2021 NCAA Tournament

[PaulNewman]

(But, just like with D1 that lean on RPI or other metrics, there are always unwritten and mostly unspoken influences on selection committees... Say it with me now... BIAS.)

LOL.  Say it with me...ROCHESTER.  Just kidding as a Dad of UR alum but still furious over the video paywall.

One addition to the criteria that I think would be useful (although UAA and NESCAC fans may object) would be to count a team finishing outside their conference's top 4 or top half as a legit factor to downgrade an otherwise viable resume...not necessarily a hard and fast prohibitive factor but one that can be given legitimate weight.  RPI got in one year recently finishing maybe 7th (?) in the LL and another year OWU finished 5th in the NCAC (outside the NCAC tourney and I assume probably the first time in the past 40 years OWU was outside the top 2-3), and I'm sorry, but the NCAC isn't the UAA or NESCAC, and a 5th place finish in the NCAC should almost by definition mean no bid.

To tack on to Hopkins92's very good point about conferences and recruiting pitches, there's a lot be said for conferences that are mixed....meaning several perennially strong programs, a few middling, and maybe a few weaker...because in theory you could sell recruits on having some good competition, a standard to chase, and a goal of breaking into the upper tier of a conference....sot of akin to what Denison did and is doing in the NCAC or maybe a Washington College in the Centennial.

[Flying Weasel]

St. Olaf has a very cool hype video.

Very cool indeed. That coach hasn't even hit puberty by the looks of him. I keep an eye on the MIAC during the season, since that's where I played One Quarter Of A Million years ago. I watched St. Olaf play with discipline, creativity, poise--and had a couple of gnarly set piece plays to boot. When trying to evaluate where they stood on a national level, I didn't rate them like a Kenyon, Messiah, or Tufts, because teams can look very good against average opposition (to wit: MSU). I would love to have them prove me wrong, and see a Champion from the MIAC. You never know: this is football. Anything can happen.

Wall was a 3-time all american at OWU, winning national POTY in 2011, and a national championship in that same year.
He has another couple seasons in the national conversation and he's getting good D1 looks soon.

A little bit more on Travis Wall, from OWU website circa 2015, who was top asst for Martin at OWU before going to St Olaf...

Wall is a 2012 graduate of Ohio Wesleyan.  He was one of the most-decorated players in Battling Bishop history, earning first-team All-America honors after his junior (2010) and senior (2011) seasons.  In 2011, he was named NCAA Division III Player of the Year after leading the Bishops to the national championship.  He posted 19 goals and 15 assists that season, and his 53 points was the second-highest single-season point total in Ohio Wesleyan history.  Wall totaled 49 goals and 36 assists during his career, ranking fifth on both Ohio Wesleyan career lists, and his 134 total points also ranked fifth.

Wall is the brother of Tyler Wall '11 and Sarah Wall '05, each of whom were 3-time All-America selections in soccer at Ohio Wesleyan.

Who do you think holds bragging rights at thanksgiving dinner... the brother and sister with 3 all-american picks or Travis with his paltry two and a NPOY.

Only one has a ring!

[PaulNewman]

And thus both turkey legs.

[Gregory Sager]

Thanks!  Very helpful to understand.

No prob!

[Gregory Sager]

(But, just like with D1 that lean on RPI or other metrics, there are always unwritten and mostly unspoken influences on selection committees... Say it with me now... BIAS.)

That's an accusation that's very easy to make and very hard to prove. And it's based upon an assumption of universal selection-committee mendacity with which I disagree.

Among other things, it has to overcome the classic pitfall of a conspiracy, which is that it becomes exponentially harder to achieve consensus, much less pull off the act conspired, for every person that's added to the process. In this case, you're asking ten different people (David Kulik from Johnson & Wales, Gabe Margolis from Brandeis, Brian Marcantonio from Utica, Carl Christian from York PA, Kevin Brenner from Eastern, Jon Waters from Lynchburg, Justin Newell from Kenyon, Marc Colwell from IIT, Travis Wall from St. Olaf, and Brad Bankhead from Mary Hardin-Baylor) to agree to collude to put the wrong team into the field, to put aside their professional ethics and subvert the selection process by favoring a clearly undeserving team over another that is indisputably better at meeting the criteria. Even without knowing anything about the character of those ten people, that's an awfully tall order.

