Pool C

[FCGrizzliesGrad]

Snippets from the conference tracker page on possible 20 Pool C bids

Mary Hardin-Baylor should be in the field despite its semifinal loss.
Johns Hopkins (23-3) is in good shape.
Mary Washington (19-8) has a strong resume and should garner one of the 20 at-large bids.
Wheaton (22-4) seems like a lock for an at-large.
St. Joseph (Conn.) (27-1) will take an at-large bid and pop someone else's bubble.
Williams (22-4) should be in,
Middlebury (19-5) should be in
Tufts (19-7) should be in
Stockton (22-5) looks good by the NCAA's metrics
John Carroll (22-4) lost to Marietta in the conference semifinals but will be comfortably in the field.
St. Thomas will be a lock to get in after Saturday's loss.
Washington U. should be in good shape for an at-large bid
NYU (18-7) seems like a good candidate on paper
UW-Oshkosh (21-6) will get one early in the process.
Both Pomona-Pitzer and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps should be considered at-large candidates.
Hampden-Sydney (21-6) should be in.

Guilford (22-6) is somehow right at the cut line.
Wooster (21-6) should have a shot at an at-large bid.
And Colby (20-7) will be at the table for consideration and may also get in.
while Emory (17-8) defeated Rochester to stay in the conversation
Rochester (16-9) could well be in the at-large conversation as well, despite a .640 winning percentage.

WPI (22-4) was No. 2 in the region entering the week, but is deep on the bubble for an at-large after the loss.
Maryville is a deep bubble team who probably won't get in after the losses by higher ranked teams on Saturday.
Utica (22-4) may be too far down the bubble to survive the upset.
Montclair State, also 22-5 but with a lower strength of schedule, would be a stretch.

Case knocked off Carnegie Mellon (15-10) on Saturday to push them off the bubble

[y_jack_lok]

^^^ You have 21 teams in those top two groups. Assuming 20 of them are correct, who do you think is least likely to get in?

[SpringSt7]

Tuned in for a little bit of Hoopsville selection show tonight---always a great watch so props to the crew. Unclear if this is the best place to post this but hope it gets picked up by Ryan or Dave or Matt, but does anyone else feel there is a flaw in the way we evaluate RROs, and if so, is there a way to fix that? It feels like every year we are making decisions about seedings and pod hosts by comparing one team from one side of the country's wins in their region versus another's on the other side of the country. Feels like that defeats the purpose, especially if SOS is already in use as a primary metric.

[deiscanton]

Well, we can agree that a .600 win/loss percentage is way too low to get a Pool C selection, no matter what your SOS is. ......

Awaiting the bracket announcement at 1 PM Eastern. 

[HOPEful]

Tuned in for a little bit of Hoopsville selection show tonight---always a great watch so props to the crew. Unclear if this is the best place to post this but hope it gets picked up by Ryan or Dave or Matt, but does anyone else feel there is a flaw in the way we evaluate RROs, and if so, is there a way to fix that? It feels like every year we are making decisions about seedings and pod hosts by comparing one team from one side of the country's wins in their region versus another's on the other side of the country. Feels like that defeats the purpose, especially if SOS is already in use as a primary metric.

Don't get me started lol...

At best, they're a redundant double dipping of SOS. But the other huge problem you're referencing is the inconsistency across the board. I've gone on a tangent a time or two about how RROs are drawing arbitrary lines in the sand to determine which wins are "good wins" vs. those that aren't.  Rochester picks up 2 wins against RROs by beating Carnegie Mellon twice, but Hope doesn't for beating Calvin twice, despite voters placing Calvin as the #16 team in the country and Carnegie Mellon unranked and without any votes. There are better ways, like D1s quadrant system, to evaluate the quality of each win. Sure those lines are still somewhat arbitrary, but at least a non-Q1 win becomes a Q2 win vs. meaningless.

[Greek Tragedy]

Not sure the emphasis on the whole "regional" idea is even something that should be considered. It is a national tournament after all. Obviously there is one particular conference that takes advantage of having ranked teams in as many as 5 different regions. Playing every conference opponent just once helps another conference dominate it's region, thus improving their vRRO. There's another conference that gets an AQ and some of their members don't even play each other.

[SpringSt7]

Well, we can agree that a .600 win/loss percentage is way too low to get a Pool C selection, no matter what your SOS is. ......

Awaiting the bracket announcement at 1 PM Eastern.

