Pool C - 2017

[roocru]

Good analysis on Pool C. +1!

Kickoff commented about how strong the middle of the ASC had become.

ETBU, Southwestern, Texas Lutheran and Sul Ross State (which beat D-2 UT Permian Basin) have knocked off one another.

I believe that each of those teams are worthy of Top 10 in the South Region Fan Poll, and head to head, would beat the #8, #9 and #10 in this week's  South Region Rankings.

Unfortunately, the lack of dominance of a third place team in the conference has denied Hardin-Simmons another result against a Regionally Ranked Opponent (RRO).

Ralph, see my post concerning this on the South Regional Fan Poll thread.

[wally_wabash]

Interesting.

I'll do a projection tonight with today's rankings and just know that my first instinct here is that it's gonna be very different from last week, and it's gonna be very different from next week.  Some of these rankings feel a little unpolished to me.  But we'll do it anyway. 

[smedindy]

if two PAC teams go 10-0, do we basically go down to four Pool C bids?

No, there's still 5 Pool C bids.

Seeing where CWRU is ranked regionally, it could be a tough decision for the committee. Do they bump up CWRU's rankings, or allow a 10-0 team to miss the playoffs?

[HScoach]

with that schedule and a dwindling list of Pool C slots, I say leave them home.

[Ohsaa13]

I find it interesting W&J is ranked 4th in the RR, one spot ahead of CWRU in the Natl Ranking, but we all dismiss what is happening on the field.  Over the next two weeks CWRU will play Westminster &CMU. Clearly their two toughest games all season.  However, if CWRU wins both games decisively and goes 10-0 does this change how the committee evaluates their final rankings?  It could be said at the end of the day CWRU a better team than W&J.  W&J is assumed to be better because they beat Thomas More early in the season which provided them a slightly better SOS.  They are playing the same teams and Case is actually putting up more impressive numbers, but we all, including me (I don't have a horse in this race), assume W&J deserves a better ranking than CWRU.

Wally...what would happen if CWRU wins out and the PAC is decided by coin flip based on the criteria the PAC has (there are multiple criteria they have, and assuming Case wins out it will come to this last point).  Case gets automatic bid for being PAC champ.  Does the committee then look at W&J with the same view they look at Case today? 

Again, no tie to either program, but found this conference interesting when looking at comments based on what folks are saying about the pool C bids

[wally_wabash]

I find it interesting W&J is ranked 4th in the RR, one spot ahead of CWRU in the Natl Ranking, but we all dismiss what is happening on the field.  Over the next two weeks CWRU will play Westminster &CMU. Clearly their two toughest games all season.  However, if CWRU wins both games decisively and goes 10-0 does this change how the committee evaluates their final rankings?  It could be said at the end of the day CWRU a better team than W&J.  W&J is assumed to be better because they beat Thomas More early in the season which provided them a slightly better SOS.  They are playing the same teams and Case is actually putting up more impressive numbers, but we all, including me (I don't have a horse in this race), assume W&J deserves a better ranking than CWRU.

Wally...what would happen if CWRU wins out and the PAC is decided by coin flip based on the criteria the PAC has (there are multiple criteria they have, and assuming Case wins out it will come to this last point).  Case gets automatic bid for being PAC champ.  Does the committee then look at W&J with the same view they look at Case today? 

Again, no tie to either program, but found this conference interesting when looking at comments based on what folks are saying about the pool C bids

I'm about to work through this, but my quick thoughts on CWRU are:
- not ideal rankings today for the Spartans
- Their profile will improve.  Well, their SOS will improve.  They'll eliminate any chance for RRO wins by winning their last two games.  The point is- this is the low water mark for CWRU.
- IF CWRU does wind up getting left out, they can blame the PAC for not giving them a fair chance.  They could have fixed it, they didn't, and here we are. 

I haven't started my exercise quite yet today, but I don't expect to project CWRU in based on today's rankings.

[jknezek]

W&J's SOS is 70+ spots higher. That plays a role and it's mostly because the teams W&J has already played have higher SOS than the teams that Case has played. With Case's two remaining opponents over .500, and W&J's last opponents with 4 wins between them, they will end up with a very similar SOS. Chicago winning out and SJF continuing a tough season will probably have W&J and Case just about even, since it is likely TMC and GC will have pretty much identical records. 