And if you're using "unwritten and mostly unspoken influences" as your guiding phrase as to what happened in that meeting, then it is a conspiracy, because that phrase implies awareness and, therefore, volition on the part of those ten committee members. It would almost have to be volitional, anyway, because a big part of the point of having ten people on the committee is to remove the possibility of any unconscious biases on the part of any one member influencing the call. They represent ten diffferent regions, ten different leagues, and, therefore, ten fairly disparate viewpoints, so it's hardly likely that they're going to stumble unaware in unison into picking the wrong Pool C team.

I'm not naive enough to believe that there are no people in D3 sports who lack integrity. But I'm not at all convinced that it's possible to collect ten such people on one committee. And I don't fancy the idea of people pointing their fingers at Gabe Margolis as the obvious ringleader of the conspiracy to supplant Wesleyan (or anybody else, for that matter) with Rochester just because he's a fellow UAA coach. That's a really unfair accusation and a challenge to someone's integrity that's based upon guilt by association. I'm not saying that you or anybody else is doing that, mind you, but it is the logical next step down this path if you believe that the committee colluded to push aside the rules by which it was instructed to abide in order to assent to somebody's favoritism. If there's a claim of acted-upon bias, then the next step is to explain it by searching for an insider who has the means and motivation to turn that bias into reality. (I suppose it's possible that somebody else among those ten people might have had some tie to UR that could lead someone who is conspiracy-minded to think that that committee member had a personal agenda to favor the Yellowjackets in the selection process, but I haven't heard of any other connections to Rochester among the ten.)

(Brandeis alumnus deiscanton theorized that Margolis might've taken up Rochester's case and persuaded his nine peers to select the Yellowjackets in an above-board manner, but, if Rochester was clearly undeserving, it's almost as hard to believe that one advocate could sway nine skeptics through sheer force of rhetoric as it is to believe that ten people with no common connection and no common agenda would collude to subvert the Pool C selection process by picking a team that didn't belong in the field.)

I'm not denying that Rochester getting in was something of a head-scratcher. But Pool C head-scratchers are hardly uncommon. Christan Shirk, whom I believe knows how to read the Selection Day tea leaves better than anybody else, had the Yellowjackets in his "Wrong Side of the Bubble" group in his analysis-and-predictions column on d3soccer.com. But he also said this: "But with so little separating these teams from those in the previous group ["Squarely On the Bubble -- Pick 4 of 6"], hearing any of their names called won't be a big surprise." You could write that off as Christan doing a CYA, but the reality is that the variances between the teams on the bubble when you get down to the last two or three Pool C picks amount to minutiae -- minutiae small enough that the remaining teams all fall within the range of valid (albeit subjective) choices. That's why it seems like most years, in every team sport (not just men's soccer), this kind of argument -- and, often, the same accusation you're leveling -- occurs concerning what's presumably the last one or two teams picked for the field. If you look around d3boards.com you'll find them everywhere.

[Hopkins92]

Whoa.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything. My only point in chiming in about being careful about falling into logical/theoretical traps was very much in GENERAL terms. Same thing with the bias comment. People are biased. It's human nature.

[blooter442]

Whoa.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything. My only point in chiming in about being careful about falling into logical/theoretical traps was very much in GENERAL terms. Same thing with the bias comment. People are biased. It's human nature.

True, and this resonates big time — even when we (myself included) think we're being objective. "Motivated reasoning" just became part of my lexicon after reading this New Yorker article.

One addition to the criteria that I think would be useful (although UAA and NESCAC fans may object) would be to count a team finishing outside their conference's top 4 or top half as a legit factor to downgrade an otherwise viable resume...not necessarily a hard and fast prohibitive factor but one that can be given legitimate weight.  RPI got in one year recently finishing maybe 7th (?) in the LL and another year OWU finished 5th in the NCAC (outside the NCAC tourney and I assume probably the first time in the past 40 years OWU was outside the top 2-3), and I'm sorry, but the NCAC isn't the UAA or NESCAC, and a 5th place finish in the NCAC should almost by definition mean no bid.

I remember that RPI team that got in, it was 2015, they played Brandeis in the 2nd round (lost 2-1 in 2OT after parking the bus and getting a 90th minute equalizer). I think the big gripe wasn't that they had finished 7th, per se, but rather that they hadn't even qualified for their conference tournament. Either way, I'd have no qualms with that being a part of the criteria — but that's a whole other can of worms.