I'm not as concerned about the back end of the bubble and moreso when it comes to giving out hosting duties and the seedings of the pods themselves. Those decisions have a greater impact on deciding a national champion than the 20th and 21st teams off the board

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

There's definitely double counting across the board, but, of the three main criteria, they do check each other pretty well.

You can compile a decently high SOS without actually beating anyone of note.  Until this weekend, Albertus Magnus' best win was at home over Nichols, yet they had a .561 SOS through good scheduling.  You'd have to downgrade the SOS a little bit for lack of actual signature wins (until they beat USJ, that is).  Looking at specific RRO wins does help contextualize a little bit.

It also helps when the winning percentage is low.  Which games did you actually win - did you beat all the lower ranked teams and lose to all the higher ranked ones?  Rochester, even with the gaudy numbers, doesn't get in without wins over Case AND Middlebury (and, as of writing, we don't even know if they actually got in or not).  I'm not sure the gaudy SOS or RRO wins matter without specific wins, because the winning percentage is so low.

[HOPEful]

I'm not as concerned about the back end of the bubble and moreso when it comes to giving out hosting duties and the seedings of the pods themselves. Those decisions have a greater impact on deciding a national champion than the 20th and 21st teams off the board

I think the conversation on the methodology effects both. It's just absurd to me that we've given so much weight to the top 7 teams in each region with a very flawed process for choosing those seven teams. Calvin, despite being the #16 team in the country on D3hoops.com last week, had not be regionally ranked this season based on their SOS, 5 losses, etc. Sure, this eliminates their chances at an at large bid. But the bigger impact, as you said, could be to the teams fighting over host rights. Calvin being ranked ahead of Carnegie Mellon would give Wheaton, Wooster, and Elmhurst all one more win against an RRO. Removing Carnegie Mellon from the regional rankings would leave CWR and Rochester with 2 less wins against RROs and Washington and Middlebury with 1 less. That's a lot of value in wins against two teams that many people would rank very differently than their value is being award based on the current system.

The point isn't about who should or should not be ranked higher. It's that the wins against the #7 teams in each region shouldn't be so much more valuable than the win's against the #8 teams while relatively the same as wins against the #6 teams. I understand that the committee can and does have conversations on the quality of those wins, but when looking down a list just at a glance, you see vRRO (2-2) as though all 4 of those games were equal and more important than the rest of that team's schedule.

[BaboNation]

While I always enjoy the discussion of the last few Pool C picks it strikes me that there should be an objective metric that does all the work.  I know that takes some of the barstool fun away for some, kinda like a robot calling balls and strikes.
I look at what Baseball Reference does with career WAR, taking in waaaaaay more data than what the committee needs to evaluate to fill out a 64 team field;  then they are able to objectively compare players from different positions;  and then they are able to compare the evolution of the game over more than 100 years, which has been nothing short of breathtaking;  and they stir it all up and spit out a ranking of the best to ever step between the lines and, to me at least, come up with a list that makes me say "Hard to argue with that".
Someone should be able to do the same for D3 basketball, probably reverse-engineering years of historical data to refine the model.

[BaboNation]

To continue with a baseball analogy.  There's a lot of discussion about Rochester's .640 WPCT.

But wRRO/games played = 10/25 = .400.  If you bat .400 you'd better be selected for the All-Star game.  No one else in the country is close.

[Greek Tragedy]

Batting .250 can get you an all-star nod.

[SpringSt7]

There's definitely double counting across the board, but, of the three main criteria, they do check each other pretty well.

You can compile a decently high SOS without actually beating anyone of note.  Until this weekend, Albertus Magnus' best win was at home over Nichols, yet they had a .561 SOS through good scheduling.  You'd have to downgrade the SOS a little bit for lack of actual signature wins (until they beat USJ, that is).  Looking at specific RRO wins does help contextualize a little bit.

I understand this argument, but at the same time I think we probably underrate just beating 12-14 average to above average teams and the impact that should have on a resume. It is easy to look at great wins and anchor your perception of a team to that small sample size. But going out and consistently taking care of a business with a .560-.580 SOS is impressive and probably something that I think we either underrate or just don't know how to place in the proper context.

[BaboNation]

Batting .250 can get you an all-star nod.

Agreed, but a .400 batting average should always get you selected.

[Augie2020]

To continue with a baseball analogy.  There's a lot of discussion about Rochester's .640 WPCT.

But wRRO/games played = 10/25 = .400.  If you bat .400 you'd better be selected for the All-Star game.  No one else in the country is close.

You can also look at it this way.Usually the teams with the best records go to the playoffs!!