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

I find it interesting W&J is ranked 4th in the RR, one spot ahead of CWRU in the Natl Ranking, but we all dismiss what is happening on the field.  Over the next two weeks CWRU will play Westminster &CMU. Clearly their two toughest games all season.  However, if CWRU wins both games decisively and goes 10-0 does this change how the committee evaluates their final rankings?  It could be said at the end of the day CWRU a better team than W&J.  W&J is assumed to be better because they beat Thomas More early in the season which provided them a slightly better SOS.  They are playing the same teams and Case is actually putting up more impressive numbers, but we all, including me (I don't have a horse in this race), assume W&J deserves a better ranking than CWRU.

Wally...what would happen if CWRU wins out and the PAC is decided by coin flip based on the criteria the PAC has (there are multiple criteria they have, and assuming Case wins out it will come to this last point).  Case gets automatic bid for being PAC champ.  Does the committee then look at W&J with the same view they look at Case today? 

Again, no tie to either program, but found this conference interesting when looking at comments based on what folks are saying about the pool C bids

So the easiest answer to this is the following:

The rankings change every week. New data is inputted, like vRRO which wasn't available for the first week to the committees, and it changes the complexion and the decisions. I am not sure if football does this exactly, but other committees have often told me how they basically nearly start from scratch each week. Just because a team is ahead of another team the previous week does NOT mean they will stay there just because. Results versus Regionally Ranked Opponents will change a lot next week.

Per your example, if CWRU wins the next two weeks, they input plenty of new data into the equation that probably doesn't leave them that low. That said, every other team in the region (and the country) has results which will also have some kind of impact - small to big.

The rankings will change. Don't put too much stock in these rankings because in a week's time they will basically mean nothing. Week 2's will be more important moving forward.

[ExTartanPlayer]

I find it interesting W&J is ranked 4th in the RR, one spot ahead of CWRU in the Natl Ranking, but we all dismiss what is happening on the field.  Over the next two weeks CWRU will play Westminster &CMU. Clearly their two toughest games all season.  However, if CWRU wins both games decisively and goes 10-0 does this change how the committee evaluates their final rankings?  It could be said at the end of the day CWRU a better team than W&J.  W&J is assumed to be better because they beat Thomas More early in the season which provided them a slightly better SOS.  They are playing the same teams and Case is actually putting up more impressive numbers, but we all, including me (I don't have a horse in this race), assume W&J deserves a better ranking than CWRU.

Wally...what would happen if CWRU wins out and the PAC is decided by coin flip based on the criteria the PAC has (there are multiple criteria they have, and assuming Case wins out it will come to this last point).  Case gets automatic bid for being PAC champ.  Does the committee then look at W&J with the same view they look at Case today? 

Again, no tie to either program, but found this conference interesting when looking at comments based on what folks are saying about the pool C bids

Two quick thoughts here:

1) I've seen this movie before with Case, where they run up big numbers against the lesser lights on their schedule and then drop their toughest game or two of the season, but nevertheless it's a reasonable point that we're defaulting to the assumption that W&J is better than Case although i) they'll finish the season having played essentially the same schedule and ii) CWRU has been equal-or-better than W&J against all common opponents.

W&J's only game against a non-PAC opponent was a 37-27 win against usually-good-but-currently 2-6 St. John Fisher; they also have a result against Grove City that was officially counted as a non-league game (hold this thought).  Meanwhile, CWRU's non-league games are a 34-14 win over 4-4 Chicago and 45-28 win over 2-6 WashU (worth noting - WashU is likely better than that 2-6 record suggests, considering that they have been competitive in nearly every game including toughies against UW-Whitewater, Wartburg, North Central). 

I think it's fair to consider the WashU result for CWRU similar to the SJF result for W&J, and the Chicago result is an okay (not great, but not terrible) non-league win.  If Case beats Westminster and CMU (neither of which is a given) they will pick up two reasonable quality wins - regardless of official "RRO" status for the criteria, Westminster gave a legit battle to likely NCAC champion Wittenberg and took W&J to overtime while CMU also took W&J down to the wire.  If Case beats both of those teams, their profile is going to be a whole lot better than it is today, and truth be told it will be nearly identical to W&J's profile.