[Gregory Sager]

Whoa.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything. My only point in chiming in about being careful about falling into logical/theoretical traps was very much in GENERAL terms. Same thing with the bias comment. People are biased. It's human nature.

True, and this resonates big time — even when we (myself included) think we're being objective. "Motivated reasoning" just became part of my lexicon after reading this New Yorker article.

I'm not denying that at all. I'm well aware that each of us walks around with a headful of both conscious and unconscious biases. What I'm saying is that the committee is designed not only to represent each region of the country but to create a Selection Day conversation broad enough and diverse enough to not only head off any bias by one individual, be it conscious or unconscious, but to guard against the chance that most or all of them will share said biases.

My guess is that the point is pretty well hammered into each of their heads that the five primary criteria rule above all else, making them hyper-aware of the existence of such biases as they may take with them into the conversation -- and it's combined with a willingness to discard those biases that is implicit in the decision to accept the call to serve on the committee.

[PaulNewman]

You were doing so well....+k

[Futbol is Life]

So as the Region 2 chair, as the at large picks are winding down, Margolis is asked to compare his highest available seed vs the others, and the Region 3 chair has Rochester.  So Margolis says "I have MIT, the team that won the NEWMAC regular season and lost in the finals of their tournament.  They are 4-3-1 vs ranked teams vs Rochester's 3-3-1, who finished 6th in the UAA.  But more importantly, my team played both within the last month - we tied Rochester despite outshooting them 27-12 and we lost to the MIT in OT while being outshot 13-6.  I think clearly MIT is the more deserving side".  Hard to believe the Region 2 chair, making this argument would have any problem winning over voters.

Problem is, the team Margolis instead chose to argue for was WPI, the NEWMAC 5th place team that lost in the quarterfinals of the tourney and had a 3-4-2 record vs ranked teams.   Mind you, Brandeis also lost to WPI this year, so Margolis still could have made an argument for WPI over Rochester.  But the point is Margolis, as the chair of Region 2, buried the best argument for an at large bid for that region down under the teams that finished 4th and 5th in the league.  I'm not saying he did it consciously,  but simply pointing out that decisions in the Regional rankings are vital.

Another example is Hopkins, the outright winner of the Centennial conference with a 4-3-1 record vs ranked teams yet ending up ranked behind Gettysburg (5th in the Centennial) after GC "makes a run" in the Centennial tourney, allowing them to get to 3-4-2 record vs ranked teams.    I get that the GC beat Hopkins in the conf tourney, but the regular season has to mean something.   Of course, both Hopkins and Gettysburg were able to make the tourney, as well as Region V's 6th ranked team Swarthmore.    But no one was surprised that GC and Swat left after 1 game.    And as could be expected, Hopkins found a way to win a tight game and almost snuck into the sweet 16.

So it's not so much that we need to avoid putting teams with losing records in a conference into the big tourney, although of course that's a red flag.  But the regular season conference performance provides great comparison between teams playing the same schedule.  A 1st place team has proven over weeks of play that they have worth.  Regions shouldn't allow a knockout tourney to have more say in determining a team's ability to get results.

[Flying Weasel]

But the point is Margolis, as the chair of Region 2, buried the best argument for an at large bid for that region down under the teams that finished 4th and 5th in the league.  I'm not saying he did it consciously,  but simply pointing out that decisions in the Regional rankings are vital.

I think you are aware that there are Regional Advisory Committees (RACs), right?  And that the members of the national committee (in this case the Division III men's soccer committee) chair these RACs, but are non-voting members of the RACs?  The regional rankings are decided by the voting members of the RACs, not by the national committee member who chairs the RAC.

https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/committees/d3/champs/D3Champs_RACProcedures.pdf

Each conference sponsoring the respective sport (with seven or more members) must have
equal representation. The chair is not included in these representatives. The chair is a
non-voting member with a charge to facilitate the RAC process and report back to the
national governing sport committee. Conference offices will be asked to appoint
individuals to the RAC (not inclusive of the RAC chair) for all sports.

I have no insight into how the national committee member in practice merely facilitates the RAC process without being influential in the process.  And the national committee can, but word is they rarely do, revise the regional rankings provided to them by the RACs.  So the ranking of the teams in Region I was down to the four voting members of the RAC representing the CCC, MASCAC, NECC and NEWMAC.

