Pool C

[Greek Tragedy]

Saturday's results included...

Results and schedules for this week (Feb. 18-Feb. 24)

Atlantic
1. Richard Stockton:  def. Manhattanville 84-71; won at Kean 70-65.
2. William Paterson:  LOST to Ramapo 83-80 OT; Won at Rutgers-Newark 61-58.
3. Farmingdale State: LOST at St. Joseph's (L.I.) 91-81; Won at Yeshiva 73-43.
4. York (N.Y.): def. Hunter 89-77 in semis; LOST to John Jay in CUNYAC Final 68-54.
5. SUNY-Old Westbury:  def. SUNY-Purchase 96-45; Won at SUNY-Maritime 82-67.

East
1. Plattsburgh State:  Won at Cortland State 56-53; Won at SUNYIT 86-75.
2. Rochester:  Def. Case Western Reserve 75-56; Def. Emory 76-63.
3. Brockport State:  LOST at Geneseo State 72-62.
4. Stevens:  LOST at Ithaca 93-82.
5. Nazareth:  Won at Elmira 84-57; LOST at Ithaca 88-84.

Great Lakes
1. Capital:  LOST to Heidelberg 80-74; Won at Otterbein 87-77.   
2. Wooster:  Def. Allegheny 84-74; Won at Earlham 92-65.
3. Hope:  Def. Calvin 76-59; Won at Tri-State 74-57.
4. Albion:  Def. Tri-State 60-50; def. Alma 84-74.
5. Penn State-Behrend:  Def. Lake Erie 70-65; Won at Pitt-Bradford 69-54.
6. Heidelberg: Won at Capital 80-74; Won at Muskingum 108-102 2OT.

Middle Atlantic
1. Ursinus:  Def. Haverford 82-75 OT; Won at Muhlenberg 72-69.
2. Gettysburg:  Won at Franklin and Marshall 75-68; def. McDaniel 78-57.
3. Widener:  LOST at Albright 86-81 OT; def. Elizabethtown 84-68.
4. DeSales:  LOST at Arcadia 66-62 OT; Won at Bloomsburg 75-67.
5. York (Pa.):  Won at Gallaudet 112-69; LOST at Marymount 94-83.
6. Messiah:  LOST at Lebanon Valley 68-65; LOST to Albright 82-70.
7. Moravian: LOST to Scranton 82-60.
8. Lycoming:  Won at Elizabethtown 56-54; LOST to Lebanon Valley 72-68.

Midwest
1. Washington U.:  LOST to Brandeis 68-66; def. plays NYU 61-52.
2. Augustana:  Def. Illinois Wesleyan 83-67; Won at North Central (IL) 63-59.
3. Lawrence:  Def. St. Norbert 69-61; Won at Carroll 92-80.
4. Chicago:  Def. NYU 81-62; def. Brandeis 74-66.
5. Illinois Wesleyan:  LOST at Augustana 83-67; LOST to North Park 67-57 OT.
6. Wheaton (Ill.):  Won at Millikin 65-56; def. Elmhurst 78-69.
7. Elmhurst:  Def. North Central (IL) 88-67; LOST at Wheaton (IL) 78-69.
8. Carroll:  LOST at Ripon 96-90; LOST to Lawrence 92-80.

Northeast
1. Amherst:  Def. Colby 86-69 in NESCAC quarters 
2. Mass-Dartmouth:  Won at Mass-Boston 92-72; Def. Plymouth State 80-67.
3. Brandeis:  Won at Washington U. 68-66; LOST at Chicago 66-74.
4. Worcester Tech:  Won at Wheaton (MA) 109-58; def. Babson 65-49.
5. Rhode Island College:  Def. Western Connecticut 71-60; LOST at Eastern Connecticut 79-77.
6. Bowdoin:  Def. Bates 83-50 in NESCAC quarters.
7. Trinity (Conn.):  Def. Connecticut College 69-60 in NESCAC quarters.
8. Middlebury:  Def. Williams in 96-59 NESCAC quarters.
9. Emerson:  Def. Emmanuel 82-79; Def. Norwich 74-48.
10. Bates:  Won at Bowdoin 65-62; LOST at Bowdoin 83-50 in NESCAC quarters

South
1. Centre:  Won at Olgethorpe 65-59; won at Sewanee 82-50.
2. Mary Hardin-Baylor:  Def. Hardin-Simmons 82-76; def. McMurry 70-59.
3. Guilford:  Won at Washington and Lee 65-52; def. Emory and Henry 122-104.
4. Virginia Wesleyan:  Def. Lynchburg 86-52.
5. Maryville (Tenn.):  Def. Piedmont 98-70.
6. DePauw:  Won at Sewanee 66-51; LOST at Oglethorpe, 80-86 2OT.
7. Millsaps:  Def. Hendrix 78-55.
8. Randolph-Macon:  Won at Eastern Mennonite 82-55; Def. Hampden-Sydney 72-66.

