2017 South Atlantic

[Mr.Right]

It's not really up to the committee, either. They're confined to using the criteria that are listed in the handbook, and thus they don't have the option of drawing outside the lines. Your beef is with the D3 membership at large, which is what put the primary and secondary criteria in the handbook in the first place.

It could also end up being your beef as well in a week in a half when North Park gets screwed and left out after a fine season and Emory gets rewarded with a Pool C and a hypothetical 1-6-1 UAA record. You don't think some of these bubble teams Head Coaches that get left out wont have a beef as well with that situation?

[PaulNewman]

It's not really up to the committee, either. They're confined to using the criteria that are listed in the handbook, and thus they don't have the option of drawing outside the lines. Your beef is with the D3 membership at large, which is what put the primary and secondary criteria in the handbook in the first place.

I would assume we can agree, though, that occasionally there can be unfortunate results from the process....that none of us would prefer to see a team 1-6-1 even from a very good conference get in while Lynchburg, W&L or any of our own preferred teams with an outstanding record/season didn't.

[jknezek]

It's not really up to the committee, either. They're confined to using the criteria that are listed in the handbook, and thus they don't have the option of drawing outside the lines. Your beef is with the D3 membership at large, which is what put the primary and secondary criteria in the handbook in the first place.

I would assume we can agree, though, that occasionally there can be unfortunate results from the process....that none of us would prefer to see a team 1-6-1 even from a very good conference get in while Lynchburg, W&L or any of our own preferred teams with an outstanding record/season didn't.

To be fair, Emory did beat W&L. Granted it was at their place in double overtime, but they did win. So you could make a case that way.

[PaulNewman]

It's not really up to the committee, either. They're confined to using the criteria that are listed in the handbook, and thus they don't have the option of drawing outside the lines. Your beef is with the D3 membership at large, which is what put the primary and secondary criteria in the handbook in the first place.

I would assume we can agree, though, that occasionally there can be unfortunate results from the process....that none of us would prefer to see a team 1-6-1 even from a very good conference get in while Lynchburg, W&L or any of our own preferred teams with an outstanding record/season didn't.

To be fair, Emory did beat W&L. Granted it was at their place in double overtime, but they did win. So you could make a case that way.

Agreed, IF the teams otherwise were very even so it made sense to go with head-to-head.  I'd have to double-check, but I'm pretty sure W&L's performance over the past 8-10 games blows away Emory.....and then there's Lynchburg.

Anyway, we're going to always come back to the "criteria are the criteria" but we're also always going to think of imagined adjustments that might improve the process....like, for example, each cmte having one "wild card" slot that they can use to fix something that they agree on seems egregious.

P.S. Our banter here is really no different than what happens the second after the NCAA D1 bball selections are announced....the very first segments on ESPN and CBS are the "who are the 3-4 teams that got screwed the worst" deals with Dick Vitale ranting and raving and a couple of interviews with distraught coaches.  And of course one of the annual themes is how the major conferences got coddled with too many bids and the "little guys" (mid majors) got the shaft.

[jknezek]

It's not really up to the committee, either. They're confined to using the criteria that are listed in the handbook, and thus they don't have the option of drawing outside the lines. Your beef is with the D3 membership at large, which is what put the primary and secondary criteria in the handbook in the first place.

I would assume we can agree, though, that occasionally there can be unfortunate results from the process....that none of us would prefer to see a team 1-6-1 even from a very good conference get in while Lynchburg, W&L or any of our own preferred teams with an outstanding record/season didn't.

To be fair, Emory did beat W&L. Granted it was at their place in double overtime, but they did win. So you could make a case that way.

Agreed, IF the teams otherwise were very even so it made sense to go with head-to-head.  I'd have to double-check, but I'm pretty sure W&L's performance over the past 8-10 games blows away Emory.....and then there's Lynchburg.

Anyway, we're going to always come back to the "criteria are the criteria" but we're also always going to think of imagined adjustments that might improve the process....like, for example, each cmte having one "wild card" slot that they can use to fix something that they agree on seems egregious.

What might work for soccer, might not work well in other sports. And the NCAA wants the criteria to be standardized. It's hard to make something that works for everyone, and a wildcard is just that. A completely unaccountable way to place a team. The NCAA has worked very hard to get away from smoky backroom deals, reintroducing the possibility isn't going to be on the table.

[1970s NESCAC Player]

The NCAA has worked very hard to get away from smoky backroom deals, reintroducing the possibility isn't going to be on the table.

Looks like you're missing the point that Mr. Right and Paul Newman are making.  They are talking about a legitimately tournament-worthy team getting left out because of overemphasis on some standardized criterion.  No one is suggesting that there should be backroom deals or that that standardized criteria should not be used, but blind application of the criteria, without also applying common sense, can lead to incorrect results.

[PaulNewman]

LOL.  Not that deluded to think the NCAA is going to adopt some idea posted on this website...and I don't think it would have to be in a back room and smoky.

