2015 D3 Season: NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

[Mid-Atlantic Fan]

November 3, 2015
D3soccer.com Men's Top 25, Week 9
Through games of Sunday, November 1, 2015

#   School (1st Pl. Votes)   Record
1   Kenyon (13)                    15-1-0   
2   Trinity (Texas) (4)           17-2-0   
3   Calvin (4)                         18-0-1   
4   Amherst                           14-1-1   
5   Thomas More                   16-1-1   
6   Brandeis                           15-2-1   
7   Montclair State                  17-2-0   
8   Elizabethtown                   16-1-1   
9   Franklin & Marshall           15-2-0   
10   Oneonta State                 13-3-1   
11   Whitworth                       15-1-1   
12   Haverford                         14-3-0   
13   Carnegie Mellon               11-2-3   
14   MIT                                 15-1-1   
15   Middlebury                     13-2-1   
16   UW-Whitewater              14-3-1   
17   Ohio Wesleyan                14-3-2   
18   Lycoming                        14-1-2   
19   Loras                              12-4-1   
20   Macalester                      13-0-5   
21   DePauw                          11-2-4   
22   Eastern Connecticut       14-3-1   
23   Colorado College            13-2-3   
24   Plattsburgh State            14-3-3   
25   Eastern                            14-2-2   
Dropped out: No. 15 Case Western Reserve, No. 20 Denison, No. 22 Tufts, No. 25 Texas-Dallas

Receiving Votes: Denison 50, St. Lawrence 46, Messiah 44, Stevens 42, Endicott 42, Wheaton (Ill.) 40, Dickinson 36, Case Western Reserve 32, Penn State-Behrend 32, Pacific Lutheran 23, St. Scholastica 21, Washington U. 19, Christopher Newport 17, Hobart 15, Concordia (Wis.) 11, Westminster (Mo.) 11, Texas-Dallas 10, Occidental 8, Redlands 6, Cabrini 6, Tufts 4, Bowdoin 4, Ohio Northern 4, Rose-Hulman 4, Wesleyan (Conn.) 2

The D3soccer.com Top 25 is voted on by a panel of coaches, Sports Information Directors and D3soccer.com staff, and is published weekly.

[Mid-Atlantic Fan]

I am surprised to see St. Lawrence not ranked. And I am surprised to see Eastern still in the top 25, granted they are hanging on by a thin, thin thread. I would swap those two teams. Any other surprises for anybody?   

[Flying Weasel]

Yea, I think the last four teams are questionable.  I agree that St. Lawrence is an option to replace them.  I also think Wheaton (Ill.) may be deserving.  Stevens, Hobart maybe.

[blooter442]

Yea, I think the last four teams are questionable.  I agree that St. Lawrence is an option to replace them.  I also think Wheaton (Ill.) may be deserving.  Stevens, Hobart maybe.

FW, a post by NEsoccerfan raised an interesting question about who will potentially receive the first-round byes. And while I opined that I still think Amherst at 14-1-1 will be in with a shout even with losing in its conference tournament, and in my opinion is more likely than - assuming they win out - a potentially 16-2-1 Brandeis or potentially 17-1-1 MIT, I am very much just making a guess. Do you have any thoughts?

[Part_Bart]

Yea, I think the last four teams are questionable.  I agree that St. Lawrence is an option to replace them.  I also think Wheaton (Ill.) may be deserving.  Stevens, Hobart maybe.

Plattsburgh deserves ranking, but St. Lawrence more so.

[Mr.Right]

Conn College not even receiving votes and Tufts only receiving 4 votes where Wesleyan receives 2 votes. Nescac gets hammered in the poll but that won't matter a lick as they will be rewarded with Pool C's.

[Mr.Right]

Also, Brandeis should have moved up a couple more spots and your #1 ranked team is still possibly a bubble team if they lose in their own conference semi's. Fantastic.

[TennesseeJed]

Yea, I think the last four teams are questionable.  I agree that St. Lawrence is an option to replace them.  I also think Wheaton (Ill.) may be deserving.  Stevens, Hobart maybe.

