Hi Coach Jon Welcome back. I am including my annual "Path to the Final 4" table showing the average strength of projected opponents for top 8 teams between the 2nd round and QTF. I think the first round is quantitatively irrelevant. TeamRIP2nd3rdQtfAvg. Opponent RIP William Smith7.33Tufts (19.33)Amherst (7)Case Western Res (4.33)10.22 Carnegie Mellon6.67Calvin (10.33)Wartburg(17.33)Messiah (4.67)10.78 Chris. Newport4Montclair St (16)Trinity TX (8.67)UW-La Crosse (12)12.22 Amherst7RIT (26)William Smith (7.33)Case Western Res (4.33)12.55 Johns Hopkins2Trinity (23.67)Williams (16.67)Misericordia (1)13.78 Messiah4.67Cortland St. (23)Emory (15.67)Carnegie Mellon (6.67)15.11 Case Western Res4.33Ithaca (26)Loras (14)Amherst (7)15.67 Misericordia1York (26)Bowdoin (23.33)Johns Hopkins (2)17.11 This draw seems remarkably even. Every top eight team is projected to play another top 8 team in the quarter final, except Chrisopher Newport, but they are projected to play a tough UW-La Crosse team and have #9 Trinity TX is the 3rd round and Montclair State will not be easy.
If there is any team with the right to complain, I think it would be Misericordia. Last year, they were assigned to the "Group of Death" and this year the get JHU in the quarters.
D3Soccer released their Week 10 poll today. USC will not update again until the final poll in December so their poll is somewhat stale. Here are the final RIP Rankings before the playoffs. TeamD3USCMasseyRIP Misericordia1111 Johns Hopkins2222 Chris. Newport3364 Case Western Res5444.33 Messiah4554.67 Amherst7836 Carnegie Mellon8777.33 William Smith11688.33 Trinity (Texas)69108.33 Calvin9101210.33 UW-La Crosse12131112 Loras10151613.67 Emory1518914 Williams25111416.67 Mary Hardin-Baylor13132416.67 Montclair State17122618.33 Wartburg19172119 Pacific Lutheran18261319 TCNJ20211719.33 Tufts23221520 Rowan14232621 Puget Sound21261922 MIT26162622.67 Virginia Wesleyan16262622.67 Cortland State24202623.33 Bowdoin26261823.33 Trinity College 26192623.67 Middlebury26242224 Pomona-Pitzer26262024 Wash & Lee22262624.67 Wesleyan26262325 Scranton26262525.67 Babson26252625.67 If a team is not listed in a poll, then I assign them a 26th ranking for that poll.
Thank you, @CHFan . I just finished my NCAA Bracket Analysis and might have some RIP numbers different from yours, mostly due to assumptions I made. My DIII Bracket Analysis I calculated: Rank Index Points (RIP) = (UCS Rank + Massey Rank + D3Soccer.com Rank) divided by 3. UCS and D3soccer.com are polls while Massey is numerical based on stats. I used the RIP to indicate the relative strength of teams and brackets. I graded each bracket by summing the RIPs for the top five teams in each bracket, regardless of how they were seeded within the bracket. (20 out of the 64 teams) Disclaimer: These are imaginary numbers and no true meaning can be extracted from them. A. The four brackets are better balanced than they were last year. 2022: 78, 52, 55, 62 2021: 100, 31, 94, 41 2019: 56, 63, 83, 48 2018: 54, 57, 55, 69 2017: 50, 51, 55, 80 B. For 2016 through 2018, each of the four strongest teams was in a different bracket. In 2021, the top two teams and the fourth team were in the Upper Right bracket. The #3, #5, and #6 teams were spread out among each of the other three brackets. This year, 2022, #1 and #2 are in the Upper Left and #3, #4, and #5 are each located in one of the other three brackets. C. I have not been following things all over D3 this year, so I can’t offer any additional thoughts. Rank Index Points for Top Five Teams in Each Bracket UPPER LEFT78UPPER RIGHT52 Misericordia1Case Western Reserve4 Johns Hopkins2Loras14 Trinity CT17Amherst6 MIT41William Smith8 Williams17Tufts20 LOWER LEFT55LOWER RIGHT62 Carnegie Mellon7Christopher Newport4 Calvin10Montclair State21 Wartburg19Trinity TX8 Messiah5Wisconsin-Lacrosse12 Emory14Mary Hardin Baylor17 6101
Just returning to this topic. Not sure whether the coach felt that running up the score to 28-0 would help his team in the post-season or if this game was just an outlier. I do see that IIT has 8 shutouts following this game and the highest score thereafter was 8-0. Either way, Karma can be a b****. IIT ended thier season at 18-3-2, lost in their conference finals and did not secure a NCAA at large bid.
