Top Conferences and NCAA Bids

[Midwest Soccer]

Long time reader of the boards, first time poster.

I'm with Jim, I don't think until you're in the same position as these kids competing for a national championship at the final four can you begin to pass judgement on any certain one team's behavior. Almost every year there is one team that angers the other more reputable programs who are making return trips to the final 4. In my opinion, it's because it's the "new kids" first time there and they have wide eyes to the experience and may not know how to handle situations that call for cooler heads to prevail because they've never been in the situation before. A lot of times in those situations you expect the coaches to regulate their players actions and reactions but in the case of R-C, their coaching staff had never been there either, so even they were experiencing it for the first time. Give the benefit of the doubt to the newcomers, they have their feet wet now, if it happened again with the same group of players, then let the prosecuting begin!

Long story short, it's only natural for the newcomers to "step on the toes" of the teams who have been there and done it before. The older teams want respect from the new teams and if they don't get it they get agitated. But remember that at some point, your program was the new kid on the block at the final 4 and most likely was the team that people were talking about as arrogant and classless.

Side note: nice to see the Duhawk Futbol twitter account commending Messiah on a championship season while mentioning what a classy program they are, as well as seeing Messiah reciprocate the compliment back to Loras. It was only last year where I was hearing stories about the bad blood from the final 4 game so it was cool to see the respect these programs have for one another.

[ldahoSoccer]

Side note: nice to see the Duhawk Futbol twitter account commending Messiah on a championship season while mentioning what a classy program they are, as well as seeing Messiah reciprocate the compliment back to Loras. It was only last year where I was hearing stories about the bad blood from the final 4 game so it was cool to see the respect these programs have for one another.

+1

It looks like Rothert played every single player in the R-C match?  That must be a first for a final four game.

[PaulNewman]

Where is the NSCAA final ranking?

The final D3soccer poll looks pretty good to me.  Maybe OWU, and Stevens, overly punished?  #6 seems a little high for Montclair.  #11 seems very generous for F&M

[ldahoSoccer]

Where is the NSCAA final ranking?

The final D3soccer poll looks pretty good to me.  Maybe OWU, and Stevens, overly punished?  #6 seems a little high for Montclair.  #11 seems very generous for F&M

http://www.nscaatv.com/rankings/2989/NCAADivisionIII/men/National/LastPoll

[Jim Matson]

Thanks for the comments on my post. I didn't expect everyone to agree, but simply that it would deb read and considered.

My comment about Messiah and their situation with admissions is about the fact that Messiah is a private school and R-C is a public school. There are differences. I did not intend to imply anything about the quality of the schools or the actual soccer programs.

I also enjoyed the Tweet from Loras. Very classy, and reflective of a program that continues to grow and play at a very competitive level.

[frank uible]

With respect to the classy/classless tension, your correspondent, like Kipling, admires those who treat the impostors of Triumph and Disaster just the same.

[PaulNewman]

Without trying to get political or religious, there is something more than Messiah being private.  Messiah, Wheaton (Ill), Calvin, Hope, and now apparently Gordon (with a stellar year and a big-time coach) all have top-tier soccer programs.  At first glance one might think the pool these programs recruit from is fairly restrictive, and that might still be true, but they also can often land a higher level of player, with greater frequency, than other D3 programs (which is different than becoming known as a landing spot for D1 transfers).

On another note, any disputing that the top 3 D3 programs currently, in order, are Messiah, Loras, OWU?  Next year will be an interesting one for OWU.  They lose a bunch of seniors who were starters and primary subs with starter minutes.  On the other hand, they have some outstanding talent returning and I'm sure Martin never leaves the cupboard bare.  And then there are teams like Tufts, who were on the radar and sort of moved off, who return almost everyone.

[lastguyoffthebench]

NCAC,

Concur on the top 3. 

Trinity, Amherst as your historic powerhouses. 

Stevens Tech, Wheaton, Williams, Camden, Montclair State... MSU has made it to Elite 8 twice and Final 4 in the last 3 seasons, but has only been to the NJAC Final once during that span (lost to Camden in 2011).

http://www.phillysoccerpage.net/2013/12/12/messiah-forward-josh-wood-named-nscaa-division-iii-mens-soccer-poy/

[Midwest Soccer]

NCAC....