[Futbol is Life]

But the point is Margolis, as the chair of Region 2, buried the best argument for an at large bid for that region down under the teams that finished 4th and 5th in the league.  I'm not saying he did it consciously,  but simply pointing out that decisions in the Regional rankings are vital.

I think you are aware that there are Regional Advisory Committees (RACs), right?  And that the members of the national committee (in this case the Division III men's soccer committee) chair these RACs, but are non-voting members of the RACs?  The regional rankings are decided by the voting members of the RACs, not by the national committee member who chairs the RAC.

Flying Weasel- thanks for the info.   I wrongly assumed the chair was actually the leader of the RAC, and not just a non-voting member.   My stance remains the same but should have been pointed at the RACs as a group.   It's vital to give the Regional Chair the best possible argument to enter into a debate, and conference performance over weeks of play should not be so easily blurred by knockout tourney results. 

[Gregory Sager]

So as the Region 2 chair, as the at large picks are winding down, Margolis is asked to compare his highest available seed vs the others,

As Flying Weasel explained, it doesn't work this way. The regional chairs are non-voting members of the regional advisory committees, so for Margolis this would not be "his highest available seed."

and the Region 3 chair has Rochester.  So Margolis says "I have MIT, the team that won the NEWMAC regular season and lost in the finals of their tournament.  They are 4-3-1 vs ranked teams vs Rochester's 3-3-1, who finished 6th in the UAA. 

Wouldn't happen. Conference standings finish is not germane to the criteria.

But more importantly, my team played both within the last month - we tied Rochester despite outshooting them 27-12 and we lost to the MIT in OT while being outshot 13-6.

Wouldn't happen. Granular statistical details like that aren't a part of the process. For one thing, they're frequently misleading. And I'm pretty sure that football, which has such a small schedule and extremely limited interconference crossovers, is the only D3 sport whose committee regularly delves into comparative margins of victory when it comes to ascertaining Pool C bids. And even then it never gets so granular as to go into total yardage, number of first downs, etc. So, again, stuff such as # of shots (or SOG, or corners, etc.) are not considered germane to the criteria.

I think clearly MIT is the more deserving side".  Hard to believe the Region 2 chair, making this argument would have any problem winning over voters.

Problem is, the team Margolis instead chose to argue for was WPI, the NEWMAC 5th place team

Again, wouldn't happen. Conference standings finish is not germane to the criteria.

that lost in the quarterfinals of the tourney

When a team loses, and whether it's in the regular season or the conference tourney, doesn't matter. Not germane to the criteria. The only exception is if the committee gets approval from D3's championships committee for a special waiver to allow it to consider the final 25% of the season as a discrete unit. And if anyone has ever tried -- amidst the rush of Selection Day, mind you -- to send an appeal up the chain of command to the championships committee for such a waiver on short notice, I've never heard of it.

and had a 3-4-2 record vs ranked teams.   Mind you, Brandeis also lost to WPI this year, so Margolis still could have made an argument for WPI over Rochester.  But the point is Margolis, as the chair of Region 2, buried the best argument for an at large bid for that region down under the teams that finished 4th and 5th in the league.  I'm not saying he did it consciously,  but simply pointing out that decisions in the Regional rankings are vital.

Sure. But, again, they're not his regional ranking decisions.

Another example is Hopkins, the outright winner of the Centennial conference with a 4-3-1 record vs ranked teams yet ending up ranked behind Gettysburg (5th in the Centennial) after GC "makes a run" in the Centennial tourney, allowing them to get to 3-4-2 record vs ranked teams.    I get that the GC beat Hopkins in the conf tourney, but the regular season has to mean something.

Sure it does. For Pool C purposes each regular season game counts for just as much as a conference tourney game. No more, no less. And each non-conference game counts for just as much as a conference game, no more, no less, in terms of the primary criteria. (In terms of the secondary criteria, non-conference games actually matter more.) Again, it's all right there on page 23.

   Of course, both Hopkins and Gettysburg were able to make the tourney, as well as Region V's 6th ranked team Swarthmore.    But no one was surprised that GC and Swat left after 1 game.

Irrelevant.

And as could be expected, Hopkins found a way to win a tight game and almost snuck into the sweet 16.

Irelevant. Anybody can play the 20/20 hindsight game. But nobody has a foolproof crystal ball that allows them to pick for Pool C only the teams that are going to perform well over the next few weeks. And, what's more, the eventual results are a completely separate issue from the purpose at hand, which is to pick the best teams according to the criteria given to the committee.