West
1. UW-Stevens Point:  Def. La Crosse 89-62; LOST at Platteville 84-65.
2. St. Thomas:  LOST at Concordia-Moorhead 67-57; Won at St. John's 82-63.
3. Occidental:  Def. Cal. Lutheran 67-63; LOST to Whittier 69-65.
4. UW-Whitewater:  Def. Oshkosh 66-51; def. River Falls 80-75.
5. Cal Lutheran:  LOST at Occidental 67-63; Won at Redlands 70-64.
6. Buena Vista:  LOST at Central 73-71; Def. Loras 80-79.
7. UW-Platteville:  Def. Eau Claire 75-58; Def. Stevens Point 84-65.
8. UW-Oshkosh:  LOST at Whitewater 66-51; LOST to Superior 77-67.

[LogShow]

Wow the west region is a mess.  Seems like none of the teams can hold their position down the final stretch of the season.

[LogShow]

So is Oxy on the bubble now if they don't win the SCIAC's AQ?

[ajsnc13]

how many teams do people think will get pool c bids from the nescac?

[ILive4This]

at most 2 pool c, probably only 1. so 2 bids tops total from the NESCAC, Amherst + whoever is in the final, and then maybe middlebury.....

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

at most 2 pool c, probably only 1. so 2 bids tops total from the NESCAC, Amherst + whoever is in the final, and then maybe middlebury.....

They only have a chance at 2 C's if Amherst doesn't win the tournament.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Pat and Mark pointed out on Hoopsville... the NESCAC has a chance at seeing three teams in the NCAA tournament. I am working to get the archives up so you can listen to those thoughts!

[Hugenerd]

I have been using a spreadsheet to track Pool C.  I decide to run a very, very simple calculation for games through Friday 2/22:

In-region winning % + (OWP + OOWP)

The results follow.  Columns are: Wins, Losses, Winning %, OWP, OOWP, OWP+OOWP, Win % + (OWP + OOWP)

(Disclaimer - I am not suggesting the committee uses this calculation, so just take it for what it's worth!)

* = team currently tied for 1st in league


1   Amherst (NESCAC, NE)   22   1   0.957   0.616   0.550   1.166   2.123
2   Plattsburg St (SUNYAC, East)   19   0   1.000   0.510   0.529   1.039   2.039
3   Washington U.* (UAA, MW)   15   4   0.789   0.650   0.569   1.219   2.008
4   Brandeis* (UAA, NE)    18   4   0.818   0.605   0.585   1.190   2.008 - C1
5   Mass-Dartmouth* (LEC, NE)    22   2   0.917   0.540   0.532   1.072   1.989
.
.
.

Titan, did you only do this calculation for teams that were ranked?  I noticed that Carnegie Mellon was missing from the list and their rating (under your metric) would be 1.803-1.834 (depending on how current the records you used are).

[LogShow]

I think its funny how in the post the mathimatical expression  "8 )"  was accidentally interpreted by the computer program as  8)

Just some unintentional comedy for ya

[Hugenerd]

I have another question that someone can hopefully help me with.  Isnt this OWP and OOWP metric inherently flawed?  And by flawed I mean, giving some conferences a large advantage over others in a significant Pool C criteria.  This is really meant to be a gauge at how good your opponents are, but by counting conference games you are in effect "watering down" this statistic.  This occurs because, every time there is a conference game, one of your opponents loses and one wins (assuming you play everyone in  our conferece at least once).

To think of this in simpler terms, lets take the case of a conference that requires their teams to only play conference games and that there are 26 teams in the conference, with each team playing each other once.  At the end of of the season, you will have a distribution of final records ranging from 25-0 to 0-25; however, if you add up all the wins and all the losses for all the teams in the conference, the numbers will be exactly the same, or in other words, the average record for any closed system of teams will be 0.500 (since every team must win and lose in any given game).  Therefore, every team in this conference will have a OWP and an OOWP of 0.500.  Obviously, in this case, OWP and OOWP are useless because they dont differentiated any of the teams from one another (not much different from reality).

Which brings me back to my point, by including all these conference games in the OWP and OOWP calculation, what you are really doing is just bunching everyone's OWP and OOWP numbers near 0.500.  So in fact, the OWP and OOWP are really just a "watered down" measure of the strength of your out of conference opponents' records. 

