Great Lakes Region

[ChicagoHopeNut]

A Pool C bid was saved this afternoon when Lake Erie hit a 3 with 4.7 seconds left to beat Penn St. Behrend 59-58 and claim the AMCC's automatic bid.  Good news for Hope. I'd say it was also good news for Witt but I think Witt was done before that game was over anyways.

[wooscotsfan]

Great Lakes Automatic NCAA Bids:

NCAC - Wooster
OAC - Capital
MIAA - Calvin
AMCC - Lake Erie

Looking for Pool C slots:

Hope
John Carroll
Wittenberg (remote possibility)

[Gregory Sager]

Wittenberg (remote possibility)

No, it isn't. Wittenberg's season is over. Way too many teams ahead of them in the Pool C line.

[wooscotsfan]

It is "remote" until the NCAA bracket is actually posted! 

[Gregory Sager]

It is "remote" until the NCAA bracket is actually posted! 

If you want to look at it that way, Oberlin has a "remote" chance as well.

[kiltedbryan]

From Pat's Post on the Pool C Board.  Pool A winners are in bold.  The likely Pool B is in italics.
First column is national QoWI rank.  I struck through those who are dead on arrival tomorrow.

QoWI Rankings Through Saturday:

Overall   Points   In-reg rk   Team   Region Win%   Overall
4   10.818   1   Lake Erie   0.955 (21-1)   25-2  Pool A
27   10.091   2   Wooster   0.909 (20-2)   25-3  Pool A
31   10.040   3   John Carroll   0.720 (18-7)   19-9
36   9.900   4   Hope   0.800 (16-4)   23-4
52   9.619   5   Ohio Northern   0.667 (14-7)   19-7 (Win % too low)
56   9.481   6   Capital   0.704 (19-8)   19-8  Pool A
60   9.450   7   Westminster (Pa.)   0.800 (16-4)   18-8  Likely Pool B
62   9.364   8   Wittenberg   0.773 (17-5)   22-5 (QoWI too low)
69   9.200   9   Penn State-Behrend   0.720 (18-7)   19-7
75   9.100   10   Calvin   0.700 (14-6)   18-9  Pool A
77   9.091   11   Baldwin-Wallace   0.682 (15-7)   18-9
83   9.000   12   Otterbein   0.600 (15-10)   16-11
96   8.857   13   Carnegie Mellon   0.524 (11-10)   12-12
107   8.708   14   Ohio Wesleyan   0.625 (15-9)   18-10
126   8.455   15   Bethany   0.682 (15-7)   19-8

[wooscotsfan]

scotsbrod - good post.

I was also counting all the teams above Hope on the QoWI list that have already clinched automatic Pool A bids and 3 teams that are virtual Pool B locks (Aurora, Lincoln, Maryville) and I got to a total of 20 teams already in.

Essentially, that means Hope is sitting at the #16 slot on the QoWI list in contention for the remaining 18 Pool C bids.

IMO, both Hope and John Carroll will get a NCAA bid.

That would mean 7 teams (Lake Erie, Wooster, Capital, Calvin, Hope, JCU, Westminster) get in from the Great Lakes assuming that Westminster gets the last Pool B bid.

[kiltedbryan]

Thanks wooscotsfan.  I only know enough to do the Great Lakes Pool As and wouldn't be able to tackle the whole national list very well.  I count 27 men's Pool As as already clinched in the Daily Dose.  Assuming this means 10 more Pool As are up tomorrow, Hope and JCU still need one more day of basketball to break in their favor, I imagine.

Looking at them, though, I too feel like they both have good chances.  No one in the GL is going to move ahead of them in the regional rankings, and with Lake Erie and Wooster winning Pool A bids, either JCU or Hope will be "on the table" from the very beginning of Pool C selection.  Obviously, the amount of time spent on the table isn't itself helpful at all to either team, but I can't imagine it hurts to constantly have your name under discussion.

[David Collinge]

I think Wittenberg has proven this season that the NCAC is a trap you really can't schedule your way out of.  The Tigers played 27 games this season, 22 of them in-region.  Of those 22 regional games, 18 were NCAC contests.  The other four were against Capital, Otterbein, Ohio Northern, and Transylvania.  That's fairly aggressive scheduling, and they won three of those games.  They went 14-4 against NCAC competition, with all 4 losses being at the hands of teams with >.500 regional records. 

So what did in the Tigers?  They played eight games against NCAC opponents in the bottom (<.333) band, five of them at home.  They won them all, but still accumulated just 67 QoWI points from those games, an average of 8.375.  To overcome that handicap and reach a QoWI of 10.000, the Tigers would have to have averaged nearly 11 QoWI points per game in the the other 14 games.  To accumulate such a total, you really can't afford any slip-ups, like Witt's losses to Allegheny and OWU.  Even if they had beaten Allegheny, their QoWI would be just 9.545, as that win would have pushed 'Gheny down below .500.  In order to feel confident of a Pool C bid, Witt would have had to convert two of those four losses to wins--in other words, to go 19-3 in-region.  That's tough for anyone, even a storied program like Witt.  In the Great Lakes, only Lake Erie (21-1) and Wooster (20-2) did that well.

They could, I suppose, have played more regional games, but there's not a lot to be gained.  They played Cedarville, which is a rivalry game, and they participated in Haverford's season-opening tournament, where they had no real control over scheduling.  That just leaves their own holiday tournament, where they faced York (NY) and IU-Southeast.  Replace those two with quality regional opponents and their QoWI improves, but only if they win those games.

[Ralph Turner]

I say that Wittenburg should look to pick up wins against the "cream" of the USAC or the South Region now that the rules have broadened. 

