As you know from being a soccer fan, it's not the better team which always scores more goals. That's why the entire body of work has to be considered. Based on your post, I looked up the box score of the Hofstra/Pitt game. Hofstra had more total shots (11-5), more shots on goal (6-4), more corner kicks (6-0), and the game was in Pittsburgh. Basing one's judgement on the result of that one game doesn't tell the whole tale of a season.
Wow...so from your lofty perspective, the 60% or so, of Division 1 women soccer players who play in lowly, NON- Big 5 conferences (aka mid majors) are "a bunch of scrubs stumbling around the field"? Minnesota lost to UC Santa Barbara this season. As a reminder UCSB finished second to LAST in the Big West conference this season. Is the Big West one of those automatic qualifiers with "a bunch of scrubs stumbling around the field"....because one of their worst teams beat the Big 10 team you're crying about not getting into the tournament.
Since you're a numbers guy, then consider that really, the difference between a #36 RPI (Rice) and a #48 RPI (Minnesota) was 0.0167. For that rating difference, one would expect game results between the two teams to be within this range: Difference of 0.0182: higher rated team wins 52.5% of the time, loses 31.7%, and ties 15.7% Difference of 0.0129: 48.0%, 36.9%, 15.1%. But, to go even further into the numbers, the RPI underrates teams from the conferences with the best average RPIs and overrates teams from the weaker conferences. So, from a numbers perspective the RPI likely overrates Rice and underrates Minnesota. I know of two rating systems that I believe are trustworthy and that don't discriminate based on conference strength: Massey: Minnesota #32, Rice #53, Cincinnati #55 5 Iteration ARPI (my system using the RPI basic skeleton but with modifications to remove the RPI's most glaring problems): Minnesota #32, Cincinnati #40, Rice #53. You'll note that Massey's and my system's rankings of Minnesota and Rice are exactly identical. The exactness is strictly fortuitous. That they are similar is not. The RPI is somewhat reasonable for bunching teams in groups. Relying on teams' exact RPI rankings as a basis for choice credits the RPI with far more precision than is appropriate. Even the NCAA agrees with that. You would be right except for one thing: I'll have to go back and re-review and verify this for the years in the 2007 to 2009 or 2010 time period, but I think I'm right in saying that over the last 10 years, when two unseeded teams are playing each other at one of their sites, the NCAA always has assigned the game to the team with the better RPI, so long as it submitted a qualifying bid for the game and met the NCAA's field standards. If the Committee decided to change that policy this year, it did it unannounced. If I were Hofstra or Georgetown or Alabama (if Alabama submitted a bid), I'd be asking the Committee for an explanation. And, if the explanation is that the NCAA changed the policy this year, I'd be asking what the new policy is. That seems like something all the teams are entitled to know.
You're extrapolating a lot from what I said above, and putting a lot of words in my mouth. First of all, did you see my post agreeing that Minnesota, with an RPI of #48, probably didn't deserve to get into the tourney based on the fact that they crapped the bed during their OOC schedule? I was speaking about automatic qualifiers IN GENERAL not being good, not this year's women's soccer tourney specifically. If a team from a non-power 5 conference gets into ANY tournament, it should be based on merit. The same applies to a power conference. If only one team from a power conference deserves to get in during a down year, so be it. Here's a perfect non-soccer example of this. My alma mater, Rutgers, finished the 2017 men's lacrosse season with an RPI of #12. Logic should dictate that , with a 16 team tournament, that the #12 team country should get in. But Bryant, who finished the regular season 8-7, got hot at the time of their conference tourney, and won the NEC. So, they made it into the field, despite their RPI of #35. Monmouth won the MAAC in lacrosse in 2017, and despite their RPI of #38 this year, they also got into the NCAA lacrosse tourney. Air Force, with an RPI of #24, won the Southern Conference. They got in. Do you really think this is a fair way of doing things?