Which brings us down to the official PAC schedule and an interesting little kink in the PAC tiebreaker that we may be overlooking...

2) As noted above, W&J's game against Grove City was officially a non-league game (owing to the overstuffed PAC, and the addition of CMU and CWRU who were originally trying to keep their "UAA" games, to balance out the official PAC schedule, some of the PAC teams play one another in games that are not officially league games).  So the only difference between W&J and CWRU's PAC league schedule was one game: W&J played Thomas More, while CWRU played Grove City (I know, I know, it's confusing because W&J played Grove City too, but it was officially a non-league game).  The remainder of their league games are all common opponents.

Why harp on this so much?  Well, the PAC tiebreaker is...

1) Head-to-head competition: in this setting they have not played, NEXT
2) Record against highest-ranked team not in the tie: in this setting both are undefeated, NEXT
3) Strength of conference record (conference winning percentage of teams you beat in 8 PAC games): so this is going to get fun!  We'll dive into this below.  A few weeks ago, it seemed like a slam dunk that this tiebreaker would favor W&J because Thomas More > Grove City.  Now I'm not so sure.
4) Overall record: both would be 10-0, NEXT
5) Record vs. common non-league opponents: no common non-league opponents, NEXT
6) ? No further criteria are listed in the PAC Manual...

OK, revisiting the #3 tiebreaker above: until a few weeks ago, it seemed abundantly obvious that this would favor W&J, because their opponent that CWRU missed (Thomas More) spent the last couple years competing for and winning conference titles while CWRU's not-common-opponent (Grove City) was coming off three straight 0-fer seasons.  But then a funny thing happened; with alum-so-young-that-XTP-played-against-him Andrew DiDonato reviving the program, Grove City won a conference game...and then another...and then another....and suddenly Grove City is officially sitting at 3-3 in the conference with two very winnable games left versus Bethany and Thiel (given the way they've been playing, Grove City is arguably the favorite in both games).  Meanwhile, Thomas More is 4-3 in the league with Thiel to play.  It's very possible that both TMC and GCC finish with a 5-3 league record (remember, W&J's game against Grove City doesn't count in their conference record - it's a non league game). I'm not sure if Thomas More's win over Grove City is relevant at all or if it's only the "strength of record" of your conference opponents, but if I am reading this correctly, in the Grove-City-wins-out-scenario, the tiebreaker criteria here would be exhausted without breaking the tie between W&J and CWRU.

Point is, to clinch the title for real, W&J needs either Westminster or CMU to beat CWRU (both of which are possible), or failing that, for Thiel or Bethany to beat Grove City (also possible).  CWRU needs every single result to go their way, but if it all does, they might not be forfeiting that claim on the league title just yet.

[wally_wabash]

New projection time.  I'm using today's regional rankings as if they were the final rankings.  Click here for a full rundown of the mechanics.  25 A, 2 B, 5 C.  Off we go. 

Pool A
The projected 25 Pool A's as of this moment:


- Three teams have clinched (the gold cells because golden ticket, obvs)
- Made two changes to the projected winners.  Eureka took control in the UMAC, and I actually picked somebody to win the ODAC (Washington & Lee)

Pool B

Round 1:
1S Mary Hardin-Baylor: 8-0, 2-0 vs. RROs, 0.555 (41st) SOS
3E Springfield: 8-0, 0-0 vs. RROs, 0.526 (83)

Same analysis as last week- UMHB has advantages in all criteria.  They are the obvious choice.

Round 2:
2S Hardin-Simmons: 6-1, 0-1 vs. RROs, 0.559 (35)
3E Springfield: 8-0, 0-0 vs. RROs, 0.526 (83)

This is a really hard call, and the way you do this has a significant impact on how the rest of this at-large process dominos (looking at you, Frostburg).  I'm going to continue to honor Springfield's win percentage advantage, however, we'll see where that SOS goes over the next two weeks.  This isn't an obvious choice.   