Mississippi College (ASC) 22 1 .957       24 2 .923
Maryville (Tenn.) (GSAC) 21 3 .875       21 6 .778
Virginia Wesleyan (ODAC) 22 4 .846       23 4 .852
Guilford (ODAC) 20 4 .833       21 4 .840
DePauw (SCAC) 19 4 .826       22 5 .815
Averett (USAC) 18 4 .818       20 6 .769
Mary Hardin-Baylor (ASC) 22 5 .815       22 5 .815
Centre (SCAC) 16 4 .800       22 4 .846
McMurry (ASC) 19 5 .792       20 7 .741
Greensboro (USAC) 17 6 .739       20 7 .741
Millsaps (SCAC) 15 6 .714       18 9 .667
Texas-Dallas (ASC) 16 8 .667       18 8 .692

Roanoke (ODAC) 14 8 .636       17 10 .630
LaGrange (GSAC) 11 7 .611       18 9 .667
LeTourneau (ASC) 14 9 .609       15 10 .600
Trinity (Texas) (SCAC) 14 9 .609       16 11 .593
Hardin-Simmons (ASC) 16 11 .593       16 11 .593
Hampden-Sydney (ODAC) 14 10 .583       17 10 .630
Hendrix (SCAC) 10 9 .526       15 10 .600
Oglethorpe (SCAC) 13 12 .520       14 12 .538
Emory and Henry (ODAC) 11 11 .500       14 11 .560
Christopher Newport (USAC) 10 10 .500       15 11 .577

The Texas schools don't count, but can you pick up a 13- or a 15-point (road or neutral site) win against these schools?

[kiltedbryan]

I'm going to make this post just so that I can give your excellent analysis of what sunk the Tigers the karma point it deserves, David!

I looked at this a bit when I was busy calculating GL region QoWIs earlier this week.  The NCAC has, as you noted, 4 teams below .333%.  The OAC has only 1 bottom feeder, then 3 teams between .333-.500%.  That means that any top OAC teams garners 12 extra QoWI points (3 teams x 2 pts x 2 games) against the bottom four teams in their conference compared to what Woo-Witt can gain against the NCAC bottom four.

[sac]

Ralph

For those ridiculous in-region matchups to happen, you may donate money to the Wittenberg travel fund at Witt.edu

[wooscotsfan]

I say that Wittenburg should look to pick up wins against the "cream" of the USAC or the South Region now that the rules have broadened. 

Ralph - interesting concept but there are two practical problems with it.

1.  Travel Costs, as Sac noted, would prevent most of these opponents

2.  Scheduling is Typically 12 months in Advance -- so, you have no assurance that an opponent will be worth 13  or 15 QoWI points when you actually get around to playing them.

I remember Wooster going out to Illinois (long bus trip) a few years ago to play a CCIW team, Elmhurst.  Wooster thought they were scheduling a tough opponent but when the game was actually played, Elmhurst had a losing record at that point and they finished in the bottom half of the CCIW that year.  BTW, Wooster won that road game.

Fortunately, this inferior QoWI methodology will disappear in the near future!

[David Collinge]

I don't know anything about funding at Wittenberg, but I'd guess that they have whatever money they need (within reason.)  Where I think the problem comes in is with the actual scheduling.

It doesn't benefit the Tigers to excise any of those OAC games or local good opponent like Transy, especially since they recruit in Columbus and Lexington.  They're not going to cut the Cedarville game, either.  So if they are going to take on good in-region South teams, it'd be in one of three possible scenarios:
1) Invite them to play in the Zimmerman tournament in late Dec. (I'd say "send them a Zimmerman telegram," but probably nobody would get the reference )
2) Try to find a tournament somewhere else with two in-region opponents
3) Make a snowbird trip

Here's the problems with these three scenarios, in case they aren't obvious:
1) Good luck trying to convince good Southern teams to come to Ohio for the New Year and play in two games they could easily lose that will count against their regional record.
2) Good luck locating such a tournament--who's going to invite one or two top-shelf regional opponents and Wittenberg to their tournament?  Plus Witt has no control over this scheduling.
3) The portion of the South Region that is in-region for Witt is the Deep South.  There's no D3 teams in Florida, and no good ones in Georgia.  That means you're going to Jackson, MS to play MC and Millsaps, or to Virginia to play two ODAC teams.  These are not what I'd call "snowbird" trips; they don't recruit these areas, and they're not terribly appealing places to go in December.  Furthermore, there's no margin for error: you have to be able to schedule the exact teams you want, from a pretty small pool, and they pray that they have good seasons.

Anyway, this whole discussion presupposes that Witt scheduled themselves into this mess and can schedule their way out, which is contrary to my initial point.  The reason they are staying home this March isn't because they didn't schedule properly, it's because they exceeded their tiny margin for error on the court.  As Lake Erie capably proved this year, no matter how weak your schedule is, if you win all your games you're in like Flynn.  So maybe what Witt should do is replace their OAC opponents with good NAIA or non-regional D3 teams to make them as tough as possible going into the NCAC season, and then split with Wooster and run the rest of the table.  That, more or less, was Wooster's recipe for success this year.

[David Collinge]

Wooster has, of course, the same problem with the NCAC schedule, and has a slightly more difficult pre-conference problem, since they host two tournaments, not one.  Wooster has tried every sort of schedule variety, including snowbird trips, NAIA teams, OAC teams, in-region cupcakes, and so on.  And Wooster has qualified for the NCAA tournament five years in a row and 15 of the past 17 years, five of those as an at-large (including the past two years.)  The difference, such as it is, is that Wooster tends to get the job done against their NCAC foes; they are less prone to the slip-up than their Springfield counterparts.  It's not that the Scots schedule better, it's that they almost never lose to the "Dorksen Eight" teams.