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Assuming no malice on their part, why not call the selection committee "The Band of Clouseaus?" Surely the Inspector would feel comfortable in such a group of bumblers...

 

That team has been Santa Clara for two consecutive years now.

 

Thank you, I stand corrected. I was there for those games, maybe it just seemed like they were number 6 the way they were playing! lol!

 

There is already a name for those that blame Anson for everything from the Titanic to JFK...(HATERS)

 

Take a deep breath, folks. Jim has been a respected participant and commentator in the soccer community for many, many more years than most respondents here have been contributing to Big Soccer. He makes one hyperbolic throw-away comment about how (for those many years) he discredited the conspiracy rumors, but after this last slight to SCU has begun to wonder. The bulk of his post is about what the college tourney experience should be for our student-athletes, and the indisputable (and apparently intentional) stupidity of the seeding committee. Yet all some people see - and jump upon - is the Dorrance comment, hardly the point of our larger discussion.

It'd be nice to see folks take the high road and forgo name-calling, at least on this one.

 

I would agree that Dorrance can flex his muscles ang get away with stuff. Notre Dame, Portland, believe me no powder puffs. Notre Dame should be #2 seed.

 

Broad is the path that leads to destruction and many enter it, because narrow is the gate that leads to life and few find it...what's the high road?

 

I am about to quit talking about this years seeding cause frankly it makes me sick. Here's my final take (theory) on the whole thing.
NO there isn't any Anson Dorrance conspiracy. He has as much to lose as the rest of the teams. He may have been set up not to make the final four as well.
NCAA is tired of the same teams dominating the final four, perhaps via some whinning coaches. So last year they set it up in hopes of seeing a few fresh faces in the final four. Guess what, it worked. UNC, Santa Clara and Portland (all recent champions and consistant final four teams) all on the same side of the bracket, so only one would advance. But that made for a very boring lopsided final four. Ummm what can we do this year and hope for maybe even better results? We play around a little with the seeding. This year we get Virginia in there cause they're having a great season. Good chance they'll make it. Ok that's someone new. Now lets help out a Big 10 team. They've had difficulty getting there. We'll stick Washington, Maryland and Florida (it's been awhile for them) over there too. Hence the movement of Penn State above ND to #2 seed.
Ok, so we put Portland and ND in the same bracket and if Portland wins then we'll have Sinclair in the final four or ND ( been awhile for them) Ummm now what to do with Santa Clara? Hey look, we could seed them 16th. Heck we screwed them last year and they went away quietly. Their coach being the classy guy he is, didn't approach us screaming and yelling about it last year. Yeah that will work! Once again we should have atleast a couple of different teams at the final four and maybe with a little luck, we'll get closer more competitive games.

 

Greetings from Mr. Grumpy:

 

LOL!

Mr. Grumpy is saying, "get back in here! Stop wasting all your time talking to those crazy soccer fans!"

 

Hold on, here. The Pac-10 is a far better conference than the SEC, one of the three best conferences in the country and by far the most balanced top conference. Everyone except Oregon won at least 3 games; nobody won more than 6. Everybody lost at least 3 games.

There are three quality teams in the SEC, and two of them are outstanding. There are nine quality teams in the Pac-10, and a half-dozen of them, more, can beat anybody in the country not named North Carolina.

Not quite in your parameters, but ... I also follow NCAA baseball, because it's the only sport in which my alma mater -- Cal State Fullerton -- is a national power. (Four-time NCAA champions; current NCAA champions -- not to brag, mind you ...)

Anyway, the NCAA screws the West on baseball, too. The geographical policy works here, too, and so we end up with Regionals pitting Fullerton against Arizona State (women's soccer analogy: Portland vs. UCLA) and Long Beach State against Stanford (Penn Stats vs. Virginia) in the opening rounds. (Format is different; six teams per regional, double-elimination, winner goes to two-team super regional, winner goes to eight-team College World Series.)

The NCAA favors the South (which is a strong region for baseball, but us on the West Coast believe that the SEC is a tad overrated while the Pac-10 and Big West should be considered more highly).

Back to the topic:

Yes, Santa Clara got screwed. Amazing.

Who else got screwed? UC Santa Barbara. They should have been in the field last year, but one bad weekend in October cost the Gauchos after they lost to Cal Poly, which was ranked about 20th at the time, in the Big West Conference tournament final.

This year, UCSB shares the Big West RS title (with my Titans!), then get beat by a good (only two losses vs. decent schedule) Cal Poly team in the BW final again. Cal Poly gets Santa Clara -- Cal Poly would be the third- or fourth-best team in the SEC, top four or five in the Big Ten, IMO -- and UCSB stays home

So, the committee dumps on the Gauchos two years in a row. (Maybe they hate Jim Rome.)

UCSB and Fullerton, which was playing great soccer after a poor start (several players hurt or ineligible while awaiting international clearance; finding a finisher), are the two best teams I've seen all year, and two of the best I've seen in the past three seasons. Fullerton's early record did them in (they did beat qualifier USD), but UCSB? There's no excuse. I would have dropped one of the CAA or Ivy schools.

My conspiracy theory: After the 2002 final, when Portland beat Santa Clara in one of the sport's all-time feel-good stories (Clive wins first title in final game), the college football conferences -- SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, primarily -- put big-time pressure on the NCAA. (The NCAA, of course, denies this; Colleen Lim, the chairwoman of the seeding committee, told me it was ridiculous.)

