Just wondering who got left out that probably should have got in and who got screwed in the seedings?
It is always interesting to look at how many teams came from each regions - and we can all pass judgment on how fair that is: Far West - 11 teams Mid West & South - 7 each Mid-Atlantic, Great Lakes & South Atlantic - 6 each New England - 3 New York - 2 These are the teams that were on the bubble: Far West Cal St. Fullerton - 8-8-2 - fat chance on the 12th team from a region getting in at .500 Mid West Bradley - 11-8-2 Mid West South College of Charleston 13-4-3 UAB 10-5-5 USC 9-7-2 Mid Atlantic - none that I know of - some may argue Penn St? Great Lakes Dayton - 12-4-2 Mich State - 11-4-2 S. Atlantic WIlliam & Mary 9-5-4 New England Columbia 10-4-2 New York Hartwick 14-2-1 - probably the biggest shock to all! These records may not be 100% accurate - but you get the idea....
region equity No, Recsoc, I don't get the idea. I think you need to know how many total teams comprise each region before making any assumption. Once that is done, you need to look at the other factors, ie; strength of schedule, won loss, etc. For example, of the 11 teams from the far west, 5 were automatic berths due to winning the conference. The real interesting selections are in the seeds: Why is UCSB seeded higher than their conference champ? Why is Santa Clara unseeded after winning their conference and LMU is seeded? Why are their 3 ACC teams seeded in the top 4? How is Washington seeded after finishing 4th in the Pac 10 behind Oregon State and Cal? How are 11 at large teams seeded? (I think it is 11).
Re: region equity I would have to agree....the seeds are very hard to understand! It doesn't seem that the committee doing the ranking agrees with the NCSAA rankings, nor many of the other rankings for that matter. I think the put too much emphasis on how the teams have done in past years versus how they did this year!
I've said it on several other threads and I'll say it again here - Strength of Schedule! It is clear the selection committee put a big emphasis on SoS. at first glance, UConn had zero chance of getting into the NCAAs with a .500 record while Hartwick, at 13 games over .500 should have been a lock. We all know it didn't happen like that and SoS is why. Of the Top 50 rated at-large teams who were .500 or better according to www.SoccerRatings.com computer formula, UConn's SoS was sixth highest while Hartwick's was 49th. In otherwords, the committee wasn't impressed with Hartwick whuppin' up on a bunch of pasties and they liked that UConn was willing to take its licks against good teams. UConn isn't the only team that benefitted from a strong SoS. Portland, Cal, Clemson, NC State... all of them were barely over .500. But, all of them had a high SoS. By contrast, Temple's SoS was barely in the Top 100 and they didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of an at-large bid. The message from the NCAA is clear - play tough teams in the regular season and you'll be rewarded.
This is definitely a baffling decision. The only theory I can come up with to explain it is that the committee penalized SCU because they are losing their two best players, Ryan Cochrane and Steve Cronin, heading into the NCAAs. IU got slighted too. They have a 13-game unbeaten streak and just won the third highest-rated conference and yet they are an eighth seed and have to play, potentially, UCLA in the quarters. IU should have been 4th or 5th in the seedings. Like Santa Clara, they are losing their two best players - Ned Grabavoy and Drew Moor - to the U20 team for the World Youth Championship. I'm guessing there is a connection to IU and Santa Clara not getting more respect despite winning their conference championships and that the connection is the loss of two players each to the U20 team. (BTW, Hartwick would have been without their star freshmen GK for the NCAAs as he was called up to Canada's U20 team for the WYC. That probably didn't help their cause, either.)
