Made it through another season! Round 1 FSU SMU South Florida Pepperdine Tennessee Wash State Harvard Michigan Arkansas Virginia Tech Purdue Notre Dame TCU Princeton Ole Miss Rutgers Duke Memphis St. John’s Auburn Georgetown Santa Clara Butler UCLA North Carolina Hofstra Penn State USC BYU Clemson Milwaukee Virginia Round 2 FSU Pepperdine Tennessee Michigan Arkansas Notre Dame TCU Rutgers Duke Brown Georgetown UCLA UNC USC BYU UVA Round 3 FSU Michigan Arkansas TCU Duke UCLA UNC UVA Semi-Final FSU TCU Duke UVA Final FSU UVA Champion FSU
Pretty sure not one person on Earth bet the UC Irvine anteaters of all teams upsetting the undefeated PAC-12 champions. Seriously WTF? That had to be the worst women’s soccer match I saw in my life. Amanda Cromwell is probably embarrassed.
None of our competitors have UCLA going out in the first round, so there will be carnage. We have them going out as follows, if my counting is right: 2 in the second round 2 in the third round 9 in the quarters 5 in the semis 1 in the championship game 2 have them as champs Here are the scores and standings after today’s 15 games:
Here are the final Round 1 results. For comparison, in 2019 after Round 1 the human scores ranged from 29 to 20 and the rating systems were at 28.
NOTE: I have added the NCAA Women’s Soccer Committee to the prediction competition. I filled out their bracket based on the seeding (including the seeding positions for the #1 seeds). For unseeded first round matchups, I assigned the home team as the first round winner, since the Committee awards home field to what it believes to be the stronger team. For the first round, the Committee got 24 right, so they are in the group tied for first.
If we throw out the UCLA and UNC results, what was the game most people got wrong? A lot of people had South Florida over NC State and Brown over St John's.
Counting the humans, the Committee, and the rating systems, all missed UCLA and North Carolina. Here are how many missed the others: Alabama over Clemson 19 Milwaukee over Xavier 18 St Johns over Brown 18 Samford over Auburn 18 St Louis over Mississippi 17 SMU over Texas 16 Santa Clara over Stanford 14 NC State over South Florida 10 Wake Forest over Harvard 7 Memphis over LSU 7 Wisconsin over Butler 5 Virginia Tech over Ohio State 4 Tennessee over LIpscomb 3 Purdue over LoyolaChicago 2 BYU over New Mexico 1 Those are from a hand count, so I hope they are right.
I think the scoring system for this contest needs a little tweaking. One point for the first round seems too little, or maybe it's just that 8 points for each of the last 3 rounds seems too much. I might try running the past 10 contests through simulations based on different scoring methods later to see the difference. It just seems unfair for someone who correctly calls winners in the first 2 rounds to gain so little. I really have no idea how it would affect the contest winners, I'm just curious. Although, maybe you, CP, or SoccerHunter have already done this?
There was a Harvard fan (parent) in another thread that was incensed that Harvard didn’t get a seed and had to travel.
I can understand that, based on their RPI. But they traveled to mild weather and a good grass field and had every chance to back up their RPI to those of us who suspected it was smoke and mirrors, and all they did was confirm that.
Holy crap! My entire right-hand side of the bracket is wiped out. heading for last place finish this year.
It is relatively easy to game the RPI if you are in a decent conference. Here are the ingredients: Play the best teams in a weaker conference to up your record, and their records will help you, followed by the weaker teams in a strong conference. Add in a decent conference schedule. Harder for mid majors in weak conferences to do it if they can’t beat the best teams in the other mid majors. Have a look at Harvard’s schedule. Fairfield Monmouth Northeastern All good teams from weak conferences. Sprinkle in BC, Kansas and St. John’s. Weaker teams in good conferences. Heat the oven to 350 and cook for 11 weeks. Whala! #12 RPI.
Fair enough. In the end though it doesn't protect you come tournament time if you're not actually that great.
As some of you know, I do pre-season simulated ratings for all teams based on where they appear to be trending over time. Out of curiosity, I have added the pre-season ratings I did for this season as a contestant, under the name Pre-Season Ratings, so they will show up in the standings under that name.
It should be noted that the committee is the only participant who gets to give home field advantage to the teams it picks.