MBB: NESCAC

[SpringSt7]

Agree to disagree with my fellow Williams supporter - this is the NCAA tournament and you will have to beat a lot of good teams to get to where you want to get, but there were some serious landmines they avoided - RMC, HSC, John Carroll, I even thought they could've gotten Catholic or Widener in the first pod. Oswego St. is excellent and again, they will have to be at their best to beat all of these teams, but in terms of being able to make a run of any substance, I thought this path gave them a chance to do that.

On the flip side, I thought Trinity got totally hosed. NCSOS was whatever and whether or not you think they deserved it because of their schedule, they will have to go winner of Virginia Wesleyan/Swat, Tufts/NYU, and then a second weekend pod presumably with Macon and John Carroll. Matter of personnel preference, but I felt like that was a pretty tough draw.

[stlawus]

Oswego has the gaudy record this these as well as experience, but if Williams can get past Desales I like this draw for the Ephs. There's something about Oswego this year that has made me a bit skeptical. It's harder playing when you get everyone's best game but they have had some offensive regression, especially from the arc. An elite defensive team like Williams can give them a lot of trouble.

[D3BBALL]

Agree on Trinity out of conference schedule, but they did win them all, and by almost 30 points on average and they did play St Joe's (ct) who did make the tournament.

By most metrics, Trinity was at least a top 8 team.

Tufts is a 7 seed, and they could match up with Trinity at the 16 round.

Williams is a 12 seed. Looks a little low.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

D3 doesn't do the 1-16 thing, even in part.  They're looking at each hosting pod, trying to get solid 1, 2, 3, and 4 seeds there, then looking to pair up the hosts for potential second weekend matchups.

We know Trinity is a good team, but their resume doesn't compare with the top seeds.  I suspect the committee would've rather had them switch with Keene, but Keene is more than 500 miles from Randolph-Macon and would require a flight the second weekend.

[D3BBALL]

I understand the travel part, and know that D3 does not do it like D1, but looking at the entire field they could have moved things around a little not just in that 1 side of the brackets.

If you just look at the seedings/brackets, it does show that the committee did not think that highly of the NESCAC this year. Not sure the committee thought highly of any Northeast conferences/teams, except for NYU. Will agree that the out of conference in the NESCAC, schedule wise or win loss, was not good except for Tufts. Yet Tufts is technically a 7 seed, so doesn't look like they liked their out of conference schedule either. Same for Keene State as well.

To have 5 of the top 10 teams in today's release of the top 25, (at least 4 in pretty much every other ranking) in 1 region, doesn't makes sense to me.

Has there ever been thought of not worrying about travel so much?

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

The Top 25 has zero to do with selection or bracketing.  It's all based on the NCAA criteria - and the committee followed that pretty well.

[Pat Coleman]

Thought of not worrying about travel so much is about the budget, and the budget is getting better for D-III championships, for sure. However, there are more important priorities for use of this budget, like allowing an extra team or two to fly. It makes a big difference for teams in Region 10, especially.

[D3BBALL]

The Top 25 has zero to do with selection or bracketing.  It's all based on the NCAA criteria - and the committee followed that pretty well.

Hi Ryan, thanks. I do understand that the top 25 is not used. But I was also looking at the other rankings/criteria as well.

When you look at the Massey ratings, D3 datacast NCAA criteria ratings, D3 efficienty ratings, Bradley/Terry ratings:
Randolph Macon averages out to the #2 team in the country
Trinity (CT) averages out to the #4 team in the country
John Carroll averages out to the #5 team in the country
NYU averages out to the #11 in the country.

When you look at just the D3 datacast NCAA criteria, they are 2, 5, 6, 7 in country.

When you 3 did your picks for the 22 at large, I thought you based it mostly on D3 Datacast Criteria. You guys nailed 21 out of 22 (btw awesome). Last year I think you as a group just missed 1 as well. This year just missing the last pick. Which is pretty amazing considering you could make a case, when picking the last 3 teams for at large, that there are like 8-10 teams that could easily be picked.