The NCAA doesn't use the Albyn Jones ratings but let's look at how the Jones ratings compare to the selection. Albyn Jones ratings (soccerratings.com) Using the ratings of Nov. 9: Code: [font=courier] In the following table # indicates an auto-bid = indicates an at-large bid SE is standard error Rank seed Team Rating SE W- L-T # 1 1 UCLA 2050 89 17- 1-0 = 2 2 Maryland 1954 87 16- 2-0 = 3 3 Wake Forest 1900 81 14- 3-0 = 4 6 St. Johns (NY) 1816 71 14- 4-1 = 5 4 North Carolina 1804 69 12- 3-3 = 6 10 Washington 1790 70 11- 4-2 = 7 Oregon State 1789 74 13- 5-0 # 8 7 St. Louis U. 1784 71 12- 3-2 = 9 11 UC Santa Barbara 1782 71 13- 4-1 # 10 9 VA Commonwealth 1777 75 14- 4-0 = 11 Old Dominion 1774 79 14- 2-1 # 12 Santa Clara 1773 69 13- 2-3 # 13 Coastal Carolina 1769 84 15- 2-0 # 14 8 Indiana 1769 66 11- 3-4 # 15 5 Notre Dame 1766 66 13- 3-3 # 16 16 CSU Northridge 1755 70 12- 3-2 = 17 California 1742 65 9- 8-2 = 18 12 Michigan 1739 70 13- 5-0 = 19 14 San Diego 1738 69 12- 4-2 = 20 13 Loyola Marymount 1738 70 11- 6-1 # 21 Florida Int'l 1727 70 13- 3-2 # 22 SMU 1721 69 12- 6-1 = 23 Creighton 1709 66 10- 5-3 = 24 Portland 1698 67 9- 8-1 25 Michigan State 1698 70 11- 4-2 = 26 15 Akron 1685 70 14- 4-2 = 27 Virginia Tech 1682 67 14- 4-2 28 Hartwick 1679 76 14- 2-1 = 29 Clemson 1676 68 9- 7-2 = 30 Rutgers 1674 66 10- 6-3 = 31 Connecticut 1671 64 8- 8-3 = 32 Kentucky 1667 69 12- 5-1 = 33 Cincinnati 1666 63 10- 3-5 # 34 Wisc - Milwaukee 1662 71 13- 5-1 # 35 Virginia 1662 73 8- 9-0 = 36 Tulsa 1661 65 12- 5-2 = 37 Oakland 1660 63 11- 3-5 ----- ------------------------------------- 38 William & Mary 1653 65 9- 5-4 # 39 Brown 1647 72 9- 3-2 # 40 San Jose State 1642 67 10- 6-2 # 41 Davidson 1634 67 12- 5-2 42 Dayton 1629 67 12- 4-2 = 43 Seton Hall 1627 64 8- 5-4 44 CSU Fullerton 1627 67 8- 8-2 45 Bradley 1626 63 11- 8-2 46 UAB 1622 65 9- 4-5 47 Penn State 1616 70 7-10-0 48 Col of Charleston 1614 67 11- 3-3 49 South Carolina 1605 67 8- 7-2 50 Columbia 1603 69 10- 4-2 51 Yale 1603 69 9- 6-1 # 52 Fairleigh D.-Teaneck 1602 74 12- 4-1 53-76 (24 teams) = 77 NC State 1533 72 9- 7-1 # 84 St. Peters (NJ) 1528 67 17- 4-2 # 91 Rhode Island 1518 66 10- 9-1 # 106 Missouri-KC 1495 68 9- 6-2 # 108 Western Michigan 1494 70 10- 6-2 # 109 Central Florida 1493 68 10- 5-3 # 112 Lafayette 1488 65 9- 5-3 # 123 SUNY Binghamton 1468 60 11- 2-6 [/font] The line, "-----", is 25 teams from the top, not counting auto-bid teams (there are 25 at-large bids). The last team above the line has a rating of 1660, with an SE of 63. It would be consistent with the Jones ratings for any team with a rating of 1600 or higher to get an at-large bid. All of the teams that got at-large bids do have ratings of 1600 or higher, with the exception of NC State which has a rating 165 points lower than the highest rated team that didn't get a bid. (165 is more than the combined SEs of the two teams) With that one exception, the difference in rating between the highest rated team that didn't get a bid and the lowest rated team that did is less than the SE. I do not show the "opponent" column of the Jones ratings because it's a fairly useless number that could easily be misleading. In the first place, it's a median, not an average or other calculation of a mean, and doesn't give any idea of the range of opponent ratings. In the second place, the strength of opponents is already a part of the Jones rating calculation, so it's redundant anyway. (Strength of schedule is one factor the NCAA considers, but they use the RPI strength of schedule and they don't make it public.) Links to the Albyn Jones rating pages: Main ratings page Rating system description
Sandon is on the money w/ SoS. The NCAA actually uses RPI, and we don't know what it is. Not sure how they do it now, but in the 90's, each regional selection committee would rate every team in their region on a 1-5 scale. You would add up the teams on your schedule to figure your strength. 1 was best, so the lower your total the tougher your schedule. The committe would re-evaluate the team ratings throughout the season. You could garner from this, if it still the wya they do it, that Clemson, NCSU, and UConn all played a lot of 1's & 2's, while those on the bubble did not. The committee also looks at your record: vs. 1's vs. 1&2's etc. Where regional debates come into play is once things are rolled up to the national level. Each regional committee would rank their teams for selection. The regional chair then goes to the national committee and says here are the 10 teams from X region that hsould get in - and here are their numbers. So if one region is harder/softer on teams, their teams could have different RPI and records vs. 1's, etc. than another region. I don't have a perfect answer - this is what it is and overall they do a good job - and it is ont an easy one. Available players (injury, cards, national team) are also factored in - and I think Sandon is on the money again w/ seed explanations for the teams that are losing players to the U-20's.