The amazing growth of college women's soccer the past half-dozen years or so has been the result of these big-time football schools pouring money into their women's programs because of Title IX regulations. I think they went the the NCAA and said, basically, "We're funding this sport; don't ever give us a final between two nobodies ever again."

And so we end up with a UNC-UConn final instead of UNC-Santa Clara or Portland-Santa Clara.

 

Sorry, but I'm fairly certain that the many UNC posters on this board will tell you that the average fan is a UNC fan. Your plea reminds me of the perfect comeback when we yelled at the "UNC refs":

US: "Hey, come on. They're two teams out there"
UNC fan: "No they're not"

 

What follows is an analysis I did comparing the Nov. 9 Albyn Jones ratings to the selection.

The process is straightforward: identify the auto-qualifiers, then count down 35 teams from the top not counting AQs or teams with losing records (35 being the number of at-large bids), then draw a line. Teams within a standard error of the line are "bubble teams". If the selection is consistent with the Jones ratings, then teams that get at-large bids should be within a standard error below the line and, conversely, teams left out of the tournament should be within a standard error above the line.

This year the line falls just below the team ranked #50, at a rating of 1662 with an SE of about 70 - so teams with ratings between 1592 and 1732 are bubble teams based on the Jones ratings. The highest rated team left out of the tournament is USC with a rating of 1716 and the lowest rated team with an at-large bid is Rice with a rating of 1593, so the selection is at least somewhat consistent with the Jones ratings.

Teams above the line that aren't in the tournament are Southern Cal, Washington St, UCSB, Oklahoma St, Oregon St, Michigan St, Loyola Marymount.

Teams below the line that are in the tournament are Virginia Tech, Harvard, Central Florida, William and Mary, James Madison, Rice.

(It doesn't prove anything but the geographical distribution of teams in the two groups listed above is somewhat interesting.)

Other "bubble teams" not in the tournament but with ratings less than an SE below the line are Missouri, Indiana, St. Louis, UC Riverside, Vanderbilt, Purdue, Oklahoma, Northwestern, Cal St Fullerton, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, San Francisco, Hawaii and Gonzaga.

#############

Of course, the NCAA doesn't use the Jones ratings. They use (among other things) the rating percentage index (RPI) which, unlike the Jones ratings, has no basis in statistical theory. The RPI is a farce. 3/4 of the RPI has nothing to do with whether a team wins or loses. The NCAA noticed problems with the RPI years ago (a team's rating can up after a team loses and down after a team wins - problems like that) and tried to make adjustments. But the adjustments didn't solve the problem, so the NCAA went back to the original formula, problems and all. The reason for the problems is simple - RPI has no basis in statistical theory (or any other kind of theory, for that matter).

(For a less negative opinion of RPI than mine read Dissecting the rating-percentage index which was in the NCAA News, February 15, 1999).

 

My conspiracy theory: After the 2002 final, when Portland beat Santa Clara in one of the sport's all-time feel-good stories (Clive wins first title in final game), the college football conferences -- SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, primarily -- put big-time pressure on the NCAA. (The NCAA, of course, denies this; Colleen Lim, the chairwoman of the seeding committee, told me it was ridiculous.)

This is a good theory, football pays for most sports, and having two AD's from D-1 football powers tell me how schools without football are second class citizens the NCAA has pressure to get the football schools to the Final-4... not to keep UNC out. USC needs to have an AD that will fight for it's women's team and they won't get left out again. ACC, Big-12, SEC, and Big-10 rule college football and want to keep thier teams playing as long as possible and will apply heat when and where needed in the women's game. Texas-#12; Texas A&M #9; Tenn #11;Washington #15; Kansas #8

 

I don't have a conspiracy theory. The selection and seeding process simply stinks.

In reference to "bubble teams" I identified using the Jones ratings (see my previous post in this thread):

Of 27 "bubble teams" identified from the Jones ratings, there are 7 from California, 2 from Washington, 2 from Indiana, 2 from Missouri, 2 from Oklahoma and one each from Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Tennesse and Hawaii. None of these teams are in the tournament.

"Bubble teams" in the tournament are: three from Virginia, one Massachusetts, one from Florida and one from Texas.

I repeat: the committee chose all three of the "bubble teams" from Virginia while passing over 21 "bubble teams" from other states.

Three from Virginia! - Only 2 team out of 22 from a states not on the East Coast.

So how did a "bubble team" from Texas get in? Probably because the committee ran out of teams from Virginia or Florida, and at least Texas isn't in the West or the upper Midwest.

My advice to a coach of a West or Midwest team who wants to get in the tournament is: don't worry about getting a better team or a better record - move your team to Virginia.

The seeding is horrible and the selection is horrible. The committee did a terrible job last year and did a worse job this year. There's a big stench coming from the committee and the selection process. It's the smell of favoritism and bias.

They screwed West Coast teams on the seeding last year and screwed them worse this year. They screwed both West Coast and Midwest teams on the selection.

The committee is plainly biased and the selection and seeding process plainly stinks.

Footnote: the reason I don't include Arizona State or Rutgers as "bubble teams" is that they both have losing records and, as I understand it, are ineligible for the tournament.

Addendum: there are two other "bubble teams" which I overlooked because they are both in the tournament and don't have ratings below "the line", one team from Connecticut and one from Nevada. It doesn't change my comments on the obvious geographical bias of the selection.