So, tell me more about how you thought Horizon League champs IUPUI earned the right to get killed by Notre Dame 5-0. Or let's talk about MAC champion Toledo's thrilling 5-0 drubbing at the hands of Wisconsin. America East champ Stony Brook finished the season 11-11-0 after Penn State beat them 7-0. (Do you REALLY think a .500 team deserved to be selected?) Lastly, the piece de resistance, was the Utah State Lady Wolverines winning the WAC, allowing them to get pummeled by Stanford 9-1. This gave them a stellar 10-12-1 record on the year. Ok, maybe "scrubs" was mean-spirited and a little strong. But did you really enjoy watching Stanford squeeze off 33 shots against a team who really didn't belong there? Automatic qualifiers have no place in tournament selection. Just take the top 64 rated teams an leave it at that. Then, we'd have some mid-majors who BELONGED there. Yale (Ivy), Drexel (Colonial), St, Louis (Atlantic Ten), San Jose State (Mountain West), Northeastern (Colonial), and Cincinnati (AAC) are all small-conference schools which finished in the top 64 in RPI, but got snubbed by the NCAA selection committee. Forget about Minnesota. My sympathies are reserved for THESE girls who play for mid-major schools and got fornicated by the AQ system.
I can see where you are coming from. Only taking the best of the best would make sense but what is the motivation for everyone else? What are they playing for? Conference championships the lead to nothing? You could have a similar argument for the World Cup: why not just take the top ranked 32 nations according to FIFA and skip the qualification process. My guess is that for some programs their goal is just to make the NCAA tournament and this is considered great success. Again, I see your point but this is model and just like in the world cup you need to watch some of the "interesting" group stage match ups before the good stuff happens later.
If you don't take an automatic qualifier who, say, wins the conference tourney after the regular season champ is knocked out, then you'd have to ditch the conference tournaments as they would be pointless. They are a bit pointless now (in many sports), if you ask me. In the P5 conference all of the better regular season teams will make the tournament anyway (unless they've got a bad RPI, which is somewhat unusual, so a lot of the games are somewhat pointless. It is, as they say, a dilemma. You have the same problem in basketball.
But that would be contrary to the founding intent of the NCAA itself. Its first job, when it created itself from nothing, was to be the third-tier aggregator over all conferences' champions. There was already grassroots interest in having a "Collegiate Champions Cup" to determine a national champion. (In fact, different sports have many different predecessor organizations that ran their nat'l tourneys before they all got absorbed into NCAA.) Hence, AQs are grandfathered in: they antecede the NCAA itself. They could kick NCAA to the curb, not the other way around. Think about it: You go to the NCAA with a proposal for a Best of the Best Strictly Top 64 tourney. (333 - 64) = 269 member schools vote against it Your proposal is DOA. Ergo, it hasn't happened, and almost surely never will. (This also explains much of CONCACAF, and NORCECA in mvb/wvb) Your argument has some merit for those sports whose tournaments take fewer teams than conferences. But some sports, in particular *bb, wvb, woso, have enough participation and interest that they can support tourney fields roughly 2x the number of conferences. Those sports will always take the hallowed NCAA model of all conference champions + roughly an equal number of at-larges. (In years past, the field itself hasn't been that large -- and so it evolved to become that large.) The D1 woso tournament wasn't always 64 teams. Arguably, it became 64 teams specifically to accept all AQs. (63 guesses how that sausage got voted-for ) More broadly, international team events like World Cups and Olympics also admit some qualifiers who don't "deserve" to be there on pure strength. The argument has also been made (every quadrennium) that it's such a shame to see some minnow living out their dream on the big stage, while Italy miss out . Undoubtedly, a Best 32 Invitational Tournament would indeed be stronger than a WC. And it, too, is DOA: too many minnows vote it out. Vested self-interest will ensure that every organization gravitates to a compromise between the union of its members' desires.
Never gonna happen unless the power five conferences break away which will change the whole landscape anyway. And I wouldn't feel too badly for these schools who have to play Stanford in the NCAA tournament; if they have won their conference tournament they deserve to be moving onto the big dance. Regardless of how the game goes those athletes will remember that experience forever and it is also good exposure for their university and soccer program. I understand what you are saying about taking the top 64 teams but don't agree with you. The automatic qualifier system works well and it is fun.