At any rate, I hope W&L gets in, via AQ or Pool C.  My vague sense is that the ODAC often has difficulty with getting its teams ranked or ranked highly.

[Gregory Sager]

It's not really up to the committee, either. They're confined to using the criteria that are listed in the handbook, and thus they don't have the option of drawing outside the lines. Your beef is with the D3 membership at large, which is what put the primary and secondary criteria in the handbook in the first place.

It could also end up being your beef as well in a week in a half when North Park gets screwed and left out after a fine season and Emory gets rewarded with a Pool C and a hypothetical 1-6-1 UAA record.

I'm aware of that, although I hasten to point out that in this case we're talking about "if" and not "when". I wouldn't gripe about it, though, because I understand the criteria going in. Whether they're good criteria or not, all I ask is that they be fairly and evenly applied -- and in the scenario in which NPU and Emory would be two of the eight teams on the table when the last Pool C berth is allocated by the national committee, which then decided to give the berth to the Eagles rather than the Vikings, I wouldn't gripe about it if the numbers definitively showed that the primary selection criteria favored the Eagles. Instead, I'd spend my energy griping about the fact that the Vikings didn't take care of business at the end of the season when the avenue was wide open for them to reserve their spot in the postseason.

You don't think some of these bubble teams Head Coaches that get left out wont have a beef as well with that situation?

I can't and won't vouch for how any coach thinks. But if he understands the criteria, then he can't complain about a team with a bad conference record getiting a Pool C bid, because he knows that conference winning percentage is irrelevant to the selection process. He may complain about how the pertinent criteria were applied, justifiably or not, but his objections would be groundless if he complained about something that wasn't in the manual. The pre-championships manual containing the criteria is published a year ahead of time -- and, actually, the criteria themselves haven't changed at all in several years -- so ignorance is no excuse in this instance. Everybody has access to the rules for postseason selection, and a coach ought to know how those rules apply in terms of his sport. The only expectation that any coach could have is that the committee apply the relevant rules fairly and even-handedly.

I would assume we can agree, though, that occasionally there can be unfortunate results from the process....that none of us would prefer to see a team 1-6-1 even from a very good conference get in while Lynchburg, W&L or any of our own preferred teams with an outstanding record/season didn't.

No, not really. I don't think that teams from power conferences should be docked for bad conference records, while teams from mediocre (or less) conferences are rewarded for good conference records. Within the confines of the NCAA principle of equal access, I'd like to see each and every NCAA championship tourney, playoff, or meet have the strongest field possible -- and to me that means not restricting power conferences from having as many representatives as they can get into the field under the current system. (Note that this goes against self-interest in my case regarding men's soccer; while the CCIW is annually one of the strongest leagues in all of D3 in most sports, men's soccer is an exception. The CCIW will get sometimes three, four, and once in a great while even five teams into the D3 tourney in other sports, but only seven times in the 30 years that the league has sponsored men's soccer have there been multiple CCIW squads in the D3 tourney, and there's never been more than two on those seven occasions.) If the seventh-best side in the UAA is better than the second-best side in some other league, then, by all means, give the seventh-best UAA team the berth. The best sides make for the best bracket in terms of quality of play.

But where we get into the weeds, and where I think that your opinion and mine of what's best for the field may converge, is how the five primary criteria as they currently exist are weighted. Right now the premium seems to be put on SoS, as opposed to winning percentage. But there's no reason why that has to remain so; after all, the five primary criteria are not listed in order of precedence. The committee could choose to balance those two criteria a bit more, which would reduce the attractiveness of an Emory-type side vis-a-vis the NPUs of the world.

What might work for soccer, might not work well in other sports. And the NCAA wants the criteria to be standardized. It's hard to make something that works for everyone, and a wildcard is just that. A completely unaccountable way to place a team. The NCAA has worked very hard to get away from smoky backroom deals, reintroducing the possibility isn't going to be on the table.

This.

[PaulNewman]

The NCAA has worked very hard to get away from smoky backroom deals, reintroducing the possibility isn't going to be on the table.

Looks like you're missing the point that Mr. Right and Paul Newman are making.  They are talking about a legitimately tournament-worthy team getting left out because of overemphasis on some standardized criterion.  No one is suggesting that there should be backroom deals or that that standardized criteria should not be used, but blind application of the criteria, without also applying common sense, can lead to incorrect results.

Thanks.  It can be a tough crowd...

For the record, I would never argue that a bad to middling team with a great record in a weak conference should take a bid from a good team in a top conference (like, let's say, Mt. Aloysius) but a St Joe's at this point has demonstrated that it might be better or is better than some of those middling teams in strong conferences.  I assume these folks have seen the aftermath of the NCAA ball selections....

[Gregory Sager]

The NCAA has worked very hard to get away from smoky backroom deals, reintroducing the possibility isn't going to be on the table.

Looks like you're missing the point that Mr. Right and Paul Newman are making.  They are talking about a legitimately tournament-worthy team getting left out because of overemphasis on some standardized criterion.  No one is suggesting that there should be backroom deals or that that standardized criteria should not be used, but blind application of the criteria, without also applying common sense, can lead to incorrect results.