FW, a post by NEsoccerfan raised an interesting question about who will potentially receive the first-round byes. And while I opined that I still think Amherst at 14-1-1 will be in with a shout even with losing in its conference tournament, and in my opinion is more likely than - assuming they win out - a potentially 16-2-1 Brandeis or potentially 17-1-1 MIT, I am very much just making a guess. Do you have any thoughts?

Byes in 2014 went to SUNY Oneonta, Messiah and Wheaton (IL).  Wondering if they were the top three teams nationally in the eyes of the NCAA?  I don't have last year's regional ranking data, so can't tell, but just curious if they had strongest combo of SoS, RvR and Win%?  Pre-Champ Manual (at least as far as I can find it) is silent on HOW the byes are awarded--just says that there are 3 for men.

[Flying Weasel]

Yea, I think the last four teams are questionable.  I agree that St. Lawrence is an option to replace them.  I also think Wheaton (Ill.) may be deserving.  Stevens, Hobart maybe.

FW, a post by NEsoccerfan raised an interesting question about who will potentially receive the first-round byes. And while I opined that I still think Amherst at 14-1-1 will be in with a shout even with losing in its conference tournament, and in my opinion is more likely than - assuming they win out - a potentially 16-2-1 Brandeis or potentially 17-1-1 MIT, I am very much just making a guess. Do you have any thoughts?

I've never gotten the sense that conference tournament performance is given extra weight by the selection committee.  Sure, the pure wins/losses/ties get added into a team's overall record, win pct., results vs. ranked., etc.  But that's seem to be it.  So Amherst could very well still be the committee's top seed from the region.  We'll know tomorrow afternoon when their third weekly regional rankings are published.  As to first round byes, I still don't know or have a sense for whether and to what extent the committee seeds teams nationally and how hard the committee works to try reward the teams they think are the best with byes.  Obviously geography plays a big role in the bracketing and sometimes it can be hard to reward a team with a bye even if "deserving".  I don't find it worth trying to predict who will get byes because geography plays such a role.  And I'm not sure why anyone should care too much, especially given the recent examples of bye teams getting upset in round two.  In other words, I'm not sure the bye is really a reward and advantage.

[Mr.Right]

You can check previous years regional rankings in the archives on this site.

VERY TRUE...Geography is the #1 reason for alot of the D3 tournament until I saw Colorado College being sent to Babson in a RD64/32 game a year or two ago. My thought at the time was maybe the committee forgot to include them and had to just stick them anywhere

[Flying Weasel]

Well, Colorado was going to have to fly no matter where they were sent, so maybe sending them further east just helped the overall bracketing puzzle come together.  There are nearly infinite possibilities for how you bracket 61 teams, so we will always be able to come up with something different from the committee that we think works better or rewards who we think are the better teams with a deserved path to the Final Four.  And maybe sometimes we do stumble upon what would have been a better arrangement than what the committee comes up with.  But the committee is under a very serious time-crunch to rank the teams, make the at-large deceisions/selections, develop the bracket, choose host sites, etc. And they are doing this on the side on top of their coaching/teaching/admin duties at their own school/conference.  It's a very intense quick turnaround.

[Mr.Right]

Agreed. However, schools that want to and can Host have to apply / let the committee know a week or 2 beforehand. That does mean they all can / should host that is just letting the committee know that if possible they WANT to host. So they have all that worked out beforehand and in my mind they start working on that this week before conference tournaments. Then they fill in the bubble teams and weaker AQ's where appropriate. That is why sometimes you see higher ranked teams or surprise teams that you thought would host and could host heading out on the road.

[Flying Weasel]

Well, and some people forget about the rotating priority between men's and women's teams hosting when both are in the tournement.  That sometimes explains why a team doesn't host.

[Golden_Fan]

New NSCAA National Poll

http://www.nscaa.com/rankings/4884

[lastguyoffthebench]

i just realised Kenyon SOS is .489...