Does anyone know the criteria the NCAA uses to determine host sites for the first weekend? I ask because the #2 ranked JHU squad was asked to travel 5+ hours to Hartford CT where Trinity hosted. The blue jays proceeded to light up Lesley (who traveled 60 mins from Boston) and the host by a combined 10-0. In the first game, it was 3-0 after 15 minutes and the Hopkins bench emptied and played the rest of the game adding 3 more. just wondered how ranking applies to location?
I know ifn the past JHU didn't have the capabilities to host multiple NCAA events in the same weekend (this used to be the case) so they put in for alternating teams on alternating years/weekends or something like that. So, sometimes it is the schools choice (and in their case I would assume it was their choice), in other places it is often finances. The west and texas always get lumped together and no matter how highly they are ranked they get lumped in together and the west always have to fly across time zones to play all because of cost!
About hosting - look at what's happening on campus. CNU hosted for men but had to defer for their women, Grass field there can only take 3 games in a weekend. Hopkins also had men hosting and also home football on the same field. You'll see them host this coming weekend I bet. Will be public tomorrow.
Also geographic location can make a difference. The school in the geographic middle has a better chance of being invited to host. It saves travelling.
For example, in last year’s Group of Death, Ewing Township would have been a long trip for the Herons and Geneva NY a long trip for TCNJ. But Scranton was right in the middle, they have a Turf field and lights so it made sense.
It is cool that, despite all their struggles this season, WashU made it to the second weekend. That seems to me the biggest upset of the weekend, along with Va. Wesleyan.
Va Wes beating Rowan, Montclair dropped by CNU, and TCNJ absent from the tourney after being in the '21 Final - new coach there is raising eyebrows I'd guess. Or is the NJAC a bit down perhaps? VA Wes playing at home on their grass field against an NJAC turf team is an advantage. They have not been successful doing the opposite in recent years. CNU still the favorite in that quad, especially at home. Have not lost in 2 years, which is crazy.
The weather turned cold this past weekend. I watched 3 games in person and saw two “firsts.” After 24 rainy hours prior, the cloudy but dry weather for Saturday morning’s game between SUNY Delhi and William Smith turned out to be the best of the weekend. According to their website, this game was SUNY Delhi’s first appearance in an NCAA tournament game in any sport, ever. Even though William Smith had been shut out for 4 straight games (including 4 OT periods), I predicted a 6-0 win for the Herons over the novice Broncos. WS scored 6 in each half, with forward Maggie Speckhart (Jr, Short Hills, NJ) contributing an assist in the first half and scoring 5 goals in the second half, for a team record 11 points in one game. Speckhart had been on the WS Development Team (JV) all year, getting Varsity minutes after that season ended. On Saturday WS almost exclusively played development team players during the second half and after the last goal, spent the last 6 minutes of the game passing the ball around the field. Praise needs to be given to Broncos starting goalkeeper Andraya Hunt (So, Cohoes, NY) who gamely played for 84 minutes on one leg and kept her team’s spirits up as much as possible. The Saturday afternoon game in Rochester started at 3:30 with a brisk wind and temperatures in the low 40s and ended in the rain under the lights with an RIT 3-1 victory over Johnson & Wales University. This was the first RIT women’s soccer win in an NCAA tournament, having previously advanced to the second day via penalty kicks after a tie game in OT. RIT’s best attacking player is Sam Halligan (So, Simsbury, CT), however on this day, it was two goals from forward Madison Corso (Sr, Honolulu, HI) and, with RIT ahead by one goal, a penalty kick save by keeper Darcie Jones (Sr, Sinking Spring, PA) that carried the day for the Tigers. On Sunday I watched the first half of WS vs. Tufts on live stream and felt WS played some of the best soccer I have seen all season. WS came away with a 1-0 win. There was snow and sleet Sunday morning and into early Sunday afternoon, but the 3:00 RIT vs. Amherst game was dry and seemed less cold than Saturday, mostly due to lower wind speeds. Amherst’s 1-0 victory goal was scored by forward Patience Kum (So, Takoradi, Ghana), who made a clever run inside the RIT center back, received a perfect through ball, and put the shot away. Kum is Amherst’s second leading scorer and a pleasure to watch. Had RIT won the game, they would have faced William Smith at Case Western Reserve, in a re-match of their 0-0 Liberty League tournament game on November 4th. Rematch will wait until next year 7325
WashU making it to the second weekend doesn't surprise me. They had some struggles this year and took some time to adjust to having Conlon back after his brief stint at Grand Valley State, but they could never be counted out. They are tested. They play in the UAA and they had the #19 SOS in D3 this season. The bigger surprise to me, and it is on the season on the whole and not the post-season, is the performance of Chicago. The Maroons finished up with a 7-8-3 record and were 0-4-3 in the UAA. From the beginning of October until the end of the season they were 0-5-3. Even Chicago Tech, a team that the Maroons have beaten in the past with relative ease, drubbed them, 3-0. Amy Reifert has had a stellar career at Chicago. In her time at the helm and prior to this season, Reifert has posted an overall record of 395-141-55 & 0.715 percent. In the UAA she has a 118-62-24 record for 0.637 percent. Other than this past season, Reifert only had two other seasons with losing records, her first year in 1991 & again in 2001. Reifert has been at Chicago for 32 years and I would expect her to retire soon. I hope that she goes out after having a team with a better record and one that gives her at least one more shot in the NCAA tournament. She is one of the faces of UAA soccer and did a lot to build the reputation of the league. She deserves it.
