2015 D3 Season: NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

[lastguyoffthebench]

Herosports.com hot teams:

TEAM                                                   BR
100      Milwaukee Engineering   37
99      Chapman                           89
99      Middlebury.                     13
99      Pacific Lutheran                   76
99      St. Lawrence                    4
99      Trinity (TX)                    19
99      Wheaton (IL)                   18
95      Endicott                           83
95      Macalester                           47
94      Geneseo State                   80

[lastguyoffthebench]

UPSETS of the DAY (strongest chance to weakest)
St. Thomas over Macalaster
Manhattanville (4th seed over #1 seed Kings)
UMW over Salisbury
Rowan over MSU
RIC over ECSU in PKs

Expecting all other ranked teams to prevail

Notable games
Swat over JHU
Brockport St over Cortland St
WPI over Springfield
Redlands over Occidental

[Mr.Right]

I mean there is so much parity these days are there even really that many upsets anymore.



I'll go the opposite of every one of those picks just for the f of it...All 10 games. Since you are predicting these as upsets I will give you odds that I will go .550 Win % because of ties and all that. You go under that mark I need a new pair of sneakers.

[Mr.Right]

Was it last year or the year before that before that when the 3rd rankings came out there was a ton of shuffling. Almost like the committee was shuffling a deck of cards in some regions. I feel that will be the case as well today.

[blooter442]

I mean there is so much parity these days are there even really that many upsets anymore.

Agreed. I've noticed that, in the UAA particularly, the idea of home-field advantage has eroded significantly this year. Aside from Carnegie, every UAA team lost at least one conference game at home, and Chicago, Emory, and NYU have lost two or more. Brandeis went a perfect 3-0 in conference at home last year, but didn't win the conference, while this year they won the UAA with a 2-1 home conference record yet are 3-0 on the road. I think the universal nature of turf might have something to do with it, whereas in the NESCAC and other grass field-based conferences there can be more variability and thus more "home-field advantage." Could also just be the randomness of the schedule, but it is interesting.

Edit: While not losing, Carnegie is 1-0-2 at home, so its home-field advantage isn't that strong, either.

[Mr.Right]

Never understood how the NEAC conference and Skyline conferences play these Mid-Week games at 11am or 1pm during the whole season. This is exactly what NCAA III is trying to cut into and when you have some conferences and teams blatantly having kids miss a FULL day of classes for a game that could be played at 3:30pm you are giving the NCAA every available avenue to start cutting into ALL Midweek games. Once they make a mandatory minimum of games a team can play in a season(which I do not think is to far off) this will eliminate most Mid-weeks anyway but these conferences and teams are basically saying 1. We  are oblivious 2. We want and should be in a D4 anyway so screw or 3. We do not care

[TennesseeJed]

I mean there is so much parity these days are there even really that many upsets anymore.

Agreed. I've noticed that, in the UAA particularly, the idea of home-field advantage has eroded significantly this year. Aside from Carnegie, every UAA team lost at least one conference game at home, and Chicago, Emory, and NYU have lost two or more. Brandeis went a perfect 3-0 in conference at home last year, but didn't win the conference, while this year they won the UAA with a 2-1 home conference record yet are 3-0 on the road. I think the universal nature of turf might have something to do with it, whereas in the NESCAC and other grass field-based conferences there can be more variability and thus more "home-field advantage." Could also just be the randomness of the schedule, but it is interesting.

Edit: While not losing, Carnegie is 1-0-2 at home, so its home-field advantage isn't that strong, either.

Kenyon lost its only game at home this year as well and there are plenty of other good examples.  Your point is one great reason why the current .85 home discount and 1.25 away game multiplier should be re-evaluated by the NCAA.  Among other reasons, it's unfair to penalize teams for playing home games.  If you want to reward teams for playing away, that makes more logical, intuitive sense.  NCACNE's point, which I've made elsewhere as well, is that teams shouldn't be penalized in post-season for playing games at home, when they earned HFA by being the top seeds in their conference.  It rewards the lower seeded teams for losing and penalizes the winning teams for winning...  SoS is absolutely critical and an essential metric for the NCAA to measure and use as an objective criteria.  The combining of the home/away metric within the SoS calc, using the current metrics, distorts and reduces the value of the current SoS, because it isn't clear if, for example, you have a .600 because you played a very tough schedule, or because you played a season of mostly away games, or you played all your tough games away and all your easy games at home.  If the NCAA published an unweighted SoS (no home/away adjustments) as an additional metric, then you would at least be able to compare the magnitude of the multiplier effect.  The .85 to 1.25 adjustment is so large that it overwhelms the underlying OWP and OOWP calcs, as a percent of the original OWPs and OOWPs, as FW and I have detailed elsewhere (as much as 47% or more on a single OWP calc.)  Your point above is empirical proof that the calc, at present, is arbitrarily assigned and bears no resemblance in reality.

[lastguyoffthebench]

ncaa.com regional rankings... click.... doh.   refresh... DOH....  refresh.. DOHHH.  refresh.... c'monnn

[SandyMac]

For those interested, St. Lawrence vs. Union begins in 30 min with a berth in the title game on the line. SLU has one of the best streaming services in the nation.

Last time out, SLU thrashed Union 8-0.  Don't expect this game to look anything like that.

Hobart will be watching this one closely, as they need SLU to clinch the AQ to leave themselves a shot.
A SLU win means yet another championship game at home, where they've won back-to-back conference playoff titles.
This is Union's only shot at their first bid in some years.
A union upset would mean Skidmore hosting the title game.


http://saintsathletics.com/sports/2013/9/3/MSOC_0903132907.aspx

[Mr.Right]

Hobart can watch as closely as they want but they are COOKED...Bet my house on it

[Shooter McGavin]

Hobart can watch as closely as they want but they are COOKED...Bet my house on it

How big's youre house...

[Shooter McGavin]

Got excited that the rankings were updated then realized I was still on the D1 tab...awkward 

[jknezek]

They are updated

[lastguyoffthebench]

Eastern and FDU-Florham still tied 0-0, 70 min in...

[Domino1195]

Thomas More loses with 25 seconds left.  There goes one great lakes bid . . .