Another way of looking at this is to think of the "in-playing" (or "in-breeding", if you will) of your schedule.  To explain what I mean by this, let us take, for example, an out-of-conference team you play and that no one else on your schedule plays. If you beat them, you have just hurt your own OWP by giving your own opponent a loss. However, that team still has the possibility of winning the 24 other games on its schedule without handing anyone on your schedule a loss. This is not the case, however, for conference games.  Since the nature of conference games is that every team plays each other at least once, there will be a lot of "in-playing" or teams on your schedule that play each other.  So regardless of who wins your conference games, one of the team's on your schedule will lose and another one will win (net = 0.500 winning percentage). This will affect your OWP negatively if you play a difficult schedule (by dropping your OWP closer to 0.500) or improve your OWP if you play a weak schedule (by increasing your OWP closer to 0.500). Either way, it will have the net effect of moving everyone's OWP toward 0.500. As you can imagine, this hurts the teams that play more conference games more significantly than it does those who play fewer conference games. UAA, for example, plays 14 conference games and the NESCAC only plays 9

This also explains why OWP and OOWP numbers will approach 0.500 as the seasons progresses, because you will play more and more conference games, which will water down your numbers even more (and bunch up all the teams even more).  We see this bias clearly in that ALL OWP and OOWP are in the approximate range of 0.35-0.65 (through about 80% of the season), making it very hard to use this statistic to sort out the top teams.  Through about 21 games, Babson was the leader in OWP with 0.654, and this number will only drop as the season finishes up (all their remaining games are in conference).

If I am incorrect in my analysis, I apologize in advance, but if I am not, shouldn't this issue really be addressed before the committee uses this as a primary criteria for pool c selection.  (If OWP and OOWP is calculated using only in-region games the bias is even worse as only out-of-conference games can be out-of-region).

Finally, I was just listening to the podcast on the daily dose with Gary Grace and he was talking about they way they use OWP and OOWP.  His main argument for the importance for OWP was that it is a metric that  teams can control by picking a more difficult schedule.  This isnt completely true because it does not take into account the games you have to play in-conference.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

hugenerd - there is a lot you cover and while you raise an interesting point with conferences, I don't have the time today to convey my thoughts on it. However... there was one thing I wanted to touch on.

Finally, I was just listening to the podcast on the daily dose with Gary Grace and he was talking about they way they use OWP and OOWP.  His main argument for the importance for OWP was that it is a metric that  teams can control by picking a more difficult schedule.  This isnt completely true because it does not take into account the games you have to play in-conference.

This is something that while you may not think is controlled by coaches, it can be. Conferences with teams at the top always in contention with other teams that are notoriously bad need to step up and challenge those lower teams. Coaches need to step up and say, "hey, we are trying to compete here, but you are dragging us down." Sure, this doesn't sound PC, but if a conference wants to be respected and have contenders in the NCAA's, they can't let the bottom of the conference falter year in and year out.

So, yes it is a disadvantage to those conferneces in the middle of the road on near the bottom, but at the same time, you don't want to punish those in conferences that are challenging and produce very good teams despite their record. In years past with the QOWI, many teams were rewarded for beating up on bad teams - they were compariable with a team that barely got through their conference unscathed. The reason was there was NO comparison to who those teams were playing.

[ChicagoHopeNut]

hugenerd - there is a lot you cover and while you raise an interesting point with conferences, I don't have the time today to convey my thoughts on it. However... there was one thing I wanted to touch on.

Finally, I was just listening to the podcast on the daily dose with Gary Grace and he was talking about they way they use OWP and OOWP.  His main argument for the importance for OWP was that it is a metric that  teams can control by picking a more difficult schedule.  This isnt completely true because it does not take into account the games you have to play in-conference.

This is something that while you may not think is controlled by coaches, it can be. Conferences with teams at the top always in contention with other teams that are notoriously bad need to step up and challenge those lower teams. Coaches need to step up and say, "hey, we are trying to compete here, but you are dragging us down." Sure, this doesn't sound PC, but if a conference wants to be respected and have contenders in the NCAA's, they can't let the bottom of the conference falter year in and year out.

So, yes it is a disadvantage to those conferneces in the middle of the road on near the bottom, but at the same time, you don't want to punish those in conferences that are challenging and produce very good teams despite their record. In years past with the QOWI, many teams were rewarded for beating up on bad teams - they were compariable with a team that barely got through their conference unscathed. The reason was there was NO comparison to who those teams were playing.

Now we'll see if I misunderstand this all. But isn't a team at the top of its conference awarded if teams at the bottom schedule and beat up on even worse teams in the non-conference schedule. For example, if the bottom half of the MIAA, which had a terrible non-conference this year had scheduled the biggest cream puffs in the country they would have a better non-conference record, which would improve the OWP of the upper tier MIAA teams. So the advantage is for perennially top heavy conference teams to want lower teams in their conference to play cream puffs in the non-conference season because as hugenerd mentions the conference OWP will break down to .500 in any league that has a balanced home and away schedule.