By my count, the Great Lakes region actually had 9 teams, which is a considerable number. Notre Dame Indiana Michigan Oakland Western Michigan Cincinnati Akron Kentucky Wisconsin-Milwaukee
I think Central Connecticut got screwed. I think they beat a couple of Top 25 teams in the past month and finished 2nd behind FDU. They beat Yale, while UConn tied Yale. They beat FSU a couple of weeks ago, and I'm can't remember the other big win, but they should have gotten in.
One thing to remeber when using the soccerratings.com rankings is that they don't include games played last week. They update on Tuesdays or Wednesdays so the information we are looking at isn't quite up to date and won't include things like NC State's advancing to the semis of the ACCs, Clemson tying a team that went on to win the ACC. Even UConn's wins over IU and Notre Dame became better last week when those two schools won their conference. When soccerratings.com updates their rankings this week, we should look them over again and see how things come out. Also, please join me in asking the soccerrating.com people to, on the last week of the regular season, update their rankings on Sunday night so that their numbers are more germain and accurate to the selection process. They do a great job and it's basically a free service but the time when their numbers are most relevant, they are a week old and not as accurate as they could be. They can still update midweek all season long, but that Conference Championship Sunday, they should update them as soon as the final games are played.
According to the soccerratings.com site, Santa Clara had the 12th most difficult while USD and LMU were 19th and 20th. SCU won the WCC over both USD and LMU, while beating USD head to head and losing to LMU in the last game after they had already clinched. SCU has been rated in almost everybodies Top 10 all season long after about week 3 or 4. This is the second year in a row SCU has gotten screwed by the NCAA commitee. If you'll recall, last year they went 10-6-1 with big momentum at the end winning 4 straight convincingly. Yet NCAA decided instead to invite some pretty marginal east coast teams with worse records and a lot less NCAA experience. At the time, the speculation was that their was only so many west coast openings. This year it's that they're going to lose two of there best players to the U-20s. Personally, I don't get how you punish a team for recruiting and training players good enough to make the U-20s, especially now that there are precious few non-professionals going. Shouldn't they be rewarding those programs for giving NCAA soccer a good rep by producing such high quality players for the national side? Someone at SCU must have really pissed off someone powerful on the committee. It would be sweet justice to see them make a nice long run in this tourney... Go Broncos!
how did everyone forget St. Francis? Sure their record wasn't great but they finished the year strong
Hartwick Do you think that the NCAA's investigation of the Hartwick program has anything to do with the team getting overlooked for a tournament bid? I am not up-to-date with the details of the investigation. But it seems like the NCCA is a conservative bunch and that matter could sway them from selecting Hartwick.
screwed davidson(22) got screwed by being put in a bracket with coastal carolina(12) for a chance to play unc(10)
Cheaters Hartwick are cheaters and everyone knows it. Why wink and nod when they bring in ineligible players, always from the UK? Even while bringing in pros from the UK every year, it is strange that they can't win anything.
Re: More info on Hartwick please Here is an article with comments by the coach. http://www.thedailystar.com/sports/2003/11/18/spwick.html