I only caught about 30 mins of the Harvard game and they did look the better side but I was surprised how much each team struggled to link passes together. Both looked quite sloppy. Watching the byu game after, got the impression neither of them would have a chance in Provo.
Agreed. I think the other egregiously low seed was USC. They gave BYU all they could handle in Provo. That's a tough place to play.
Ivy looked like they were ranked about right. 4 teams in the top 32. Maybe 2-3 Top 25 caliber teams. No top 10-16. All this criticism of the Ivy and the RPI and it looks like they weren’t far off.
Home team (also higher seed) Round 1: 30/32 UCLA (1) loses to UCI Xavier (4) loses to TN Round 2: 7/8 Arkansas (2) loses to Pittsburgh Neutral Field Higher Seed Round 2: 3/8 Wisconsin (4) loses to Texas (5) Notre Dame (3) loses to Memphis (6) Georgetown (3) loses to St Louis (6) Gonzaga (8) loses to UCI (NR) Brown (3) loses to Mississippi St (6)
Incorrect predicted results highlighted in red: The actual results were: Columbia W, L Harvard W, L Princeton W, L Brown W, L The RPI and KPI predicted results were: Columbia W, L Harvard W, W Princeton W, L Brown W, W The Balanced RPI predicted results were: Columbia W, L Harvard W, L Princeton W, L Brown W, W The Massey predicted results were: Columbia L Harvard W, L Princeton L Brown W, L The Pre-Season ratings predicted results were: Columbia L Harvard W, L Princeton W, L Brown L Based on the actual results, the Massey ratings and my assigned Pre-Season ratings were just as likely to be correct as the RPI and KPI. The ratings most consistent with actual results are the Balanced RPI. Generally, the RPI and KPI gave the Ivy teams the best rankings. Massey gave them the poorest. The Balanced RPI was between them, but leaning in the Massey direction. What these few results suggest is that the RPI overrates the teams, Massey underrates them, and the Balanced RPI comes closest to rating them correctly. These are far too few data, however, from which to draw reliable conclusions.
love my panthers!!! Excited for a rematch against FSU! The ACC is truly the best conference in women's college soccer, I'm rooting for all the ACC teams left at this point
Let's compare RPI of Nov 5 and the US soccer coaches poll of 10/29, both of which are the last showing on the NCAA website for women's soccer. RPI Coaches Poll FSU 1 1 BYU 2 6 PSU 4 5 Clemson 5 7 Stanford 6 3 UNC 13 13 Pitt 18 11 Nebraska 23 15 Out of 5 ACC teams, 4 are still alive, but at most 3 can advance. The RPI apparently doesn't properly weight the strength of an ACC schedule! At the very worst Pitt should have been a 3 seed. The way they easily handled Memphis is a testament to the difference between playing quite a few good teams (Memphis) versus playing several top notch teams Pitt! To be fair, the Arkansas team was worthy of their seeding. Their game against Pitt was very evenly played IMO. The ACC, the old PAC and the SEC have the toughest in conference schedules. The PAC doesn't have a conf tourney, so they were third IMO. Adding Texas will help the SEC and adding Stanford will further bolster the ACC. Not sure how strong the Big 12 will be going forward, but the Big 10 will be strengthened with USC and UCLA. A couple of anomalies. Wake Forest was 25 in the coaches and 82 in the RPI. I definitely side with the coaches here. Another failure of the RPI is in rating the Ivys IMO. RPI had Brown at 8, Harvard at 11, Princeton at 17 and Columbia at 20. The coaches had Brown at 14 and no one else in the top 31. Not 1 Ivy exceeded their seeding! Time to move on from the RPI, or at the very least, let it be a smaller component of weighting for seeding. TBF, the RPI was slightly more accurate at the top with the 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 teams advancing. The coaches had 1, 3, 5, 6, 7
Indeed, the ACC is shoring its muscle. The NCAA deemed that only 5 ACC teams were eligible, and now we see that 4 ACC teams are half of the 4th round (along with 2 from the Big 10, PSU and (surprise!) Nebraska, which has benefited from the UCLA), and Stanford and BYU completing the 8 slots. The grumbling when the bracket came out seems reasonable given that not taking in Wake and then putting 3 of the 5 ACC entries into the same corner of the bracket to knock each other out. For the 4th round (some times called the "Elite 8") ACC - 5 entries, 4 teams remaining, FSU, UNC, Clemson, Pitt Big 10 - 9 entries, 2 teams remaining, PSU, Nebraska Big 12 - 7 entries, 1 team remaining, BYU PAC 12, 3 entries. 1 team remaining (Stanford) SEC - 7 entries, no teams remaining
I just took a look at the Univ. of Memphis roster, and among the 27 players listed, there is not one, not two but 16 internationals. That has to be a record. The team has 11 players from Canada, 3 from Japan and two from Germany. Krikorian used to have a lot of internationals--but I don't think he ever had anywhere close to 16. Pittsburgh, a talented team that beat a good Memphis team tonight, has 8 internationals--including 6 from Canada. Who knew Canada had SO many good players? All three of Pitt's goal scorers tonight were internationals--2 Canadians and a Nigerian.