Define "tournament-worthy", "common sense", and "incorrect results" in this instance. If your objective is to produce the best bracket possible in D3 men's soccer, is that an "incorrect result"? If not, would common sense dictate that you apply the criteria in such a way as to penalize teams that didn't do well in their respective conferences but performed more than adequately within the five primary criteria to justify receiving a Pool C berth? What's a tournament-worthy team if you're trying to fashion the best bracket possible in terms of soccer quality, within the confines of the equal-access principle that dictates that each member league of D3 gets at least one side into the field?

There's really no such thing as "blind application of the criteria." The five primary criteria do offer leeway for interpretation in terms of how they're weighted with respect to each other. Also, part of that leeway is that they allow the committee to turn to secondary criteria if there's an internal logjam within the committee. In other words, it's not simply a matter of punching in the numbers and spitting out a list of Pool C candidates in terms of precedence. After all, a computer could do that. The idea behind the current system is to tie one hand behind the backs of the committee's members in order to make sure that everyone is applying the same numbers-based criteria, not to cut off both of their hands.

[PaulNewman]

Sometimes we're just having fun....a funny and sort of frightening tangential, true story...

I couple of months ago Dan Wetzel wrote an article about the kneeling thing, and I usually never do this, but I browsed through the comments section...and 95% of the comments all sounded the same and were ripping Wetzel and basically anything close to the kind of folks and agencies that are the intended recipients of all these bombs.  I chimed in to make a couple of comments, and I noted how similar all of the hateful and extremely partisan comments were, suggesting in jest that there were Russian bots.  Now I actually know what the whole probe is about and how elections can be turned by flooding these comments sections, social media, etc, etc.  Seriously, I was blown away that comments that should have been running 50-50 or at worst 60/40 were going 95% (and 95% horrifically nasty) in one direction.  THE VERY NEXT DAY, for the first time ever in my nearly 60 years, I received a phone call on my cell labeled as coming from Russia with the weird country code and the whole deal.  I didn't answer so don't know what would have happened if I did.  Totally true story.  And guess what the impact was?  I have never again posted in any comments sections for news articles or anything in that kind of genre, which I think was the point.

[jknezek]

The NCAA has worked very hard to get away from smoky backroom deals, reintroducing the possibility isn't going to be on the table.

Looks like you're missing the point that Mr. Right and Paul Newman are making.  They are talking about a legitimately tournament-worthy team getting left out because of overemphasis on some standardized criterion.  No one is suggesting that there should be backroom deals or that that standardized criteria should not be used, but blind application of the criteria, without also applying common sense, can lead to incorrect results.

Not missing the point. Just don't agree. The criteria more or less works. It provides flexibility in the committee in how they weight and rank the criteria. It works across all sports more or less. If you go back to the pre-AQ time, backroom deals, old coaches networks, and happy phone calls were the norm. It sucked. Standardizing the criteria, making it mostly public, and allowing coaches and teams to understand it, has been a boon to teams, programs, schools, and athletes.

The idea of removing that criteria to allow the committees to again subjectively select wildcards, not based on any standardized criteria or weighting, is a bad idea. Does it annually cause some small heartache around a few teams for every tournament across every sport? Of course. But arguing about the last 2 or 3 teams in or out, at most, is a heck of a lot better than what used to happen.

Known selection criteria is a good thing. It allows teams a better idea of what they need to do, how to build their schedules, and what their performance merits. Wildcards from the committee do none of these things.

[PaulNewman]

It's settled.  The system at present is perfect.  No tweaks needed or desired.

[1970s NESCAC Player]

It's settled.  The system at present is perfect.  No tweaks needed or desired.

What he said, especially if Greg Sager and jknezek happen to be Russian bots . . .

[Gregory Sager]

The NCAA has worked very hard to get away from smoky backroom deals, reintroducing the possibility isn't going to be on the table.

Looks like you're missing the point that Mr. Right and Paul Newman are making.  They are talking about a legitimately tournament-worthy team getting left out because of overemphasis on some standardized criterion.  No one is suggesting that there should be backroom deals or that that standardized criteria should not be used, but blind application of the criteria, without also applying common sense, can lead to incorrect results.

Thanks.  It can be a tough crowd...

For the record, I would never argue that a bad to middling team with a great record in a weak conference should take a bid from a good team in a top conference (like, let's say, Mt. Aloysius) but a St Joe's at this point has demonstrated that it might be better or is better than some of those middling teams in strong conferences.  I assume these folks have seen the aftermath of the NCAA ball selections....

Again, what I'm saying is that your concern could be addressed within the process as it currently exists, without having to completely change the rules by adding conference winning percentage as a sixth criterion. What's needed is for there be an impetus within the committee to weigh winning percentage a bit more and SoS a bit less. That would cause, for instance, St. Joe's to rise within the Northeast Region rankings the next season, presuming that the Monks continue to run roughshod over every side they face.