NESCAC

[Mr.Right]

Do me a favor. Keep track of all your minnow teams in the NCAA tournament that get Pool C's from New England region and give me their overall record in the NCAA's and how far they get. Tufts(assuming they get in), Amherst and maybe Midd or Bowdoin will get past the 2nd round into the sweet 16 which none of these teams will.

Coast Guard, WPI , Babson, Gordon, etc

[Off Pitch]

SOS is totally objective.

Objective - not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.

"The Strength-of-Schedule used by the Division III soccer committees is based on Opponents' Average Winning Percentage (OWP) and Opponents' Opponents' Average Winning Percentage (OOWP) with home and away multipliers being applied for men's soccer. For men's schedules, a multiplier of 0.85 is applied for home games and 1.25 for away games. Neutral site games are assumed to be unfactored."

[Mr.Right]

Gordon and other teams will always have a better win % over a Nescac with a few losses and ties because of games played. They play 5 or 6 more games than Nescac schools. Gordon would struggle to get into the top 8 of Nescac.

[Mr.Right]

The SOS is flawed Big time.

[Mr.Right]

Damn Gordon gets thru on PK's..God is on their side until the NCAA tournament starts

[Off Pitch]

Gordon and other teams will always have a better win % over a Nescac with a few losses and ties because of games played. They play 5 or 6 more games than Nescac schools. Gordon would struggle to get into the top 8 of Nescac.

You are mostly correct.  However, most years NESCAC schools will have a better SOS which is usually rewarded.  BUT, this year the NESCAC schools had an unusually poor record outside of the conference.  This resulted in SOS for many NESCAC schools to be lower than usual and allowed the minnows like Gordon, WPI, Babson, Coast Guard to look better by comparison.

This situation would not exist if the NESCAC schools had fared as well in real out of conference games as they do in your pretend matchups.

[arkman]

Off pitch - you are generally right about rankings, and are a much better predictor of them than Mr. Right.

Mr. Right - Much as you say you like logic and objectivity, you seem to lack it frequently. That said, I think you can be, you're just remarkably bad at articulating your points and differing your opinion from objective facts.

The New England rankings most certainly make sense based on the ranking criteria. However, I would agree that the SOS is a limited statistic. I would hesitate to criticize it too much because I don't have a better alternative, but I also don't feel like taking the time to come up with one and I would opine that doing so is possible.

The issue with SOS is, as Off Pitch noted, based on opponents winning percentage and opponents opponents winning percentage. The majority of games most teams play, and especially NESCAC teams, are against team in their conference. Among all in-conference games, I believe (though i'm too lazy to calculate specifically) the winning percentages would generally cancel out because every game must be won. What's left is games that are tied, so teams with conferences that have more ties per capita (aka NESCAC) will have worse SOSs. What's left is out-of conference record, which also has flaws. If a team plays a team that has done well in a crappy conference that may not be so good, it will have a good AWP, but may not actually be any good. However, I will say I agree with off pitch that  the NESCAC has not performed up to snuff this year, so it deserves to some extent it's "Just desserts".

However, I don't think anyone that's sane could think that Gordon's SOS, the best of which is ECSU (Loss), Roger Williams (Loss), and... (i'm struggling to pick another decent team from that list. Maybe maine maritime?) is harder than Midd's, featuring, Amherst (tie), Tufts (Tie), Williams (Win), Wesleyan (Win, Tie), Bowdoin (Win).

More importantly, by Mr. Right's "Sniff test" - if both teams were to play a game against a random team in D3, any random team, who would you put money on to get a result? Midd or Gordon? I think the ranking criteria do need to be reviewed.

[Nutmeg]

All NESCAC thoughts:

POY - Pascual-Leone. Glaser is the best player in the league IMO, but don't think he will get the votes here.

ROY - Merchant. Along with Knoth, he carried a pretty weak Bates team since returning from injury. Very good + dangerous two-way player.

COY - Shapiro. I think Seabrook deserves it for getting the absolute most out of a Colby squad that was horrible last year, graduated its two best players, and didn't have any great incoming players. However, I don't think he wins this award, Shapiro has done a great job to turn the Tufts team around.

First Team

GK – Sydor (Middlebury)
D – Bratt (Wesleyan)
D – Odulate (Bowdoin)
D – Williams (Tufts)
M – Santos (Tufts)
M – Devlin (Conn)
M – Martin (Amherst)
M – Pascual – Leone (Amherst)
F – Conrad (Middlebury)
F – Grady (Williams)
F – Glaser (Middlebury)


Second Team

GK – Bull (Amherst)
D – Wirz (Amherst)
D – Danilack (Williams)
D – Stanton (Colby)
M – Shea (Trinity)
M – Merchant (Bates)
M – Kayne (Tufts)
M – Goss – Woliner (Middlebury)
M – Jones (Bowdoin)
F – Knoth (Bates)
F – Savonen (Trinity)

I can't see two Middlebury forwards making the first team.....I also don't see two Amherst midfielders making the first team. While Amherst did better this year at using the midfield it is generally not their style. tufts had the most impressive midfield this year, both in style of play and importance. Most of them even scored more than their forwards. From the games I saw, Kayne, brown, pinhiro and Santos played well.  Santos is flashy and came on strong. brown is a fighter. Kayne, very versatile, dictates the tempo and play and both he and brown play great defense. pinhiro is steady and good on set plays.  I think two of them will make the first team....probably Kayne and santos, but can see another combination.....

[Mr.Right]

Arkman- That is real lazy of you to point out I am bad at articulating my thoughts. Why not give me 3 examples of this or are you to lazy

[arkman]

Mr. right

Ha.

Anyways, my apologies, that came out harsher than I intended. I meant to say that you generally are the most knowledgable person on this board, but frequently find yourself in needless conflict because you don't make your points particularly well when conflict might not be necessary.

oh the irony.

[Mr.Right]

Maybe but I also get lazy and do not feel like thinking before I write every post. If I have to articulate my thoughts before every post this would become as tedious as filling in zeroes in the phone book.

[Mr.Right]

Anyway on yo Midd and Bowdoin

[PaulNewman]

Mr.Right, I know you've been waiting all might for a final.  Lesley nipped Newbury 3-2.

[Mr.Right]

While I have praise Midd's talent compared to Gordon I feel real shaky against picking them over Bowdoin. Like we have stated all year Midd has Conrad, Glazer, Horton and a couple decent defenders plus a decent keeper. Bowdoin has more talent across the board as long as all their injured players are available. There game back in September was a tedious affair muddled in the midfield with neither team looking that spry offensively. Bowdoin's wingbacks bother me in this game just because of their size. They are very skilled and very quick but their lack of size could be an issue against Midd. Goita serves a mean ball, one of the best in Nescac but Bowdoin does not have Brewster anymore and lack their usual toughness to get to the end of one of those serves.

[Mr.Right]

I saw that final. How does Newbury who lost 9-0 to Bates TIE MIT.