Pool C -- 2012

[smedindy]

Bob.Gregg's point is a good one though.

Whoever was voting for Waynesburg over W&J either didn't bother to look at the Week 11 result, was using their outdated impressions of Waynesburg, or because they were 9-0 and W&J already had two losses didn't want to drop them too far ... or, perhaps legitimately felt the Jackets were better than the Presidents, but I'm willing to bet not all of them felt that way ...

And if the poll, even if it's accurate most of the time, spits out results like that, you're better off going with the NCAA's list of set criteria, where at least everyone can follow the numbers and get a concrete explanation why their team wasn't in.

That said, I'd be all for adding D3football.com TO THE COMMITTEE.

We do it every year, but we're splitting hairs. Two losses and no AQ means your playoff hopes are on life support. If you get in that way, it's gravy. It's important though, IMO, to reward teams who go out and schedule the big nonconference game, and in the cases of PLU and LC, justice was done.

Then again, when some conferences have just one non-conference game, and that turns from a dream into a dud, then what to do about that.

Early this year Wittenberg played Capital. Normally, that's a great test and a benchmark. This year Capital was awful. But it's not like Wittenberg schedulde a creampuff - just a team having a bad year. Next year there's less margin for error for Wittenberg in a non-conference game and if the team they play craters then that's the way it goes. I don't like the implication that teams are scheduling creampuffs in that case - it just happened.

[smedindy]

Walled off works for me, smed. Have you seen the number of games the NEFC plays outside itself? They technically have two non-conference games but almost everyone plays one of them against another NEFC team. Sixteen teams averaged one true non-conference game this year, going 7-9. Of those 16 games, 10 were against the ECFC.

I contend most all of that is due to budgeting issues. Perhaps AO will give them money to travel.

I contend that a fair amount of that is due to desire. Thankfully Salve Regina is not so content to just play in the New England sandbox.

None of these schools have a lot of money save a few odd ducks. Salve may have some advantages since it's Catholic, unlike Nichols, Endicott and Curry, which have small-ish endowments. I know MIT has buckets of money but probably not for athletics since they want to change the world in other ways. The Coast Guard and the Maritimes are also 'interesting'.

Plus, would a LL or E8 or NJAC team want to play a lesser team in that conference? Why would they want to jaunt up to play Nichols or Westfield State every two years just to clobber them and ruin their SOS?

And frankly, I'm not shocked most of those teams stay close to home. Easy to travel, no overnights for the most part, and it gets them out in their recruiting area.

[smedindy]

At any rate, this is such a weird year. At least we have playoffs to argue about...

[K-Mack]

Walled off works for me, smed. Have you seen the number of games the NEFC plays outside itself? They technically have two non-conference games but almost everyone plays one of them against another NEFC team. Sixteen teams averaged one true non-conference game this year, going 7-9. Of those 16 games, 10 were against the ECFC.

I contend most all of that is due to budgeting issues. Perhaps AO will give them money to travel.

I contend that a fair amount of that is due to desire. Thankfully Salve Regina is not so content to just play in the New England sandbox.

Well I'm not sure I blame teams that can't afford a full coaching staff for scheduling teams an hour away instead of overnight trips to New York and New Jersey. So I'm with Smed on that ... BSC scheduled really the only decent, available non-NEFC/ECFC/NESCAC team in New England and beat them. (Springfield, 21-17)

But at the same time, you want the best teams in the field, you take the best teams. Had C-M or UW-P gotten in this year, the message would clearly have been delievered.

UW-P and C-M each played Buena Vista, and the Pios played Dubuque and Cobbers Jamestown (N.D.) for probably much the same reasons NEFC teams play who they play. Their SoS advantages were from playing in tougher conferences. It's true the NEFC as a whole doesn't schedule aggressively, but I'm not sure the critcism here is totally on the mark.

[Ralph Turner]

In a way, with the access ratio 7.5:1, the 16-team NEFC had been doing everybody a favor for years by only taking up one AQ. They got hip to the game and are splitting into two so they can claim their second, meaning this will be a moot point in the future.

(6.5:1)

6.5:1 but capped at 32 teams.

239 divided by 32 = 7.468

We are getting close.  After the loss of McMurry and Mississippi College, but the addition of a few more schools, we will be above 7.5000: 1

Bingo. Although subtract 10 NESCAC teams.

229 divided by 7.5  =  7.15625.  Thanks Pat!