Now after UMHB and Springfield come out of our rankings lists, the remaining regional boards look as follows:
East: Frostburg, Western Connecticut, Curry
North: DePauw, Illinois Wesleyan, Heidelberg, Wheaton, Millikin
South: Hardin-Simmons, Centre, Case Western Reserve, Franklin & Marshall, Westminster
West: St. John's, UW-La Crosse, Concordia-Moorhead, UW-Platteville, George Fox

So, I mean this is where it's weird and we're just going to roll with it this week.  DePauw should not be ranked higher than IWU.  The people in the North RAC know this and I don't get why they pushed this unfinished trash out today.  Nor should Heidelberg be ahead of Wheaton, but whatever. Our friends in the North just mailed it in. 

In the South, CWRU sits third and they probably have no shot today.  They're in worse shape than Centre was a few years ago, TBH.  Going to be interesting to see if they get enough SOS help over the next 10 days to climb up in the South rankings. 

Enough of my babble.  Let's pick some teams.

Pool C:
Round 1:
5N DePauw - 7-1, 0-1 vs RROs, 0.568 (23)
2S Hardin-Simmons - 6-1, 0-1 RROs, 0.559 (35)
5E Frostburg St. - 7-1, 0-1 RRO, 0.459 (194)
5W St. John's - 6-1, 0-1 RRO, 0.524 (88)

For everybody who is unfamiliar, this is kinda what DePauw does.  They show up in weird places that they don't belong and make everyone feel uncomfortable and just kind of make everything a little awkward.  So, everyone here is a one loss team with a loss to their league champion.  We have varying degrees of SOS.  Examining the results vs. ranked opponents is useful.  HSU, FSU, and SJU all played fairly competitive games.  DePauw got pantsed to the tune of 52-6 in their own yard.  That matters.  Cowboys are the pick. 

Round 2:
5N DePauw - 7-1, 0-1 vs RROs, 0.568 (23)
6S Centre - 7-1, 0-1 RRO, 0.529 (76)
5E Frostburg St. - 7-1, 0-1 RRO, 0.459 (194)
5W St. John's - 6-1, 0-1 RRO, 0.524 (88)

Last week (albeit a little later in the process), I took Frostburg ahead of St. John's.  Frostburg's SOS took a big hit this week and so I'm going to flip that order.  Our new player is Centre, but they don't offer anything particularly different than what we've got already- namely an RRO win.  Platteville losing really took the Johnnies off the bubble in a big way. 

Round 3:
5N DePauw - 7-1, 0-1 vs RROs, 0.568 (23)
6S Centre - 7-1, 0-1 RRO, 0.529 (76)
5E Frostburg St. - 7-1, 0-1 RRO, 0.459 (194)
6W UW-La Crosse - 6-2, 1-1, 0.557 (38)

Alright, now it's fun.  La Crosse is new, they have a quality win and they have very nice SOS.  They also carry an extra loss, that to an unranked team which is a bummer for them (losing to Whitewater is a bummer...strange times, y'all).  And then there's DePauw, still here, still messing things up.  If the order was correct and IWU was here, we'd have common opponent stuff to play with...DePauw is the worst.  Also, that SOS is a myth.  The NCAC up and down does not produce 23rd strongest schedule while Frostburg's NJAC schedule is 194.  That doesn't make any sense.  La Crosse has the best win on the board.  Frostburg still has the best loss (OT vs. 4E Wesley). I know I'm hand waving over the SOS on this one, but Frostburg is my pick and I'm calling shenanigans on the SOS.   

Round 4:
5N DePauw - 7-1, 0-1 vs RROs, 0.568 (23)
6S Centre - 7-1, 0-1 RRO, 0.529 (76)
8E Western Connecticut - 7-1, 1-0 vs RRO, 0.500 (127)
6W UW-La Crosse - 6-2, 1-1, 0.557 (38)

I've been staring at this board for a while.  I'm down to Centre or La Crosse.  Looking at the RRO results, La Crosse lost a 14 point game to 1W Oshkosh who is quite good and they just beat Platteville, who last week I thought could be a top seed in the tournament.  The extra loss is Whitewater, which is not exactly your run of the mill non-ranked loss.  Centre lost a 14 point game to 3S Berry.  La Crosse holds an SOS advantage as well and I think I'm gonna do it.  Yep.  Eagles in. 

