I'm not inclined to go round and round on this, but ... 1. You use RPI frequently in your post. If you want the best teams to duke it out, how are you determining the best? If RPI is determinative, then BC is in but Villanova is out - hence this thread. 2. I predict great success for ACC teams this year - it's our strongest soccer conference. I would also guess that playing at home will be advantageous (9 of 9), as will a first-round buy (7 of 9). [I'll allow someone else to research prior years.] 3. But no, you are correct, I am in fact arguing that even if you proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, with geometric logic, that a duplicate key to the ward room icebox did exist, and that BC was one of the 48 best teams in D-1, I would still take Sandon's Hofstra, North Florida, Wisconsin or Villanova ahead of them. I feel no compulsion to take a .500 team just because they play in the ACC, regardless of their RPI, and spreading the wealth a bit (among other conferences) makes the tournament more interesting (to me), not less so. And when BC comes crying to me about their impressive RPI, I would tell them (from a safe distance, of course) that RPI is all well and good, but that the NCAA D-1 soccer championship will henceforth be contested only by teams that have won more games than they lost. Well, unless those BC-ish teams win their conference tournament - wouldn't want to be too rigid.
But, again, you want to count advancing on PKs in a conference tournament as a "win," at least for Wisconsin and in so doing, that would give BC a "winning" record.
Actually, no I don't. I just take advancing as a positive, and I gave BC credit for advancing in their tournament. I grabbed the 4-2-2 from someone else's earlier post. Actually from @gauchodan (32) Providence (7-1-0) (28) South Florida (6-1-1) (44) Utah Valley (6-1-1) (29) Pacific (5-1-2) (40) North Florida (5-2-1) (47) Lipscomb (5-2-1) (39) Wisconsin (4-2-2) (42) Villanova (4-2-2) (31) Vermont (4-4-0) (33) Virginia Tech (3-2-3) (30) San Diego State (3-3-2) (35) South Carolina (3-4-1) (46) Connecticut (3-4-1) (36) Hofstra (3-5-0) (45) New Hampshire (3-5-0) (49) West Virginia (2-6-0)
The women have 64 teams in their bracket. Playing down from 64 takes the same overall time as playing from 48.
having 32 (32 out of 206, ~15.5%) in the men's tournament is actually closer to the women's tournament (64 out of 334 or ~19.1%) than the 48 (48 out of 206, 23.3%) the men have now. I understand the sentiment of the first round bye, but 64 (31%) would be a pretty diluted field.
I think it would be interesting to grab some statistics on the first round bye. It is a bit unfair for those teams to have to play one less game in route to the final four, but I would also say that some of these teams are going 2 weeks without playing a competitive match e. I'm inclined to say that we see more upsets in the round of 32 (or at least the better teams struggle beat their lesser opponent) than we do in the round of 16, but that's just conjecture. Our differences between whether the "better" team should get in or spreading the wealth likely come from the conferences we more closely follow. Both sides have good arguments and are just a difference of opinion. Again, the difference between BC and Wisconsin, is that BC beat the teams they were supposed to beat, and Wisconsin did not. (2 loses to teams below 50 RPI) if BC was in Wisconsin's conference and played the same schedule Wisconsin did, they would have a better record than 11-4-4 and we wouldn't even be comparing the two. I am not trying to beat a dead horse here. I appreciate the difference of opinion and want the flaws in my logic to be pointed out.
No dog in this fight here, but...Wisconsin also didn't help themselves in their recent past either. 2015 -- 5-11-3 2014 -- 3-12-3 2013 -- 14-5-2 (NCAA 2nd Round) 2012 -- 6-8-5 2011 -- 10-8-2 2010 -- 4-13-3 Historically, have only made NCAA tournament 6 times since 1977, 4 times came from 1991-1995 (4 in 5 years), and the other outside of 2013 was in 1981. I don't know how much the selection committee looks at this, but the last two seasons surely don't help a reputation.
NAIA is setup with 31 teams. Host school automatic bid (1) At-Large bids (6) Conference automatic qualifiers (24) If the host school refuses their automatic bid, the At-Large bids become 8 -- host school no longer receives first-round bye. While it is rather dumb for a host school to get a first-round bye, it's structured nice with automatic bids and automatic qualifiers. Automatic qualifiers can be: win regular season conference, win conference tournament, OR have over 12-team conference and get two automatic bids for your conference. Unless I'm mistaken, the most I've seen from one conference in the national tournament is 3-4. There are 20 conferences in NAIA men's soccer. If a conference has less than 5 member schools, they don't get an automatic bid. I'll say this, any way is structured much better than the DII format. Absolutely archaic and ridiculous.
Yes. I would prefer expansion over contraction because I want college soccer to grow. But all negotiations are quid pro quo.
Put me in the camp, that 48 seems the right number between inclusion, quality and logistics. Perfect, no. But pretty good given resources (time and money) and getting the best teams in while still having upsets. I believe that no matter what number is included, someone is going to be on the bubble and not get into the tournament.
No matter the sport, there will always be a team on the outside looking in. But let's face it, we are arguing over a school that would have just about a zero chance of winning the national championship if it got in. That is almost always the case. Only in college football, with a 4-team field, could one realistically make the case that a team on the outside could have won it all.
The only reason that our beloved JoeSoccerFan likes the status quo, is because the current setup allows him to perform in our Bracket Challenge... Is he more biased than the RPI.
Going to 64 teams wouldn't negatively effect the quality that much. The RPI of teams included would go from the current 38/40 to approximately 50. The weakest teams are typically the winners from weak conferences or teams that sneak up and win conferences over higher RPI teams and that wouldn't change. RPI teams at 50 aren't a hell of a lot different from 40.
To extend a position to soccer that I've taken on NCAA basketball tournament: I'd prefer that a team should be in the top half of its conference for the season - and if a lower half team wins the conference tournament, no more than half of a conference's teams get in. I wouldn't mind seeing a few more bids go to some of the non-power conferences. It seems that each year there are a couple of middle conference teams that have strong seasons but get upset (sometimes eliminated on PKs) in conference tournaments, then the strong team misses the tournament because the selection committee only gives one bid to the conference. I'd like to see how those teams would fare as at-large bids.
Then go out and schedule really strong out of conference teams and travel on the road as Akron, Denver, etc do.
I agree, to a point. It would be nice, though, if the strong teams would return the favor, give up home field advantage and travel to some of the middle schools. (I say this as a supporter of a strong team that will host a strong middle-level team but apparently won't travel there.) Perhaps a better way to say my earlier post: I'd rather see a team that finished #1 or #2 in a mid-major conference in the tournament over a team that finished behind 7 or 8 other teams in its conference. That #9 team from the power conference may (or may not) be better than the #2 from the mid-major. However, we've already seen what the #9 team can do against the good teams in its conference, whereas we've only seen the mid-major play teams that are willing to schedule them. I understand and respect that some reasonable people will have a different opinion.