MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Titan Q]

I think it would be a good idea to "re-seed" the Final Four teams.  I am not sure that is the right term, but I mean once the Final Four teams are set, the national committee should get to make the national semifinal pairings at that point (like on Sunday, after the Elite 8 games).

It would be nice, for example, to not have Central region (Wheaton) vs Central region (Oshkosh) Friday...not to mention a rematch of a game played already this season. 

Or, we could have had NESCAC vs NESCAC...would have been nice to avoid that.

Or there are situations where you want to look at the teams left and put who you feel is 1 vs 4, and 2 vs 3.

There should just be 4 quadrants (brackets) and then a big "TBD" in terms of who plays who in Fort Wayne.  Just a thought.

[Hoosiersfan2323]

Congratulations to all NABC All-Americans, including Second Team All-American Aston Francis...

http://bit.ly/2T0xVIn

[Gregory Sager]

I would add...

I think it is important for Wheaton to come out in Augustana/Round 3 game mode (where the whole team gets involved) vs Marietta game/Round 4 (all Aston Francis).  I think the Thunder want to get Luke Peters going to the basket, or posting up a smaller guard, a few times early; get Spencer a couple good 3-point looks; get Luke Anthony some shots when he first checks in; etc.

I think Wheaton's best chance to win Friday is by spreading out the shots better than they did at the start of the Marietta game.

Wheaton's going to have to be much more worried about defense than offense tomorrow night. We all saw what Marietta's Tim Kreeger did to Wheaton on Saturday with his 15 and 13 double-double. Well, UWO's bigs are capable of doing a lot more damage than that. The Titans are going to bring a load of firepower inside in the persons of 6'8, 240 C Jack Flynn (14.7 ppg, 8 rpg) and 6'8, 210 PF Adam Fravert (14.6 ppg, 7.7 rpg), with the additional problem that Fravert's 41% shooting percentage from beyond the arc makes him a true stretch-four. Wheaton's ability to counter all that is going to be heavily dependent upon the health of Spencer Peterson. I think that the Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance missed him much more last Saturday than was generally acknowledged, probably because Wheaton won and because of all of the ballyhoo surrounding the record-setting performance of Aston Francis. But with Peterson out and Trevor Gunter clearly limited by injury, Mike Schauer had to do his own scrambling around out of the norm to adjust to circumstances. We've already discussed how Gavin "DNP" Hawkins was brought out of mothballs this past weekend once Peterson got hurt, and Cade Alioth, who had seen 36 minutes of floor time in seven games since New Year's Day, also worked a shift on the inside for Wheaton against Marietta.

If Wheaton has Peterson available, Mike Schauer will have a big with muscle who can attempt to counter Flynn, thereby allowing him to use Anajuwon Spencer to chase Fravert around the halfcourt all night; it will limit A. Spencer's ability to be a rim protector, but that's WC's best chance to counter Fravert. Otherwise, he'll be stuck with using Anajuwon Spencer against a guy with enough beef to throw him around like a rag doll down in the blocks (Flynn), while forcing the smaller Kobe Eichelberger to do the Fravert-chasing. Eichelberger has been really solid on defense in the postseason, but the problem with this configuration is that the Wheaton mentor can't use Spencer and Eichelberger for forty minutes apiece. He's going to need to slip in the banged-up Gunter somewhere, because I don't see Hawkins or Alioth being anything but traffic cones to Flynn, and they're certainly not going to prevent Fravert from playing his inside-outside game. And Gunter will be asked to respond with something that may possibly be beyond his physical capability at this point.

Without Spencer Peterson, I think that Wheaton is very, very vulnerable to getting wiped out by UWO's duo of bigs.

[Titan Q]

And the NABC did in fact proceed with a 1st Team All-America that does not include Aston Francis...

https://twitter.com/NABC1927/status/1106208613423611907

[Gregory Sager]

Congratulations to all NABC All-Americans, including Second Team All-American Aston Francis...

http://bit.ly/2T0xVIn

This is the perfect advertisement as to why the d3hoops.com All-American list is far more valid than its NABC counterpart. That's true every year, but this year the whole Aston Francis thing really brought it into high relief.

[wheels81]

Maybe they didn't give him region honors because he may make POY?

[Hoosiersfan2323]

Maybe they didn't give him region honors because he may make POY?

Hard to justify giving MOP to someone who wasn't good enough for the first team.

[blue_jays]

Congratulations to all NABC All-Americans, including Second Team All-American Aston Francis...

http://bit.ly/2T0xVIn

This is the perfect advertisement as to why the d3hoops.com All-American list is far more valid than its NABC counterpart. That's true every year, but this year the whole Aston Francis thing really brought it into high relief.

This is the definition of a LOL. As has been said before, no one cares about the NABC cuz these coaches votes are myopic at best. There isn't even a guy over 6-4 on the first two teams. No good post players in D3 anymore?

Fortunately, this will be quickly forgotten (everyone acknowledges its stupidity). Simply, he's the most explosive and exciting D3 player I've ever seen. The moments of actually seeing Francis play and the indelible mark he made on the D3 landscape will be what we all remember instead.

[UWPSUPERFAN77]

To Titan Q: I agree with reseeding at the Final four! You could get the 2 best teams in the final game, without one of them being bumped out on Friday !

