I have posted my weekly report on the question whether the RPI will be usable for this season: NCAA Tournament: Keeping the RPI Honest, Part 4. It is based on games played through Sunday, March 14. It shows how current RPI ranks compare to historic baselines for what they should look like from a conference and region perspective. As an additional bonus, at the end of the report I show the RPI Top 60 through Sunday’s games. My approach with the weekly reports simply is to provide underlying data related to the question whether the RPI will be usable and then leave it to you to decide whether it will. Soon, I will be posting a new article on the question: How In the World Is the Committee Going to Make At Large Selections?
The NCAA has issued its first set of RPI Rankings, based on games played through Sunday, March 14. A major question this year is whether they will be usable. Check them out and see what you think.
Uh, given that most of the top RPI teams have played very few games--Central Connecticut, ranked 2nd, as played 1 game!, and Army (no. 1), two games!--I'm going to assert that this will not be usable, which I think has been your position for a while.
I have posted my weekly report on the question whether the RPI will be usable for this season: NCAA Tournament: Keeping the RPI Honest, Part 5. It is based on games played through Sunday, March 21. It shows how current RPI ranks compare to historic baselines for what they should look like from a conference and region perspective. My approach with the weekly reports simply is to provide underlying data related to the question whether the RPI will be usable and then leave it to readers to decide whether it will. Later today, I will be publishing a three-part series of articles on the question: How In the World Is the Committee Going to Make At Large Selections? It will include a method to make the NCAA Tournament at large selections that I think would be reasonable for the Committee to use, if it decides the RPI will not be usable. I will post links to the articles here, once I have published them.
As promised, I now have published a series of three articles on the question of how the Women’s Soccer Committee will make its NCAA Tournament at large selections this year. The first article discusses two fundamental options the Committee will have: (1) use the RPI in making selectons or (2) do not use the RPI and instead turn to past history as an indicator of appropriate conference and region levels of representation in making selections: NCAA Tournament: How In the World Is the Committee Going to Make At Large Selections? - Part 1: RPI or No RPI? The second and third articles are based on the likelihood that the RPI will not be usable and describes a method of using past history to set tentative conference and region levels of representation among the at large teams but then using this year’s games to decide on the actual teams that will fill the conference and region slots. Article 2 is NCAA Tournament: How In the World Is the Committee Going to Make At Large Selections? - Part 2: The Top 16 Teams. Article 3 is NCAA Tournament: How In the World Is the Committee Going to Make At Large Selections? - Part 3: The Remaining At Large Teams. Included in the second and third articles are the teams that, under the method I describe, would be tentative seeds (Tier 1), a pool of the likely additional at large selections (Tier 2), and a pool of long-shot additional at large selections (Tier 3), all based on the actual results of games played through March 21 and simulated results of games not yet played (including conference tournament games). I will be updating the three tiers of teams weekly, so follow along and discuss if you are interested.
Following Chris Henderson’s tweets today and he has Pepperdine in as an at large. How? They have no good wins and a bad tie. Is it just because no one else has a good resume either so their wins will be better than other schools wins? Basically the third place team from the WCC will go no matter what?
No one really has a clue how the NCAA tournament is going to select teams. They haven’t released anything that says how they will judge the teams this year. The RPI wont work. Probably will go off of reputation. This will be the easiest tournament for most of the big names. They will get byes the first round and also have easier 2nd round games then normal. Cutting out about 50% of the power 5 teams who would normally get an at large bid will benefit the elites. I still don’t get why the decision was made so early to only have a 48 team tournament. Basketball still had a full tournament. I don’t see why the fall sports aren’t playing a full tournament.
Actually, they have said how they will do it, although I doubt they mean it. The Pre-Championship Manual says they will do it the way they always have, including using the RPI. That probably simply is copying the Manual standard language and using it. If men’s basketball had been in the current situation, would we have seen that in their Pre-Championship Manual? Somehow I do not think so.