I thought that the committee uses criteria very similar or the same to the D3 datacast.

Based on this, imo, I don't think the committee got the top 16 close. Based on D3 datacast criteria, that one bracket has 4 of the top 10 and 7 or 8 of the top 20. It is, imo, clearly the toughest bracket and not even close.

[D3BBALL]

Thought of not worrying about travel so much is about the budget, and the budget is getting better for D-III championships, for sure. However, there are more important priorities for use of this budget, like allowing an extra team or two to fly. It makes a big difference for teams in Region 10, especially.

Thanks for info, makes sense. Like you, wish the budget was bigger as well. D3 should get all the benefits like D1 gets.

[SpringSt7]

D3 Datacast tries to follow the exact same criteria as the committee but the difference is that the committee gets to use the most up to date regional rankings of the last weekend that the Datacast does it - as you recall, part of the IWU pick was due to thinking they might get a few extra RROs if Carthage was ranked.

[nescac1]

I will say that while three of the brackets each have plenty of very strong teams, Hampden Sydney (clearly, and deservedly, the top overall seed) has a very easy path to the Sweet 16.  If it plays the highest ranked teams it possibly can, it would go through LaRoche, Stevens, Catholic, and Cal Lutheran.  None of those teams are ranked above 12, and none have any recent tournament pedigree.  Compare that to the other top seeds' hardest possible paths and it's dramatically different, with the JCU/RMC/Trinity quarter of the bracket clearly the most loaded of those three. 

Geography does make seeding very difficult.  In the past, sometimes teams from the western half of Division 3 faced a really unfair gauntlet.  But Whitman, Whitworth, and WIAC as a league are all down from past levels of dominance, there is no clear superpower team in California or Texas this year (though lots of strong teams), and St. Thomas leaving MIAC with no team stepping up to fill the void hurt as well. This year west-heavy bracket ends up being the easiest, but that certainly is not typically the case, so it balances out over time.  I do however think John Carroll, a Midwest team, should have at least been separated into a different quarter of the bracket from RMC and Trinity; that would have been easy enough to accomplish as JCU's sectional could have been swapped into several different spots. 

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

After all the back and forth and analysis, I suspect the Trinity (CT) and Keene pods got switched for possible second weekend geography - maybe at the last minute.

Trinity is way underseeded where they are, plus we ended up with all three MAC Commonwealth teams in the same quadrant, which they're really loathe to do.

My best guess, they had the bracket the way they wanted it and the NCAA made them make that change (Keene is more than 500 miles from Randolph-Macon), and there wasn't a lot of time to do lots of wholesale changes to rebalance everything else.

HSC has the easiest path, followed by Widener, then CWRU, then RMC.  Not that any is easy, but the bottom right is markedly tougher.

[nescac1]

Swapping the Trinity and Guilford pod would make sense but I think an even better way to balance would be to swap the brutal John Carroll pod for the Trinity (TX) pods.  Not sure if that would work in terms of potential travel and whatnot, however, but that alone would make the four brackets fairly evenly constituted.

HSC clearly has the easiest path, and RMC clearly the hardest, but I'd rather have Case Western's path than Widener's ... RWU, CNU, Oswego, Guilford/Keene as toughest possible path for for Widener vs. Mary Baldwin, Hope, Platteville, Wash U/Trine for Case...

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I think an even better way to balance would be to swap the brutal John Carroll pod for the Trinity (TX) pods.

You're right - and it would make more sense, seeding wise.  I wonder if that was another future travel issue - they didn't want the island pods in different quadrants?

[nescac1]

That would be my guess Ryan, putting them all together to maximize chances of less travel in the future rounds, maybe?  But I mean they are all probably going to have to fly cross-country to HSC, odds are, so in the end I just don't get it ...