Congratulations to the ACC! Yet, ACC fans continue to complain about the refs (almost reflexively) and the tournament bracket. It is not good in terms of how others see the conference.
lol! Updating one’s view of a conference based on message board comments sounds like a worse system even than the RPI. Annoying I know, but there have been some truly egregious calls and non-calls in fsu games this year. Don’t think that’s an unreasonable topic of discussion on an fsu board.
I can live with any perception anyone wants to have of the ACC. I feel similarly about the SEC in the other football. That said, the SEC usually is the best conference. You choose to come on here and generally denigrate a whole conference which is your prerogative, but I do find it surprising from someone so data driven. In the FSU thread, I posted a YouTube video of the FSU Duke game with time markers for what I perceive to be bad calls which FSU has gotten more than its share of this year. You chose to ignore that and the differences I noted above from the RPI and the coaches poll. Each to his own.
I'm sorry, I did not mean to be that offensive. I meant my congratulation of the ACC seriously. I never would denigrate the conference, it is a great conference. I help some of its teams with scheduling and other information. I also have done a project to help the conference as a whole. I will check out the video you spent good time providing and see what I think. I do note that Harvard got hard done by when it did not get a PK call in the game it lost. I have watched some of the ACC teams' games and did not see any calls there that came close to matching the non-call in the Harvard game. But maybe what you put together will change my mind. (I will note, however, that I am used to seeing very strong attacking players regularly get hacked down at the women's professional club and international levels and have concluded that is just part of the game that one must live with, even if I think fouls should be called. So I am a little more tolerant about non-calls in that area than the rules interpreted literally might call for.) Regarding the differences between the RPI and the coaches' poll, I do not take the coaches' poll very seriously. On the other hand, I have done a great deal of work on the problems with the RPI, including its handling of both Wake Forest and Virginia this year. In particular, I have said that a better rating system would have had Wake and Virginia in the Tournament and demonstrated why. Perhaps you are not familiar with that?
I mean, as someone proudly not neutral, Tom81 regularly denigrates other teams that don't come from the almighty ACC. So honestly pretty laughable to see someone with their ACC-blinders so firmly on accuse cpthomas of all people as "denigrating an entire conference" LOL I'm sorry but it's a little melodramatic Also, not sure how a video with FSU getting one bad call....against Duke, a fellow ACC team...is related to ACC people whining about NCAA stuff. ACC fans are a special breed. It's just of how it is. You're not really disproving that.
I found this an interesting conversation in correlation to my own UNC fandom. I will note to @cpthomas that ACC fans aren't necessarily complaining any more or less when they play other leagues, and if anything the complaints ratchet up in the ACC vs ACC games. So I'm not sure why the comment was necessary in relation to more ACC teams making it this deep in the tournament. Look I don't think officials care who wins or loses. I *do* think they worry about the appearence of caring. The perception that they might be bias in favor of one team. They're worried about calling too many fouls on one team. They don't want to give one team more yellow cards than another. They don't want to punish an over-matched team or a team that had been outplayed for their lazy, persistent, or dangerous tackles. They don't want to appear like they favor "the better team" or the team with the most success (blue bloods you might call them) ... Or maybe they feel sorry for the overmatched team and don't want to make it harder for them than necessary. As a UNC who also keeps an eye on other ACC teams like FSU I feel like this has become a growing problem for both teams in the past decade or so. We are getting *hammered* on the field, both when we play weak opponents in the ACC and when we play weaker opponents from other leagues. PK's, fouls, yellow cards for persistent infringement and tactical fouls ... I know these things exist because they still happen in other games (ND vs Clemson in the ACC tournament was a ride and a half) ... but they seem almost wholly absent in UNC and FSU games. @Jericah7 cpt was the one that brought up the ACC teams complaining about officiating for an NCAA tournament ... you're right the correllation was off but it wasn't Tom who made it. Maybe take your own "neutral" blinders off and learn to read better.
UNC fans complaining about refs/bias is music to my ears. They could be right, of course, and UNC may have been on the short end of many a referee's call this year, but after decades of preference, it's nice to see the karmic scales balance.