Round 5:
5N DePauw - 7-1, 0-1 vs RROs, 0.568 (23)
6S Centre - 7-1, 0-1 RRO, 0.529 (76)
8E Western Connecticut - 7-1, 1-0 vs RRO, 0.500 (127)
8W Concordia-Moorhead - 7-1, 0-1 vs RRO, 0.468 (184)

The Cobbers make their obligatory appearance in one of my projections...rolling in late with a crummy SOS, an 0-1 RRO record, and a make or break game with SJU looming.  We do this every year.   The Cobbers don't have the profile at this moment so we can rule them out.  52-6 is still basically a disqualifier for me, so sorry DePauw (and sorry, IWU Titans...our friends in Bloomington didn't deserve this this week).  So, Centre or Western Conn.?  Western Conn. has an RRO win over my projected MASCAC champion.  Surprised to see two MASCACs in the rankings, tbh.  They do also have an SOS deficit to Centre.  I'm going to pick the Colonels here because I think Western Conn wins the MASCAC outright if they win their last two (I'm projecting a loss to Framingham), or they lose and won't be in play here.  The East's rankings were both logical and strange. 

Alright, so that's the field.  I'm not real happy with this today, primarily because the North region gave us erroneous rankings and it blew up the entire exercise.  I may revisit this tomorrow and do a lightning round projection where IWU and DePauw are ranked properly.  That really threw off the whole thing this week. 

[Ralph Turner]

Hardin-Simmons SOS takes a hit with the games against Belhaven and McMurry.

Springfield gets good SOS with MIT but Maine Maritime will knock it down.

Wally, why Centre over DePauw?

[FCGrizzliesGrad]

I'm wondering how different things would look if H-S was Pool B and Springfield started Pool C at the table. St John's probably first off as Springfield has a similar SoS and better record but no RRO. If you say Springfield is in #2 then you'd have the same four at the table as the projection but with Frostburg just now joining instead of being there from the start.
Adding in IWU as they should move up once RRO are factored in (1-1 right now, with a game vs #10N Millikin and a win over currently unranked but possibly #11N Carthage) and a SoS of .495 would likely get picked before Frostburg.

Just to throw another example (out of the 800 or so that have been collected over the years) of SoS "usefullness"... Frostburg is at .459 while Minnesota-Morris playing no one but UMAC teams (their non-conference game was a second game with Martin Luther) is at .462

[Mr. Ypsi]

IWU is still WILDLY in play as far as RRO.  Carthage is almost surely #11 in the North.  UWW is likely #11 in the West.  Both are wins.  And they are yet to play #10 (North) Millikin (who would likely drop out if we beat them).

So conceivably as high as FIVE RROs.  I wonder what the record is?

[wally_wabash]

Wally, why Centre over DePauw?

I've got two reasons.  The first is that I find DePauw's SOS to be dubiously high.  They have 0-8 Kenyon coming up which is going to rectify that.  The East RAC today exercised a mild bit of subjectivity with respect to curious SOS figures when they went ahead and (correctly, IMO) ranked Frostburg ahead of Husson and Union.  I think you can do the same with DePauw.  The NCAC does not produce the 23rd best schedule in the division.  The second is DePauw's RRO result vs. 2N Wittenberg.  52-6 is a disqualifying result (except for maaaaybe extreme cases like games vs. Mount Union).  Centre was at least competitive in their lone loss to Berry.  When I'm looking for at-large teams, I want to find teams that I believe can be competitive in the tournament.  52-6 indicates to me that DePauw are paper tigers (ha). 

We also know that on the first pass, the regional committees don't (officially) factor in RRO results at all.  That helps explain the funky order of things in the North.  I hope they do a more thorough job next week because quite frankly this week it looks like they made a standings table and called it a day.  I think it takes about 8 seconds of semi-thoughtful conversation to see that IWU needs to be ranked ahead of DePauw, and it just didn't happen from that group this week. 

[Ralph Turner]

Thanks, Wally