For any who have looked at the articles I wrote on using historic conference and region representation as a basis for allocating teams among conferences, for the NCAA Tournament at large selections, I have revised slightly the teams assigned to the different tiers for selection purposes. I did this to take into account that during the conference regular seasons, teams may not always be playing the same number of games. I fixed this problem by doing regular season rankings within conferences based on points earned per game played rather than just total points earned. The links in post #80 above still are good to take you to the articles with the corrected tier tables.
For those who do not want to read the articles describing where the tiers come from, here they are: Tier 1 are tentative seeded teams. Tier 2 are tentative candidates to be additional at large teams. Tier 3 are potential long shots as at large teams. The yellow highlighted teams are my currently projected automatic qualifiers. The distributions of slots among conferences and regions are based on historic levels of representation among conferences and regions, with the teams on the lists based on results this year in actual games played and simulated results for games not yet played. The specific teams all are subject to change as additional games get played.
How is Washington a potential long shot for a Tier 3 at large bid? They are #4 in the Pac-12 right now?
For at large team selection, my suggestion is that they allocate numbers of positions to conferences and regions based on past history (i.e., since 2013, which was when the last major conference re-alignment was completed). Then, for the positions conferences get, they decide which teams get them based on this year’s performance. This is the best and fairest way to get the right teams in the bracket. I do not agree that the tournament will be easier this year for the big names, other than the first round bye. In the second round, if the Committee does it the way I think they should, the seeds will be the #1 through #16 teams and their opponents likely will be the #17 through #29 teams plus three conference automatic qualifiers outside that group. If they can work the bracket positions right, the three conference automatic qualifiers could be the top three that are not seeded.
Of course the tournaments easier. You are taking away 16 teams and they are all at large bids. That means that’s probably at least 14 power 5 teams. A 7-10 place ACC team wont be in the tournament and that’s a tougher match up then almost all the mid major conference champions outside of like 5 mid major conferences.
I am projecting that they will finish in the #6 position, which means a two position drop from where they are now. That puts them in current Tier 3. If they stay in the #4 conference position where they are now, they will be in Tier 2 (from which likely all but 3 teams will be at large selections). If they get up to #3, they will be in Tier 1. As I wrote, "The specific teams all are subject to change as additional games get played." What is important now is not the specifics of which team will end up where, but what method the Committee will use to select teams. My method is based on historic data about how many teams each conference and regional playing pool should have in each tier. If the Committee is not going to use something like that method, then what is it going to do?
Thinking about what you have posted: Using the table in Post #86, assuming that all of the at large teams will come from Tiers 1 and 2, and assuming that the highlighted teams are automatic qualifiers, all for purposes of illustration, then Vanderbilt, South Florida (could be Memphis instead), and Georgetown will be automatic qualifiers that do not receive byes and 8 of the remaining Tier 2 teams will be at large selections that do not receive byes, for a total of 11 Tier 2 teams being in the Tournament and not receiving byes. This means that none of the Tier 3 teams would get at large selections, so only the Tier 3 automatic qualifiers would be playing. All the other teams in the Tournament would be weaker conference automatic qualifiers. The likely Tier 3 automatic qualifiers would be the conference champions from the Atlantic Sun (Florida Gulf Coast or North Florida?), Colonial (Hofstra?), Mountain West (Boise State?), Patriot (Navy or Army?), Summit (Denver or South Dakota State?), and Sun Belt (Arkansas State or South Alabama?) conferences. These conferences are on the Tier 3 list because the Committee has given each conference at least one first round home game over the years since 2013. I will make further assumptions, that the Committee, in forming the bracket, will separate all of the 11 unseeded teams from Tier 2 in the first round and also will separate from them and each other the top 5 Tier 3 automatic qualifiers. Each of those teams will play an automatic qualifier from farther down on the list. If the Committee does it this way, then it is likely that the seeded team opponents in their first games would be the 3 automatic qualifier Tier 2 teams, the 8 at large Tier 2 teams, and the 5 Tier 3 automatic qualifiers. Of these, the potentially weaker than usual opponents for the seeds in their second round games are the 5 Tier 3 automatic qualifiers. Of these, I do not think Hofstra can be counted as a weaker than usual second round opponent. The other 4 may or may not be. So you may be right that some of the seeded team second round games will be easier than usual (the weaker Tier 3 automatic qualifiers), but most of them will not. If anything, I think it more likely that more Tier 2 teams will have easier first round matches than normal since they will be playing only weaker conference automatic qualifiers. In other words, the strong conference teams that will not be playing this year, but that ordinarily would be, will not be creating difficult first round matches for the unseeded strong conference teams that are in the Tournament. Who emerges from the first round, however, will not be that different than what we are used to seeing, with possible exceptions for some of the Tier 3 automatic qualifiers that previously might have been eliminated by the strong conference teams not in the Tournament. If the Committee were to set the bracket so that each of the four #1 seeds gets one of the Tier 3 automatic qualifiers in its round two first game, then the four #1 seeds likely would have weaker round two opponents than is normal. The other seeds would face opponents as strong as usual, and possibly ones that are a little fresher since their first round opponents might have been weaker than normal.