Good topic for discussion. Messiah is on another level clearly.

Then you have to ask yourself how you measure success to rate the next few. Loras has been to 4 final 4's since 2007 which is 2nd only to Messiah which is remarkable. Williams has actually been to 3 since 2009 as well but I don't think anyone measures them in the same talks as your Messiah's, Wheaton's, Loras', OWU's, etc.

OWU has been to 2 final fours since 2006. Excluding the 2 less final 4 appearances, the only thing OWU has on Loras (excluding regular season records) in that same time span is a National Title.

Messiah, Wheaton, Trinity, and OWU I think are historically the top 4 programs, but with early tournament exits peppering Wheaton, Trinity, and OWU over the last decade or so, programs like Loras are starting to chip away and etch their name at the top of the list.

Currently it's hard to disagree with your order.

I think once Loras get the monkey off their back in the Final 4 game they will raise a trophy. I see they return a lot of talent so they should be fun to watch again.

Side note: All-americans came out today. And before the Loras faithful can jump at it, I will jump at it for them. Pretty ridiculous that Loras only got 1 all-american in Cavers. He's a first team talent as well. Figura should be on there. I've particularly been impressed with Fluegel as their season wore on also.

[mjdNJDevils]

As a Stevens grad and commentator, I think we're definitely up there but unfortunately many times you see the difficulty of playing in a weaker schedule with respect to tournament time.  It will never happen, but I'd love to see us join the NJAC because we need that competition.  They do a good job of nonconference scheduling, but it only goes so far.

On a different thread, I wasn't sure I wanted to post this throughout the tournament but I'm going to put it in here for thought now because unfortunately my point was very well founded in the Messiah-Williams result.  How much longer can we continue to overrate the NESCAC, and by result, the New England region as a whole, while they continue to play a restricted schedule that rarely sees them engage challenging non-conference opponents?  We seem to have this theory that "The NESCAC plays extremely high quality football," yet many examples I remember from my college days and watching now post-graduation I remember a very obnoxious rough and tumble, old English-style game that simply tries to physically bully teams out of games.  Messiah badly outclassed them, and rightfully so.  Yet Williams, due to this respect, was given a pod host right with a 6 loss record.

Consider in the Mid-Atlantic Quadrant you had a pod setup that could have pitted 2 regional #1s and two Coaches top 5 teams together (regardless of the value you put in that ranking system) in the Sweet 16 (#4 RU-Camden and #5 Stevens) and also includes the South Atlantic #4/NSCAA #16 York PA Spartans.  One of Stevens and York will be going home in the Round of 32.  On the opposite side of that very same bracket, you have two regional #2s (Carnegie Mellon and Montclair State) potentially facing off in a Round of 32 game, and another regional #2 (Rochester) potentially awaiting a round later.  Already a pretty imbalanced bracket just looking within that group of 15.   Conversely, in the New England bracket, there was an Elite 8 appearance guaranteed for a team with a MINIMUM of 5 blemishes (That would have been #2 New England Brandeis, who lost to Williams), and St. Lawrence was able to storm through a pod scoring 13 goals. 

I understand that I will be seen as biased using Stevens as a example point, and I understand that the NCAA at the D3 level is trying to keep travel costs down.  But I'd much rather see them plane some teams around to balance the bracket, because to me you simply can't have a bracket with 1 regional #1 and 2 regional #2s where another bracket has 2 regional #1s, 3 regional #2s, and a regional #4 who would likely be a #2 in basically any other region (York).  Additionally, it's not just this season.  Amherst and Williams have met in the Northeast Quadrant Elite 8 match each of the last 2 years, having had to dispatch only St. Lawrence outside of region.  In 2011, no NESCAC team (out of 3) made it out of the Sweet 16, each losing to a New Jersey or in-region team (RU-C, SIT, Babson).  In 2010, again it was Amherst ousting St. Lawrence to meet Bowdoin, with Williams eliminated by Babson and Middlebury getting through William Paterson before falling to Bowdoin.  Of course, when you look to the final 4 matchup, the NESCAC team falls to the side considered the rank outsiders.  2010 saw Bowdoin fall to Lynchburg, 2012 saw Williams fall to Ohio Northern (who then lost to Messiah 5-1) conceding 3 goals.  Yes, one-offs are difficult for the purpose of statistical assessment, but we're building a trend of results and occurrences here.  At what point does the NCAA D3 soccer committee either have to start putting the pressure on NESCAC schools to play a larger non-conference schedule or simply start ranking them lower?

