Yep, but by no means did I predict San Diego State to win. They aren't intimidated by UCLA, as evident the first time they played them earlier this year.
Yeah I know, who the heck wants to check out the match online in just "audio" ? This is 2013. By the way, nachos and spicy cheese dip, and a bottle of beer, is hitting the spot now. It goes great with an online feed.
What's the record for largest margin of victory by a non-seeded team in the tournament? Mississippi is clobbering Jackson State by a score of 9-0, and the match still has almost ten minutes left.
Aw shucks, they didn't get a 10th goal. GameTracker still shows that it's at the 81:50 mark. The # of goals scored must have broke GameTracker, and they'll have to get it fixed. http://www.olemisssports.com/gametr...ool=ole&sport=wsoccer&camefrom=&startschool=&
Marquette is 6th in last soccer america rankings: http://www.socceramerica.com/article/54834/soccer-america-womens-top-25.html !
How does home field work in the second round? Take the Stanford versus South Carolina game. Where is that game game scheduled? Does South Carolina get home field because of their higher seed or is South Carolina stuck out West having to play in the UCLA pod?
Last games of the night: UCLA 3-0 San Diego St. (game is stuck with 8 seconds left as a San Diego St. player is injured) Stanford 1-0 Cal St. Fullerton One pod in the UNC region is complete for next week (should be in LA): (2) UCLA vs. Kentucky (3) South Carolina vs. Stanford
For each upcoming group of four teams, the two games next weekend are played at a single site. The higher seed hosts -- or if the higher seed loses in the first round, the remaining seed hosts. The only exception is if the team that otherwise would host has not bid to have the games or does not have a field that meets NCAA specs. UCLA has been through this before and certainly has bid to host. It has a field that meets NCAA specs. So, South Carolina gets to play Stanford at UCLA and, if they win, to play UCLA at UCLA.
This is correct. They will host all the way to the College Cup, and of course the College Cup is also in North Carolina this year. No school has played a higher % of their NCAA tournament games in-state than UNC, all time. Of course, being a #1 seed in > 90% of years that Anson has been there, and with the majority of College Cups taking place in North Carolina as well, they have hardly ever had to leave the state. Last year was a rare exception when they had to travel to BYU. That's why last year's National Championship was more special for UNC. It honestly felt like the first time they ever won a National Title when "they weren't supposed to". UNC is the only team last year that would have beaten BYU (at BYU) in the NCAA tournament. Penn State would have lost there (they actually did lose 3-1 in the regular season last year at BYU). Stanford would have lost there. Florida State would have lost there. It took some serious Crystal Dunn magic and the miraculous play of the game from Brook Elby, to save the game in overtime, and to save the season for UNC. Otherwise, BYU wins in dramatic fashion at home, like they did against Auburn and Marquette in the NCAA tournament last year before they played UNC in the Elite 8 (penalty kicks, overtime, etc, against Auburn and Marquette).
How was Marquette's RPI strong enough to be a #2 seed to begin with? They didn't have a strong schedule. They had exactly one good win over ND early on. They lost to Portland, UCLA and Illinois St. Hellooooo! What about their resume' screams #2 seed? What about their resume' screams any kind of seed?
I'm sorry, but if Marquette played an ACC round robin schedule, do they even make the tournament? Maybe CPT can tell me why Marquette deserved their #2 or how the committee royally messed up?
I would take Wake Forest at 10-6-2 over Marquette at 18-4 all day every day, yet they ended up with a #2 seed? They had one pretty good win over Georgetown. A 15-2-2 Georgetown doesn't go .500 in the ACC in my opinion. They lost to Illinois State!! The committee needs to look at SOS a little more IMO.