So it's not so much that we need to avoid putting teams with losing records in a conference into the big tourney, although of course that's a red flag.  But the regular season conference performance provides great comparison between teams playing the same schedule.  A 1st place team has proven over weeks of play that they have worth.  Regions shouldn't allow a knockout tourney to have more say in determining a team's ability to get results.

You're separating games into groupings that are not regarded as such by the committee. Again, look at the manual. It doesn't distinguish between when games are played, or whether they were considered regular-season non-conference games, regular-season conference games, or conference tournament games. They all count the same. In terms of the circumstances of the game, they're only interested in whether or not the game was regional, and whether or not it was against an eligible D3 school (i.e., a full D3 member or a school in its third or fourth school year of provisional D3 membership).

[wingtips2]

Just wanted to point out from an NCAA rules perspective that it was not necessary for Conn to sub in the pk specialist goalie before OT expired.  That would be the case under FIFA rules, but NCAA rules allow any non-ejected player to participate.  As far as the idea of getting him in the game to avoid putting him in cold for pks, I get it, but the substitution itself was not required by the rules.  Another quirk in NCAA pk rules.  FIFA has all 11 players participating, or else a reduction by the team with 11 if one team is playing with 10.  NCAA rules ask a team to designate 10 kickers, one of whom may be the goalkeeper.  In the Tufts-Stevens shootout, teams only went 10 deep instead of 11 before allowing repeat kickers.

They also designated a backup goalkeeper to take a kick.
It's ridiculous that anybody can participate like that.

[wingtips2]

SlideTackle, I think saying NESCAC got no respect is a bit of distortion.  They did get 4, which is pretty good and about what they usually get.  Yes, they deserved five this year. And yes, they should have gotten one of the Centennial bids and Rochester should not have received a bid.

The geographic concentration of the NESCAC in a singular area doesn't help their case. 
The UAA is spread out and each of the teams could be theoretically be considered top team in their region and have the entire conference get in. 
And the Centennial teams have a lot more wiggle room geographically as well. 

And this has probably been discussed before, but why isn't Tufts in the UAA?  Their academic profile as a research university with endless graduate programs certainly matches the UAA teams more than the NESCAC.

Not sure what geographics has to do with this. If you put NESCAC teams that finished 5-10 this year in several other region I or even region II conferences they'd win far more games and likely finish in the top 2 in many if not all of those conferences.  Hamilton, who finished 10th in the NESCAC this year and is quite talented, beat Oneonta in October.  Oneonta gave Mid a good game but finishes the year having lost to 2 NESCSAC teams. I don't think Cortland will be very competitive against Amherst, but we shall see.

Don't recall all of this year's games, but I believe in UAA v. NESCAC this year NESCAC teams won their games and I don't believe gave up a goal.  The two I recall are Tufts 4-0 over Brandeis and Conn 3-0 over NYU.  Both those NESCAC teams lost to or tied NESCAC teams that didn't get bids to the tournament.  I guess every year is different, but the last tournament had 2 NESCACs in the national finals, they have been ranked in the top 10 most of the year and yet the committee gave only 4 slots to NESCAC and 5 to UAA. I wouldn't chalk that up to geographics.  Probavbly more a misjudgment of conference strength.

Geography has EVERYTHING to do with it.
There are a limited number of Pool C spots.  They can't all be teams from New England, where every NESCAC team is based. 

Let's look at this year.
Wesleyan is 5th in the NESCAC and 5th in the regional rankings. 
Entering them in the tournament would give four of the 21 pool C bids to one region - which isn't unheard of, but it doesn't seem to be an annual occurrence. 

The four UAA teams receiving pool C bids all were top 2 in their regions, pretty much guaranteeing (based on historical norms) those teams spots in the tournament. 

Now imagine that all the UAA teams are in one region this year.  Rochester would likely be rated 5th best in that 'region' after finishing .500 in the conference, good for 6th place.  Do they get into the tournament?  Unlikely. 

But, in real life, the committee will be thinking, "do we pick the #5 team in this region in order to keep out one of these four teams ranked #2 in their region?" That #5 NESCAC team would have to be demonstrably better, ie beaten one of the UAA teams head-to-head, in order to take that pool c slot.  Because the UAA is spread out geographically, when they have teams sitting at the top of their region (as was the case this year), they are going to get more bids than a geographically concentrated conference.