[mjdNJDevils]

Apparently editing posts isn't allowed on the boards, so just a couple final pieces on this:

It's great to have parity.  The NJAC has parity, so too the UAA.  Yet the NJAC teams have historically and presently been very successful.  Surely you have to consider them the best conference, particularly based on consistency of tournament performance against spread of opposition and travel.  But there can be a problem with parity.  If you all play each other and beat each other up but don't really beat too much quality outside your group, it doesn't give much indication as to your overall talent level.  A great example of this is the Mountain West's RPI in D1 basketball.  They constantly have a conference RPI that people question as too high.  But they schedule aggressively out of conference and play high level games in conference.  Yet typically they underperform in the tournament.  One has to surmise that their conference level is lower than tournament teams they come up against, and this in my view is the case with the NESCAC.

On the travel side -- I remember the mid-2000s where NYU had established themselves as a force despite not necessarily posting a great overall record.  Heck, we (Stevens) ran into their buzzsaw a couple times in my college years.  Part of their advantage surely has to be attributed to location.  Part of why a side like Emory struggled in the tournament I definitely believe is the travel, so I can understand that keeping plane trips to a minimum is preferred.  But I also believe in an opposition spread.  An Amherst-Williams or other all-NESCAC elite 8 isn't necessarily a good thing for D3 soccer.

[PaulNewman]

Calvin should probably be in that elite historical group as well.

I agree about seedings and distribution of teams.  No way Stevens and York should have been a round of 32 game.  There were other similar examples as well.  And then take Kenyon, which had to go through defending runnerup Ohio Northern, a highly rated Wheaton team that hadn't lost in 2 months on Wheaton home field, only to meet Messiah, and in theory, with a win, a date with OWU...before ever getting to the final four. 

I also wonder about the home fields at the sweet sixteen level.  What a huge advantage (except in case of Amherst, but still...), and maybe there should be more neutral sites once we get to sweet sixteen.

[PaulNewman]

Agree Stevens guy.  And actually mixing up the New England and NJ/PA schools more ith also schools like SLU and Rochester in the mix would be a service to the NESCAC.  If the NESCAC is really good then by moving the teams the NESCAC conceivably could get 2 teams in the final four.

Joshua Wood is a great story.  Incredible dedication to come back to the level he did after two season ending injuries in a row.  I watched the Messiah players very closely and I never saw Wood complain or showboat or doing anything than play hard.

[Midwest Soccer]

I mistakenly left off Stevens as another program that I think is coming on strong in the Division III soccer world. Making an appearance in the 2008 title game only to fall in PK's to Messiah....correct me if I'm wrong but didn't you guys beat Amherst pretty good in that final 4 game?

I'm with you on all your views of the NESCAC. Their schedule is frustrating because none of the better teams travel out of region to play any other good programs. And I hate the fact that most years, due to the scheduling, one NESCAC team will be in the final 4. Don't get me wrong, it's not like it's a walk in the park for that team to get there and I'm in no way taking away from the fact that it's difficult to win tournament games, let alone 4 of them. But I REALLY wish that NESCAC teams would be thrown into different pods, if for no other reason, to see how they fare against other conferences. I'd like to see Amherst or Williams travel to play a good program out of region.


And NCAC, I was just typing out that Calvin should be included as well. Historically but also recently. Despite missing the tournament this year (and playing one of the hardest non-conference schedules in the country), from 2009-2011 they had 2 appearances in the National Championship game (most besides Messiah in same time-frame) and the other year was a loss in PK's in the elite 8.

[mjdNJDevils]

You're right on ... that final 4 match was a 4-0 result.  Amherst were pretty thoroughly throttled