us play Midd twice as well.  Everyone else, that would be a lot less interesting most years. 

The problem is that there is no really easy way to divide the league.  First issue is that there would be one 5 team division and another 6 team division, not sure how that would work exactly but it would be a mess for sure.  Second, you want to keep CBB together and Little 3 together.  I imagine you could do a north-south kind of deal with CBB, Hamilton and Midd all together, and then a Mass/CT division, that would probably make the most sense.  But that would make for absolutely BRUTAL travel for those northern division schools (it's a looooonnngg drive from Hamilton to the Maine schools, Hamilton to Colby is seven hours without even accounting for winter storms making it often far longer).   No way in heck that Hamilton and the Maine schools sign off on that. 

You could also do East-West (CBB, Tufts, Conn College), better on travel, but that would be ridiculously competitively unbalanced pretty much every year in NESCAC's history . 

[fantastic50]

I don't see a reason why we can't look at all numbers and at some point say, okay... that's too high/low, we aren't going to get any good information from that. We need to lessen it's impact here. A bell-curve of some kind (like a graph showing where the SOS sits compared to everyone else in the division) may make some sense..

This is most interesting thing said in the thread today. We could easily have an SOS rank, instead of a decimal SOS value. My recollection is that the D1 selection committee uses SOS in that form.

[Ralph Turner]

Slightly off-topic, but perhaps interesting ... here are the records for each conference vs non-conference regionally ranked opponents:

NCAC 7-7 (0.500)
NWC 3-3 (0.500)
CAC 6-7 (0.462)
WIAC 5-6 (0.455)
NESCAC 10-13 (0.435)
UAA 7-10 (0.412)
CC 4-6 (0.400)
NEWMAC 5-9 (0.357)
NJAC 6-13 (0.316)
CCIW 5-11 (0.313)
ODAC 6-14 (0.300)
MIAC 4-10 (0.286)
OAC 4-10 (0.286)
LL 5-15 (0.250)
MACC 3-9 (0.250)
HCAC 2-6 (0.250)
LEC 4-13 (0.235)
SCAC 4-15 (0.211)
CUNYAC 2-8 (0.200)
IIAC 2-8 (0.200)
MWC 2-8 (0.200)
CSAC 1-4 (0.200)
E8 2-9 (0.182)
CCC 1-6 (0.143)
SUNYAC 2-13 (0.133)
SKY 1-7 (0.125)
LAND 2-15 (0.118)
NACC 1-8 (0.111)
NECC 1-8 (0.111)
MACF 2-18 (0.100)
AMCC 1-9 (0.100)
USAC 1-9 (0.100)
MIAA 2-20 (0.091)
MASCAC 1-12 (0.077)
SAA 1-15 (0.063)
ASC 0-1 (0.000)
NAC 0-3 (0.000)
PAC 0-8 (0.000)
ACAA 0-10 (0.000)
SLIAC 0-11 (0.000)
SCIAC 0-12 (0.000)
NEAC 0-14 (0.000)
UMAC 0-14 (0.000)
GNAC 0-15 (0.000)

Only one game, geographic isolation combined with an 18 game conference schedule.

LeTourneau lost to Johns Hopkins 93-84 at Rhodes on Nov 18th

[Pat Coleman]

Only one game, geographic isolation combined with an 18 game conference schedule.

Hard to schedule regionally ranked teams when it's not even a priority to play D-III opponents.

[toad22]

[/quote]
If we find the NESCAC would get about a .050 reduction in SOS with a double round robin,  maybe we could just gently point that out to the committee chair and see what happens.   
[/quote]

That is about the worst idea I have ever read. Don't try to prevent good teams from getting in, try to make sure that all the really good teams get in! Maybe we need more than 64 teams. D1 has play in games. The answer cannot be to prevent teams from the really good conferences from getting in. I sincerely believe that the WIAC is, year in and year out, the best league in the country. Figure out how to get one or two more teams from the WIAC in every year. If you can do that the problem is pretty close to solved.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

If we find the NESCAC would get about a .050 reduction in SOS with a double round robin,  maybe we could just gently point that out to the committee chair and see what happens.   
[/quote]

That is about the worst idea I have ever read. Don't try to prevent good teams from getting in, try to make sure that all the really good teams get in! Maybe we need more than 64 teams. D1 has play in games. The answer cannot be to prevent teams from the really good conferences from getting in. I sincerely believe that the WIAC is, year in and year out, the best league in the country. Figure out how to get one or two more teams from the WIAC in every year. If you can do that the problem is pretty close to solved.
[/quote]

Might as well stop the idea of more than 64 teams now... one, when would you play those games?

The bigger point is, 64 is the max, period. Let's not start comparing to D1. That tournament brings in most of the money DIII's entire operating budget is based on. They can basically do what they want as a result. If they had the same rules as DIII, they'd have something like a 56-58 team tournament.

[smedindy]

Lord, we don't need to coddle the power conferences.

[Smitty Oom]

I am just spit balling, and I admittedly skimmed some of this page and have only been around for two years of this NESCAC and round robin talk so if this has been brought up before, forgive me.

I acknowledge that the NESCAC is a very impressive conference with great teams every year. This can be taken as fact, we all agree here.

It is also fact that the single round robin helps the NESCAC teams in terms of pool C bids.

Hope you all stay with me here, as I haven't said anything outlandish yet...

So the NESCAC gets a bunch of teams in each year, while the MIAC cannibalize itself and makes it much harder to not only find resume boosting non-conference games but keep that SOS high enough for pool C consideration, resulting in maybe one team a year getting an at large bid out of the MIAC. So if the NESCAC gets 5 horses in the race and the MIAC only gets 2 horses, of course I am going to put my money down that the NESCAC will have some better results compared to the MIAC. I honestly think that should some of these above average conferences like the MIAC/IIAC/OAC would get more teams into the tourney they would prove that they fit right in.

Perfect example to solidify my point:

- Hamline was able to beat Williams this year. Sure it was soon after the Scadlock injury, but Hamline is a squad that isn't close to making the playoffs in the MIAC (6 of 11 teams make it) and Williams tied for the NESCAC regular season lead this year. I would put my money on Williams winning a rematch, but nonetheless, the MIAC and other conferences are just as talented and deep as the NESCAC is, they just dont get the chance to showcase it on the national stage due to their round-robin set up of conference games.