See Leo Weil at JHU. She may have used up her tenure long enough to crash into inevitable incompetence. “Dottering” is never a good look for leading a top program at a top academic school.
The sweet 16 compete in Sectionals this weekend, with Misericordia, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western, and Christopher Newport hosting. Case Western has a very nice page for its Sectional with hot links and good information on each team. https://athletics.case.edu/sports/wsoc/2022-23/2022_NCAA_Sectional_Rounds A weather note. Buffalo, NY is located between Amherst and CWRU and between William Smith and CWRU. The Buffalo area has been hit with 20-50 inches of snow in the last day, closing many highways and causing the Bills game to be moved to Detroit. I understand William Smith is already in Cleveland and I expect Amherst is, too. So they beat the storm. Massey has posted percent chance for each team to win their game on Saturday. The two tightest contests appear to be Amherst (47%) vs. William Smith (38%) and Wisconsin-LaCrosse (49%) vs. Virginia Wesleyan (34%). https://masseyratings.com/csocw/ncaa-d3/games Game times and links to video streams and live stats are provided here: https://www.d3sports.com/sports/wsoc/2022-23/schedule?date=2022-11-19 Have fun watching! 7760
I am not sure that I would describe Reifert as doddering. I would also not say that Weil and Reifert are analogous. Weil is a good bit older than Reifert. I could be wrong but I believe she is around 57-58 years old. When Weil retired from Johns Hopkins in 2019 I believe that he was 74ish. Additionally, IIRC, Weil had JHU in the final 8 in his last season, before losing to eventual runner-up William Smith. Reifert has had a distinguished career at Chicago and I would to see her go out on a high note. If she wanted to retire now, she probably could. Her husband has a good job with the White Sox and they live comfortably in Hyde Park near the school. One major change in the Maroons' program this season was Julianne Sitch going from the women's program to leading the Chicago men. Sitch and NYU's Kim Wyant are the only two women that are head coaches of NCAA men's teams. Sitch has done an excellent job with the men's team and has them in contention for an NCAA title this season. Sitch was at Chicago as an assistant previously and then left to take an AC position with the Chicago Red Stars. When all of the Rory Dames stuff went down, a topic for a different discussion, the timing was right for Sitch to go back to Chicago as an AC for the women's side. When Pat Flinn left after the 2021 season, Sitch made a great candidate to take over the men's team. Long story short, when Reifert retires, hopefully on a high note and on her terms, Sitch would be a great choice to take over the women's program. She is a native of Chicagoland, played at DePaul, has great connections all over the country, and is familiar with the rigors of the U of Chicago and the types of student-athletes that fit there.