The counter is that in improving OWP the other conference teams may hurt your OOWP. While it is likley a team that is bad enough to lose to a conference's bottom tier will lose a lot that is not assured. Maybe the rest of that teams schedule includes even more cream puffs.

Finally, does the OWP include all games, even non-d3 games? If so, the argument I mention above is even stronger.

[Hugenerd]

hugenerd - there is a lot you cover and while you raise an interesting point with conferences, I don't have the time today to convey my thoughts on it. However... there was one thing I wanted to touch on.

Finally, I was just listening to the podcast on the daily dose with Gary Grace and he was talking about they way they use OWP and OOWP.  His main argument for the importance for OWP was that it is a metric that  teams can control by picking a more difficult schedule.  This isnt completely true because it does not take into account the games you have to play in-conference.

This is something that while you may not think is controlled by coaches, it can be. Conferences with teams at the top always in contention with other teams that are notoriously bad need to step up and challenge those lower teams. Coaches need to step up and say, "hey, we are trying to compete here, but you are dragging us down." Sure, this doesn't sound PC, but if a conference wants to be respected and have contenders in the NCAA's, they can't let the bottom of the conference falter year in and year out.

So, yes it is a disadvantage to those conferneces in the middle of the road on near the bottom, but at the same time, you don't want to punish those in conferences that are challenging and produce very good teams despite their record. In years past with the QOWI, many teams were rewarded for beating up on bad teams - they were compariable with a team that barely got through their conference unscathed. The reason was there was NO comparison to who those teams were playing.

It seems like it would be more useful, in that case, to use a teams OWP out-of-conference.  Meaning, still take into account all the teams you play (including conference teams), but only calculate the OWP and OOWP with their out-of-conference schedule.  This should give you a better feeling of the strong teams and conferences without pushing all the numbers towards 0.500.  Just a thought.

[Hugenerd]

hugenerd - there is a lot you cover and while you raise an interesting point with conferences, I don't have the time today to convey my thoughts on it. However... there was one thing I wanted to touch on.

Finally, I was just listening to the podcast on the daily dose with Gary Grace and he was talking about they way they use OWP and OOWP.  His main argument for the importance for OWP was that it is a metric that  teams can control by picking a more difficult schedule.  This isnt completely true because it does not take into account the games you have to play in-conference.

This is something that while you may not think is controlled by coaches, it can be. Conferences with teams at the top always in contention with other teams that are notoriously bad need to step up and challenge those lower teams. Coaches need to step up and say, "hey, we are trying to compete here, but you are dragging us down." Sure, this doesn't sound PC, but if a conference wants to be respected and have contenders in the NCAA's, they can't let the bottom of the conference falter year in and year out.

So, yes it is a disadvantage to those conferneces in the middle of the road on near the bottom, but at the same time, you don't want to punish those in conferences that are challenging and produce very good teams despite their record. In years past with the QOWI, many teams were rewarded for beating up on bad teams - they were compariable with a team that barely got through their conference unscathed. The reason was there was NO comparison to who those teams were playing.

Now we'll see if I misunderstand this all. But isn't a team at the top of its conference awarded if teams at the bottom schedule and beat up on even worse teams in the non-conference schedule. For example, if the bottom half of the MIAA, which had a terrible non-conference this year had scheduled the biggest cream puffs in the country they would have a better non-conference record, which would improve the OWP of the upper tier MIAA teams. So the advantage is for perennially top heavy conference teams to want lower teams in their conference to play cream puffs.

The counter is that in improving OWP the other conference teams may hurt your OOWP but this is not assured.

I agree with DCHopenut.  The bottom teams in the conference playing better teams will only improve your OOWP, but will actually drop your OWP because these teams will probably lose more if they play stronger teams.  And, as Gary Grace said, OWP is more important than OOWP, so the bad teams in your conference playing good teams would actually work against you.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

DCHopeNut - your example would crush the OOWP. If the bottom teams in the MIAA were beating up other bad teams, the OWP would be high, but the OOWP would be very low. The committees would see that in a sense "read through" the fact that the OWP is over-inflated.

It seems like it would be more useful, in that case, to use a teams OWP out-of-conference.  Meaning, still take into account all the teams you play (including conference teams), but only calculate the OWP and OOWP with their out-of-conference schedule.  This should give you a better feeling of the strong teams and conferences without pushing all the numbers towards 0.500.  Just a thought.

hungenerd - then you are eliminating a good conference from the equation... and some teams only play maybe two or three teams out of conference because of the size of their conferences. So... the good conferences tough schedules would not be counted AND those in large conferences would have barely a handful of games to compare against. That just isn't an option for many reasons.