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| When choosing between two-loss teams and one-loss teams, there's no way to predict what the committee will do. UW-Platteville athletics photo |
By Pat Coleman
D3sports.com
Last year's bracketology show was pretty succesful and well-received, so we are going to keep doing it until it doesn't work any longer. And it was a little easier this year, since there were no night games scheduled on Saturday night. We're sure the full committee appreciated that as well.
We went on the air Saturday night with the most structured bracketology we've ever done: a mock committee, full mock regional rankings and the voting process the committee uses.
- Week 11 scoreboard
- Week 11 roundup
- Rivalry games
- Our mock selection show
- Projected playoff bracket
- Printable blank bracket
- NCAA selection show, 6 p.m. ET
- Who's clinched a bid?
- Even more game stories
It's a messy process, and it's not perfect. But if three heads are better than one, then having Frank Rossi and guest bracketologist Greg Thomas weigh in make this a more realistic process of bracketing.
First, we created mock final regional rankings. The committee needs to have these in order to get its work done and so do we. I won't run through all the numbers, but here was our result.
Step 1: New regional rankings
East: Alfred, Hobart, Wesley, St. John Fisher, Stevenson, Frostburg State, Western New England, St. Lawrence, Delaware Valley, Husson.
North: North Central, John Carroll, Wheaton, Mount Union, Olivet, Wittenberg, Rose-Hulman, Franklin, Illinois Wesleyan, DePauw
South: Mary Hardin-Baylor, Johns Hopkins, Hardin-Simmons, Thomas More, Case Western Reserve, Muhlenberg, Berry, Randolph-Macon, Huntingdon, Washington U.
West: UW-Whitewater, St. Thomas, UW-Oshkosh, Coe, Linfield, St. John's, Monmouth, UW-Platteville, Northwestern (Minn.), Central.
We spent a good amount of time on our mock selection show walking through some of the difficult decisions in these regional rankings, and rather than rewrite them here, I would invite you to listen.
Here's some of the highlights.
Step 2: Pool B team
Mary Hardin-Baylor. Easiest decision of the night.
Everyone from then on is eligible for at-large (Pool C) bids, including members of the 25 automatic bid conferences.
Step 3: At-large teams (Pool C)
Once the automatic bids are handed out and Mary Hardin-Baylor is selected, the committee will take the top remaining team in each of the four regional rankings and compare the four head to head. As the night starts, that board contains UW-Oshkosh, Wheaton (Ill.), St. John Fisher and Hardin-Simmons.
UW-Oshkosh is easily the first team in the field, followed by Wheaton (Ill.) and Hardin-Simmons. These required little discussion. But when Wheaton got in the field, it was replaced by that little conundrum known as Mount Union.
The fact of the matter is, Mount Union's criteria do not look great. They look slightly worse than some of the 9-1 teams that have gotten in in the past as well has have gotten left on the bubble in the past. Strength of schedule of slightly below .500, no wins vs. regionally ranked opponents. You get the picture. The OAC is pretty ordinary this year. And the Purple Raiders' loss isn't even to an unbeaten team. But we don't see any committee leaving Mount Union out this year.
Let's revisit the board here for the final two spots.
The board looks like this:
East: St. John Fisher (8-2 vs. D-III, win vs. North No. 5 Olivet, loss to East No. 1 Alfred, .590 SOS)
South: Case Western Reserve (9-1 vs. D-III, win vs. South No. 10 Washington U., .488 SOS)
North: Franklin (8-1 vs. D-III, plus a loss to FCS non-scholarship Butler, win vs. South No. 4 Thomas More, loss to North No. 7 Rose-Hulman, .494 SOS)
West: St. John's (9-1 vs. D-III, loss to West No. 2 St. Thomas, .521 SOS)
Condensing the discussion down to a sentence or so, our mock committee chose St. John's because, among the three one-loss teams, St. John's had the best strength of schedule, and in fact, the only one above .500.
That gives us this four teams for the final spot:
East: St. John Fisher (8-2 vs. D-III, win vs. North No. 5 Olivet, loss to East No. 1 Alfred, .590 SOS)
Case Western Reserve (9-1 vs. D-III, win vs. South No. 10 Washington U., .488 SOS)
North: Franklin (8-1 vs. D-III, plus a loss to FCS non-scholarship Butler, win vs. South No. 4 Thomas More, loss to North No. 7 Rose-Hulman, .494 SOS)
West: UW-Platteville (7-2 vs. D-III, plus a win vs. NAIA St. Francis, Ill. (5-6), loss to West No. 1 UW-Whitewater, loss to West No. 3 UW-Oshkosh, .574 SOS)
UW-Platteville is going to be a Top 10 team in our final regular season Top 25, it's safe to say. And they are definitely one of the 10 best teams in the country. But are they clearly going to get an at-large bid? No. It's not clear at all at this stage of the game. When looking at the criteria the NCAA committee uses, St. John Fisher definitely grades out better.
If you are going to select UW-Platteville, you have to make the case that close losses (30-24 vs. UW-Whitewater, 22-13 at UW-Oshkosh) are better than a blowout win vs. Olivet (52-10) and a loss Saturday at Alfred (38-17). Plus, St. John Fisher lost at Utica, 23-6, on Oct. 15. That's where a case could be made for UW-Platteville.
Step 4: Bracketing
On to the bracketing.
Bracketing this year provides some of the usual challenges and some different ones as well. First, of course, Mount Union doesn't get a bracket built around it and gets a home game but not a super favorable first-round matchup. Secondly, we have the usual Texas matchup.
If the NCAA would spring for one extra flight, we would use it to fly Huntingdon to Mary Hardin-Baylor and bring in someone else entirely to play Hardin-Simmons. But that's not the way the NCAA has operated in the past, so what we did instead was create a first-round matchup in the second round for the Texas winner. Someone has to fly to Huntingdon, or Huntingdon has to fly somewhere -- nobody is within 500 miles of Huntingdon. Well, Husson is also a geographic outlier, and keeping them with other East teams in the bracket would result in a couple of unfavorable matchups -- low seeds playing each other in early rounds rather than playing higher seeds. Putting Husson in a plane to Alabama solves that.
We've suggested this before. This is a good year for the committee to do it.
Mount Union no longer gets an easy road to the quarterfinals or semifinals. Perhaps Alfred gets the easiest one, but Hobart would be a good challenge in the second round if both teams advance, and then John Carroll, Thomas More are both potential big challenges on the other side of that bracket.
St. John's was right on the cut line for getting a home game. They could travel to Coe and could travel to Wheaton, but since Wash U can basically only go to a few places in the first round, the Bears are heading to Iowa. (Wash U. is also within 500 miles of North Central, Wheaton, UW-Whitewater and UW-Oshkosh, but the seeding works pretty well with sending them to Coe.)