[Greek Tragedy]

To Titan Q: I agree with reseeding at the Final four! You could get the 2 best teams in the final game, without one of them being bumped out on Friday !

Don't you think Oshkosh would be the #1 seed and Wheaton would be the #4 seed this weekend?

[GoPerry]

To Titan Q: I agree with reseeding at the Final four! You could get the 2 best teams in the final game, without one of them being bumped out on Friday !

Skeptical..   How do you assess who the best two teams are after they've all won 4 tournament games?  Seems like a can of worms with limited upside.

Yeah, I guess it's a little unfortunate that UWO and Wheaton have already played. But for most fans, you'd rather have that in the semi than in the final right?

[Gregory Sager]

I agree with GoPerry. Re-formatting the Final Four pairings subsequent to sectional play is problematic. It looks like a bait-and-switch, and it goes against the principle of transparency, because there's no openly-disclosed seeding to begin with in the D3 men's basketball tournament. People have come to expect that when they see a national bracket on selection day they're looking at a full diagram of every team's path to the national championship, which is how it works in state high-school tournaments and in the national tournaments on all of the other college levels.

What the committee should do is to guarantee that the bracket is geographically split every season. That is to say, the midwestern teams (Great Lakes, Central, and West regions), or almost all of them, are always grouped together into two of the four sections, because that's the way that D3 geography dictates that tourney bracket construction works. Those two sections should never be put together on the same side of the bracket, as they are this season. In years past there was a rotation in which the northeasternmost section and the southeasternmost section would take turns playing the two midwestern sections in the national semis, with the two midwestern teams and the two eastern seaboard teams facing off in the semis every third year. The committee should go back to that rotation, except that they should eliminate altogether that third year of the rotation in which we get a geographical like vs. like scenario in the national semis. In other words, each year in the national semifinals we should see a game between an East Coast team and a midwestern team followed by another game between an East Coast team and a midwestern team, with West Coast and SCAC/ASC teams simply adding to the diversity on either side whenever they reach the Final Four.

That would eliminate the occasional NESCAC vs. NESCAC semifinal, and it would also eliminate scenarios like the Wheaton vs. UW-Oshkosh rematch as well.

Yeah, I guess it's a little unfortunate that UWO and Wheaton have already played. But for most fans, you'd rather have that in the semi than in the final right?

I think it'd be better in the final than in the semifinal. The idea follows upon the same principle of keeping teams from the same league apart as deep as possible into the tourney; ideally, they shouldn't meet before the sectional semis, and being bracketed so that they don't meet until the sectional finals is even better. This is the same idea, in that it lessens the chances that two teams that have already played each other would meet until deeper into the tournament than is already the norm. Best of all, it enhances the idea of intersectional rivalry, i.e., the argument over which part of the country produces better D3 basketball teams. This would mean two semifinal pairings in which the midwestern domination that we proudly claim would be forced into a put-up-or-shut-up situation against what would almost always be East Coast opponents.

[Titan Q]

To Titan Q: I agree with reseeding at the Final four! You could get the 2 best teams in the final game, without one of them being bumped out on Friday !

Skeptical..   How do you assess who the best two teams are after they've all won 4 tournament games?  Seems like a can of worms with limited upside.

Yeah, I guess it's a little unfortunate that UWO and Wheaton have already played. But for most fans, you'd rather have that in the semi than in the final right?

You just use the same exact data they use to pick the Pool Cs, make the bracket, and make site-selection decisions -- the Selection Sunday resumes.

Here is how I see the seeding order of the 16 teams left, using the official Selection Sunday criteria...

Projected overall seeding order of remaining 16 teams
1. Whitman: .963/.563/5-1
2. Augustana: .889/.544/8-3
3. Amherst: .852/.568/8-3 
4. Christopher Newport: .893/.549/7-3
5. Randolph-Macon: .893/.542/6-3
6. UW-Oshkosh: .885/.542/5-3
7. Loras: .778/.587/3-2
8. Oswego State: .815/.532/8-4
9. Swarthmore: .889/.535/5-1
10. Hamilton: .852/.553/4-4
11. St. Thomas .846/.531/5-3
12. Nichols: .926/.525/4-2
13. Williams: .769/.598/6-5
14. Marietta: .769/.549/6-4
15. Guilford: .750/.545/5-4
16. Wheaton: .704/.573/5-5

If I'm right about that order, you'd have Christopher Newport vs Wheaton; UW-Oshkosh vs Swarthmore.

Beyond the seeding, maybe a rule where you keep same conference/same region teams from playing each other in the national semifinal game if possible.

[Titan Q]

I agree with GoPerry. Re-formatting the Final Four pairings subsequent to sectional play is problematic. It looks like a bait-and-switch, and it goes against the principle of transparency, because there's no openly-disclosed seeding to begin with in the D3 men's basketball tournament.

But there are behind-the-scenes seeds...and these are factors in big decisions (like bracketing and site-selection).  So why not let the committee continue to use their seeding process to make sure the Final Four pairings are as good as possible?

[Titan Q]

Through last season...

Expanding upon Bob's chart:

Region	# of titles	Most recent FF	Most recent title
Central	20	2018	2015
Great Lakes	7	2011	2002
Middle Atlantic	4	2016	2001
Northeast	4	2018	2017
East	3	2005	1990
West	3	2018	2018
Atlantic	1	2018	1996
South	1	2015	2006