The Committee is convinced by a preponderance of the evidence ... ... that Marquette is not a #1 seed
Let's see if this comes out as a readable table: OK, it does. Take a look at Marquette's Element 2, which is the average of its opponents' winning percentages. In the overall RPI formula, notwithstanding how the formula appears on the surface, Element 2 has an effective weight of 40%. Element 3 is the average of your opponents' opponents' winning percentages. It has an effective weight of 10%. So, if you're just looking at Strength of Schedule, Element 2 is effectively 80% and Element 3 20%. If you compare how Marquette's Element 2 compares to the other top 25 teams, you can see that its opponents' winning percentage is one of the best. On the other hand, if you look at its opponents' opponents' winning percentages, it is not so good. Essentially, Marquette's RPI was fed by opponents who achieved good records against not so good opponents. One of the critiques of the RPI is that there can be significant disparities between a team's RPI rank and the team's rank in terms of what it contributes to its opponents' strengths of schedule. This is a function of the fact that for the RPI, the effective weights are 50% the team's own winning percentage and 50% the team's strength of schedule, whereas for what a team contributes to its opponents' strengths of schedule the effective weight is 80% the team's winning percentage and 20% its opponents' winning percentages. Thus Marquette was benefiting greatly from its opponents' winning percentages, with that benefit not sufficiently tempered by its opponents' strengths of schedule. My Iteration 5 URPI cures this problem. Under that rating system, here's what I get for the top 25 teams' ranks: As you can see, it has Marquette down at #8. Massey has them at #9. Bennett has them at #20. For at least part of the season, Massey and Bennett incorporate consideration of the teams' past histories. I don't know if their current numbers have filtered that out completely or not. I think it's safe to say that Marquette was not the #2 team in the country. On the other hand, when I put Marquette into a competition with the top 13 ARPI teams, it came out deserving a #2 seed. First I seed the four #1s and then I seed the four #2s out of the remaining 9 teams from the top 13. Once I have used the ARPI to define that group of teams, it no longer has a part in the competition. Rather, the competition is based on head to head results among the 9 teams, results of those teams against common opponents, and results of those teams against the Tournament field (actually, I use results against the top 50 in the ARPI). I also look at results over the last eight games to see if anyone has fallen apart at the end of the season; and at conference strength and standing based on what appear to be some Committee practices over the last six years. I run the competition like a round robin, with each team compared to each other team and my then tallying how many teams each team came out "ahead of." In the competition, Marquette was a #2 seed. I haven't yet run my system using the Iteration 5 URPI to see what difference its different ratings would make. That's a task for next week. If you have read my discussion about the #4 seeds over on the Bracketology thread, you'll know that I have some discussion there of Wake Forest. Wake may be a team that the Committee declined to seed because of its results over the last eight games. The Committee may have decided that the end of season Wake (post Stengel) was not the same team as the first half of the season Wake and that its rating at the end of the season therefore was particularly unreliable as a representation of Wake's ability to compete at a seed level. This might be debatable if it in fact is what the Committee decided, but it wouldn't be a clearly erroneous decision -- unlike a couple of the Committee's other decisions.
Re Marquette, cpthomas makes (of course) good observations about how the RPI incorporates Strength-of-Schedule and especially the effect of Element 2. I like to illustrate the problem this way Marquette opponent RPI "approx strength" Massey rank Colorado Coll 23 51 DePaul 43 68 St Johns 52 69 Portland St 47 89 Illinois St 48 70 The RPI "approx strength" is a close measure of how much a team contributes to its opponents RPI - the higher the ranking, the higher the system considers the team a strong opponent in how it calculates Strength-of-Schedule. (source for this is the excellent nc-soccer website - go to the page and click twice on the approx strength column to sort the table from highest to lowest) You can see quite a disparity between how the RPI and Massey rank these teams in terms of how strong an opponent they are for the teams they play. But that chart only shows part of it. The other part is how the RPI downgrades other schools when calculating their opponents' ranking. Illinois State was the 48th toughest team to play against according to the RPI system. Here's some examples of teams that rank below them. team RPI "approx strength" Wake Forest 65 Minnesota 67 Notre Dame 69 Arkansas 72 Ohio St 76 Oklahoma St 83 Wisconsin 93 Illinois 104 Boston College 109 Duke 114 Miami 124 Maryland 125 That's right, Illinois State is ranked by 21 places a tougher team to play than Notre Dame in how the RPIs are calculated! Boston College is the 109th toughest team to schedule and play! Duke, 114! It's amazing the RPI doesn't seem more screwball than it is.
Final: Georgetown 2-0 LaSalle. Hoyas advance to play UVa Louisville 1-1 Illinois St. at the start of 1OT
So how does next weekend work? Will 4 teams gather at one school's location, whatever the highest seed is of those still in? Is that how it works? Does Notre Dame still have a chance to be a host providing Michigan loses tonight?
Yep, four teams gather at one school's location. If this year is anything like last year, Notre Dame has a chance of hosting if Michigan loses. If there are no seeds available to host, then it comes down to the NCAA's decision to choose the host, based on applications submitted from potential hosting schools.