Yesterday, only one of the games went to OT, which is unusual for the sweet 16 I think. Three of Massey’s underdogs won: Virginia Wesleyan, William Smith, and WashU. I went back to the end of season polls to see where our final 8 ranked: *USC had them #1-6, plus WashU and Virginia Wesleyan receiving votes. *D3soccer.com had them #1-5, 11, 16, and WashU not receiving votes. *Massey (at the time) had them #1-2, 4-6, 8, 30, and 50. I was thinking that the UAA teams do not play a conference tournament, so the only UAA schools with a lot of tournament experience are the ones that get to the NCAA regularly, like WashU under Conlon. All the UAA schools are out, except WashU and CWRU. CWRU has limited NCAA experience. On the other hand, their opponent today, William Smith, has been to the elite 8 four straight times now, so these players know the grind. Before the tournament started, I did not think WS would get past the second round, but this morning I am hopeful that the tourney-tested Herons can ride their defense as they have done all year and squeak by one more game. 8023
This would probably be better in the men’s soccer forum but I am posting here due to my earlier post on Julianne Sitch coaching the U of Chicago’s men’s team after assisting the women’s team for 2 stints. FWIW, below is a link to an article from the Chicago Maroon, the Chicago student newspaper, about Julianne Sitch coaching the Chicago men’s team. Sitch credits Amy Reifert for a lot of her development as a coach. https://chicagomaroon.com/37239/sports/julianne-sitch-keeps-her-eye-on-the-ball/
Championship Weekend Starts Today And for the first time, the teams get to rest one day between the semifinals and the final….Hooray! Friday 12/2/22 1:00 pm ET: Messiah vs. Johns Hopkins – Live on NCAA.com https://www.ncaa.com/game/6079255 Friday 12/2/22 4:00 pm ET: Virginia Wesleyan vs. Case Western Reserve – Live on NCAA.com https://www.ncaa.com/game/6079256 Sunday 12/4/22 Noon ET: Championship Game – Live on NCAA.com https://www.ncaa.com/game/6079257 I won’t be able to see Messiah and Hopkins live, and for sure the 4:00 game announcers will give the score/result. NCAA.com will have the full game replays available on their site within a couple of hours after each game ends. 8695
Quotes like the one below drive home your point. Note that he says 2 days, but it's 3 nights and the game times are exactly 3 days apart - 10 PM Wednesday (Poland), 10 PM Saturday (Australia). In season, most teams on most weeks have two games less than 36 hours apart. Some conferences regularly schedule games with less than 48 hours between the two. https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/s...-says-madness-play-again-two-days-2022-11-30/ Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni said it was "madness" for his team to play their World Cup last 16 game against Australia with just two rest days after their last group match. The South Americans beat Poland 2-0 on Wednesday night to top their group and set up Saturday's knockout clash. "I think it's absolute madness to play in nearly two days and a bit when we are top of the group. I can't understand it," Scaloni said, talking to the media after the game at Doha's 974 Stadium ended just before midnight.
The United Soccer Coaches announced their 2022 All-Americans on November 30. Forty-five players on three teams: https://unitedsoccercoaches.org/202...-mens-and-womens-all-america-teams-announced/ USC: “… seven out of the 45 student-athletes receiving recognition are earning the second All-America honors of their careers: Trinity senior defender Bailey Meyer; Loras senior midfielder Payton McDonnell; Christopher Newport GR-5 forward Sarah Smith; McDaniel GR-5 midfielder Jules Dotterweich; Johns Hopkins sophomore forward Katie Sullivan; Massachusetts Institute of Technology GR-5 forward Karenna Groff and Misericordia GR-5 midfielder Michaela Fasolino and sophomore forward Emma Sweitzer.” One first-year was named by the USC: Annie Isphording from Cincinnati, OH made the First Team as a defender for Johns Hopkins. Eight schools placed two players on the list: CWRU, CNU, JHU, Loras, Messiah, Misericordia, Trinity (TX), and Wisconsin-Lacrosse. I found it interesting that the players on the list from Johns Hopkins were a sophomore (her second award) and a first-year, which flows against the Hopkins-is-stacked-with-D1-graduate-students narrative. There are 7 sophomores, 6 juniors, 21 seniors and 10 “GR-5” students on the list. I looked up the “GR-5” students. The list included 7 graduate students and 3 fifth-year seniors. Of the ten, eight spent their entire career at the same college. The other two were: CWRU graduate student Camryn Hartman (a Cleveland native) was an undergraduate at D1 Cincinnati and CNU fifth-year senior Sarah Smith transferred to CNU from D1 Virginia Tech for the 2021 season – she is now a two-time D3 All American. It is almost noon and the D3 Championship is about to start. 9025
Hopkins started 6 5th Year players today and subbed a 7th. This could be the oldest team to ever play in an NCAA Championship WS game. Is that a fact or just 'narrative' coach Jon? 2 Hopkins 5th years made the All-Region 1st team and 1 made the 2nd team. So coaches did vote for these players. Only the committee would really know why the 2 older Hopkins players did not become AAs, while the 2 younger one's did. Rachel Jackson is certainly deserving but was not their leading scorer. I said before, Dan is not violating any rules but he is certainly 'working the system'. I don't really have a problem with it but I am not on the Hopkins schedule or in their conference or d3 region.