[K-Mack]

At any rate, this is such a weird year. At least we have playoffs to argue about...

I prefer the terms "calmly discuss intelligently."

Jokes aside, this board has been outstanding this season.

[Frank Rossi]

As promised, here's my take as to why BSC was chosen ahead of C-M.  This was in response to someone who accused me of advocating for BSC when, I truly believe, C-M was the better choice remaining on the board at that time:

"Actually, I'm not.  I concede that C-M was a better pick.  The reason [BSC was] picked ahead of C-M is because the new electronic [voting] system has an inherent flaw that even our [Top 25] poll has:  except potentially in the first two picks, voters will likely only begin to slowly slide the new team under consideration up the ballot.  Since the final West team was likely picked at #6, C-M didn't roll up the ballots fast enough, especially with no real H2H comparisons like we would use to jump teams up a ballot [in the Top 25 poll].  Essentially, BSC was already sitting at #2 and 3 on most ballots prior to the #6 pick and likely rolled up to #1 and #2 on those same ballots in most cases.  It's a flawed system for so few picks.  They should use a jury system (straw poll, discuss results and rationales, real vote).  It would assist in overcoming the inherent flaw."

You can't assume that a team with a 9-1 record and a 0.520ish SOS in this year's pool was going to be jammed at #4 on all ballots for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th picks.  A team also should never go downward on a bracket since the assumption is that if a team is #2 vs. Team A, B and C, and Team A is picked, Team A-1's inclusion should not shift the #2 team downward for any reason short of head-to-head play (which RARELY exists across regions).  So, Bridgewater State was likely slowly making their way up ballots for about 4 or 5 picks to the point that they were next in line regardless of which team in the West was picked and the next team in line.  I would guess that on only a couple ballots (especially with the C-M coach off the call and not able to vote) C-M surpassed BSC in that final selection.

Is this fair?  Not really.  Remember that I'm just reporting that the Committee didn't do anything wrong, much like the East RAC didn't.  It's the current system set up by the NCAA and overseen by an NCAA liaison to ensure consistency that may be flawed.

[smedindy]

Wow. That's um...interesting...

Maybe we shouldn't look at the regions with one representative at a time of the regions on board. Perhaps we should look at the "C" candidates per region as a whole, ranked 1-7.

[emma17]

What's flawed is that it appears people on the committee didn't stop and ask a simple question before finalizing/releasing the selection: "Does this all make sense"?

[smedindy]

There is precedence, of course, to choose a one-loss team over two-loss teams so really it wasn't a 'holy cow we put Kenyon in as a 'C' moment. Once the die is cast I gather, you can't take it back. And two losses means you're really relying on the dice to come up boxcars.

[K-Mack]

Heidelberg 11
UW-Platteville 13
North Central 14
Wheaton 17
Wittenberg 19
Elmurst 20
Concordia-Moorehead 21

Yeah, it's a game changer.

Love ya Art, but that's not a game-changer. That includes teams that any of us could see were right there.

The discussion, perhaps, should be about what Pool C should stand for. I've always thought of it as a reprieve for teams who would have won their conferences if not for one play or, occasionally, one bad game. BSC and Waynesburg fit that mold (OWU not so much because they didn't face Witt, which is another convo entirely)

The polls leave out Rowan ... which is a whole other discussion on how polling is done and the value in it.

There should be a clear path to the bids that we all can follow. We have that now, we just don't have perfection when you get to the bubble. Adding more subjectivity and secret reasoning is only going to increase the confusion, not solve it.

Would I liked to see C-M and UW-P in? Heck yeah, but we'd be talking about someone else's snub if it had gone down that way. Nature of the bubble.

How do we define "best" to get the 7 best teams in?

[K-Mack]

As promised, here's my take as to why BSC was chosen ahead of C-M.  This was in response to someone who accused me of advocating for BSC when, I truly believe, C-M was the better choice remaining on the board at that time:

"Actually, I'm not.  I concede that C-M was a better pick.  The reason [BSC was] picked ahead of C-M is because the new electronic [voting] system has an inherent flaw that even our [Top 25] poll has:  except potentially in the first two picks, voters will likely only begin to slowly slide the new team under consideration up the ballot.  Since the final West team was likely picked at #6, C-M didn't roll up the ballots fast enough, especially with no real H2H comparisons like we would use to jump teams up a ballot [in the Top 25 poll].  Essentially, BSC was already sitting at #2 and 3 on most ballots prior to the #6 pick and likely rolled up to #1 and #2 on those same ballots in most cases.  It's a flawed system for so few picks.  They should use a jury system (straw poll, discuss results and rationales, real vote).  It would assist in overcoming the inherent flaw."