With the single site news, there is no reason at all the Committee could not set up the bracket the way I described in my preceding post. Thus all the seeds will be in the second round due to byes and, in addition, all the unseeded at large selections and all the top unseeded automatic qualifiers very likely will get to the second round and be their opponents. Unfortunately, the first round games will be April 27-28 and the second round games April 30-May 1. This means the first round winners will have their second round game on the third day after their first round game. This seems like a big advantage for the seeded teams, given their first round byes to me, but maybe it is enough recover time. I have asked someone who will have a pretty good idea if it is enough. Other notable item from the press release: The bracket announcement will be April 19.
Soccer Wire NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Soccer Championships to be held entirely in North Carolina Currently, the campus venues that will host tournament games are at Campbell, East Carolina, University of North Carolina Wilmington, UNC Greensboro and Wake Forest. Off-campus sites for tournament matches include: Bryan Park (Greensboro, North Carolina). J. Burt Gillette Athletic Complex (Wilson, North Carolina). Sportsplex (Matthews, North Carolina). WakeMed Soccer Park (Cary, North Carolina). Other dates for the tournaments are: First round — Women, April 27-28; Men, April 29. Second round — Women, April 30-May 1; Men, May 2. Third round — Women, May 5; Men, May 6. Quarterfinals — Women, May 9; Men, May 10.
Not a good week for Tennessee. Lose to Cincinnati 2-1 then get smashed 7-0 at home against North Carolina. Have to think that could bump them from the tournament. No shame in losing to UNC but losing 7-0. . . Yikes
For a team in Tennessee’s position, a big question is going to be at how high a level they have demonstrated they can compete. Ordinarily, I think that means they would need ties or wins against highly ranked opponents. And, if they lose against highly ranked opponents it would not hurt that much and the game score would not be a significant factor. I this case, however, maybe ....
I did - Weird game. Tennessee had some chances, had a number of corner kicks.. But Dickey didn't have to make any tough saves and it seemed like UNC would just decide it's time to score some more goals.. I pull for UNC, but was hoping for a competitive game.
I have published two new articles at my RPI and Bracketology blog. They follow the two themes I have been working on: (1) Will the RPI be usable for this season? Everything so far points to, "No," and (2) If the RPI is not usable, how can the Committee form the NCAA Tournament bracket? The first article is an update on whether the RPI will be usable: NCAA Tournament: Keeping the RPI Honest, Part 6. The second article is on my alternative, non-RPI, method for making at large selections, updated based on actual game results through Sunday, March 28: NCAA Tournament: How In the World Is the Committee Going to Make At Large Selections? Part 4 - As of March 28. Based on my alternative method, here is the March 28 table of the three tiers of teams. The yellow highlighted teams are actual or simulated automatic qualifiers. Tier 1 teams are tentative seeds. Tier 2 are tentative additional at large selections. Tier 3 are potential, but longer shot, at large selections. The tiers are based on simulated finishing positions within conferences.