The way to assure that the best teams get in the NCAA tournament is pretty obvious: Get rid of the end-of-season conference tournaments that always produce a few underdog winners who don't really deserve to be in the NCAA based on their season record. You take the best regular-season teams, which is far more valid than a conference tournament. In fact, the conference tourneys really serve no purpose other than to give undeserving teams, along with some bubble teams, a shot at the NCAA. I'd certainly support the idea of ditching the conference tourneys and maybe adding one or two more regular season games instead. The regular season, an extended body of work, is the best indicator of who belongs in the NCAA.
Interesting statement. This year, I saw some evidence that the Women's Soccer Committee, in its decisions, valued the conference regular season standings more than conference tournament results. My guess as to why, if it's true, is exactly what you're saying: a full round robin, or even close to one, is more indicative of how teams with a conference stand in relation to each other than are results in a single-elimination tournament. I think this is particularly true in soccer, where the nature of the game produces a relatively high number of upsets (I think, I couldn't prove it relative to other sports).
The only way that's ever going to happen is if you have one super-conference, which replaces the P5 and some mid-majors, and that's not going to happen anytime soon. Also, there will always be some mid-major conferences who will hold a conference tourney. I disagree about getting rid of conference tournaments. I think the conference tournaments are what some players/teams live for. I mean, only one team in the entire country can win an NCAA championship, but many players can walk away from their respective schools and say they at least won a conference championship in their four year tenure. These games are about the student-athletes (not only about the fans), and they deserve to put a trophy on their shelves if they've worked hard. If you asked me whether I like the university/college system acting like the minor league of soccer in America, I would say definitely not. I wish there were a better alternative for developing players.
A round robin regular conference schedule with the conference championship going to the first place team is to me a much greater accomplishment than winning a one-game knock-out tournament where missing/injured players can have a huge impact. It can still be a trophy but a more deserving one. Ask any English professional team if they would rather win the FA cup or the Premier League Championship.
So, each team would play more conference games, correct? If so, in that scenario, the probability dictates that end of conference schedule opponents would be weaker for the top tier teams.
Regarding conference tournaments, I remember a while ago one of the power conferences that has a conference tournament was reviewing whether or not to keep it (not the Big 10). One of the things it did was consult its players. The players really wanted to keep the tournament because it was so much fun.
Well, that wasn't pretty. Ohio State got bumped in the first round. Rutgers, Northwestern, and Wisconsin all got jettisoned in the second round. The only Big Ten team left standing in the round of 16 is Penn State. Thoughts?
Thought is good thing Minnesota didn't get in as they would have lost as well. Penn State is clearly best team in Big 10.
Northwestern were very over matched talent-wise against a very good UCLA team; NW held UCLA to only 1 goal, which I thought was very respectable. Rutgers played West Virginia tough, took them all the way to penalty shots and two good saves by the WVU keeper was the difference. Wisconsin only lost by a goal to #1 ranked South Carolina. So, ultimately, I think the Ohio State loss to Vanderbilt was the only bad conference loss. Here's a post I found showing the breakdown of teams left by conference. It evinces what many already know, which is the B1G is clearly behind the ACC, PAC12, Big12, and SEC in competitiveness. The big question is who are you going to be rooting for now that only Penn State represents the B1G conference?
I think the fact that Penn State won the national championship 2 years ago and ~17 players on the current roster were part of that 2015 squad bodes well for them. They are not going to get rattled by opponents from the ACC, PAC, Big12, or SEC. I just have not been able to figure out why they haven't been able to pull it together this year and win more games. I was expecting they'd get a #1 seed with all the talent they have.
Well, I'm following peripherally. Anybody see the Stanford dismantling of PSU yesterday? If one believes in the transitive property (which is not always reliable) then it is of note that Stanford beat Auburn 2-0, and beat Florida State 1-0, but beat PSU 4-0. Was the game as lopsided as the score indicates? Or was it just some bad breaks which snowballed? Regardless, this certainly wasn't the Big Ten's year in women's soccer.
4 goals in the first 26 minutes; nothing after that. So just think USA vs Japan in the world cup final in 2015. Poor game plan, IMO, by PSU.