You can't assume that a team with a 9-1 record and a 0.520ish SOS in this year's pool was going to be jammed at #4 on all ballots for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th picks.  A team also should never go downward on a bracket since the assumption is that if a team is #2 vs. Team A, B and C, and Team A is picked, Team A-1's inclusion should not shift the #2 team downward for any reason short of head-to-head play (which RARELY exists across regions).  So, Bridgewater State was likely slowly making their way up ballots for about 4 or 5 picks to the point that they were next in line regardless of which team in the West was picked and the next team in line.  I would guess that on only a couple ballots (especially with the C-M coach off the call and not able to vote) C-M surpassed BSC in that final selection.

Is this fair?  Not really.  Remember that I'm just reporting that the Committee didn't do anything wrong, much like the East RAC didn't.  It's the current system set up by the NCAA and overseen by an NCAA liaison to ensure consistency that may be flawed.

I think I suggested the split vote scenario a few pages back, but Frank deals with it in great detail.

The voting is something many of us learned about just this year. I thought they were still doing jury style until a few weeks ago. Tim Lester of Elmhurst told me about regional committee service, and voting, last week as well.

But I think even in the simpler view, with the voting being fresh every round, and just looking at the last four teams available, you can make a case for having to take BSC, even when everyone on the committee probably knows C-M is ranked higher, would please the masses and is probably the better team ... the numbers don't say so, and if you can just ignore the numbers and do whatever the heck you want, why even have them?

The last four on the board, however, must have been
Bridgewater State, 9-1, .520, 1-1
Waynesburg, 9-1, .441, 0-0
Ohio Wesleyan, 9-1, .483, 0-1
Concordia-Moorhead, 7-2, .571, 0-2

[AO]

But I think even in the simpler view, with the voting being fresh every round, and just looking at the last four teams available, you can make a case for having to take BSC, even when everyone on the committee probably knows C-M is ranked higher, would please the masses and is probably the better team ... the numbers don't say so, and if you can just ignore the numbers and do whatever the heck you want, why even have them?

The last four on the board, however, must have been
Bridgewater State, 9-1, .520, 1-1
Waynesburg, 9-1, .441, 0-0
Ohio Wesleyan, 9-1, .483, 0-1
Concordia-Moorhead, 7-2, .571, 0-2

Those three statistics are getting weighted differently in each region's ranking and seemingly with every pick coming off the board.  Rowan was 7-1, 0.506 SOS, 0-1.   Why didn't Bridgewater State jump Rowan in the secret regional rankings?   To compare the winning percentage and regionally ranked contests, isn't it within the criteria to consider the rank of the teams Concordia and BSC played?  -  St. Thomas/Bethel were 3rd/7th, Framingham/Endicott were 8th/10th.

[Pat Coleman]

It is within the criteria to do that.

[HScoach]

Heidelberg 11
UW-Platteville 13
North Central 14
Wheaton 17
Wittenberg 19
Elmurst 20
Concordia-Moorehead 21

Yeah, it's a game changer.

Love ya Art, but that's not a game-changer. That includes teams that any of us could see were right there.

The discussion, perhaps, should be about what Pool C should stand for. I've always thought of it as a reprieve for teams who would have won their conferences if not for one play or, occasionally, one bad game. BSC and Waynesburg fit that mold (OWU not so much because they didn't face Witt, which is another convo entirely)

The polls leave out Rowan ... which is a whole other discussion on how polling is done and the value in it.

There should be a clear path to the bids that we all can follow. We have that now, we just don't have perfection when you get to the bubble. Adding more subjectivity and secret reasoning is only going to increase the confusion, not solve it.

Would I liked to see C-M and UW-P in? Heck yeah, but we'd be talking about someone else's snub if it had gone down that way. Nature of the bubble.

How do we define "best" to get the 7 best teams in?

I agree.  One unfortunate bounce, or decision as in C-M's case, shouldn't be a death sentence the playoffs if you're a good team from a solid conference.  I also believe that Pool C should always have a spot for a 1-loss team that is unfortunately stuck behind a juggernaut in conference.  Ala H'Berg this season.