Ithaca couldn't quite get it done against Cortland on Saturday. But might the Bombers get another shot? Ithaca athletics photo by Rich Barnes

By Greg Thomas and Pat Coleman
D3sports.com

When you expand the first-round geographic proximity radius from 500 miles to 600 miles, you add a few intriguing possibilities. But you don't solve the real problem for teams in Texas and on the West Coast.

However, when you have a final Saturday like we did, with Pool C candidates seemingly losing left and right ... then you have something interesting.

Our mock selection committee met Saturday evening to do what we always do: Try to project what the NCAA committee will do, given the same information. We choose five at-large teams. We bracket them using the rules the committee has to use. 

And here we go.

• The selection show streams online (we will have a link on D3football.com) at 5:30 p.m. ET Sunday.

Here's how the process works for the at-large bids. The committee traditionally will sit down with a board that includes the top at-large team from each regional ranking, comparing the four teams head-to-head, then select one to put in the field. The committee considers the usual criteria: results vs. Division III teams, strength of schedule, results vs. regionally ranked teams, head-to-head results and results vs. common opponents. As we get closer to the end of the process, though, the committee can consider non-Division III games as well. And with just five spots and more than twice as many candidates, expect every piece of data possible to be used.

There is no Pool B bid this year, and no Pool B-eligible teams.

Here's how our mock at-large selection process went:

We start with the top at-large team from each of the now-six regions on the board. That is this group:

1 Merchant Marine, 8-1, .488, 0-1 vs. RRO
2 Ithaca, 8-2, .613, 2-2 vs. RRO
3 Birmingham-Southern, 8-1, .505, 2-1 vs. RRO
4 Baldwin Wallace, 8-2, .522, 1-2 vs. RRO
5 Wheaton, 9-1, .481, 0-1 vs. RRO
6 UW-La Crosse, 7-1 vs. D3, .573, 2-1 vs. RRO 

For this purpose, teams in both our final ranking (which you can see further down the page) and the official rankings released this past Wednesday are considered regionally ranked.

From this group, it seems pretty clear to us that UW-La Crosse should be the first at-large team in the field. In addition to these games, UW-La Crosse does have a loss, but it is to Grand Valley State, the No. 6 team nationally in NCAA Division II, which should not be a knock on any D-III team. UW-L has beaten UW-River Falls, which we project will be in this final ranking, as well as UW-Oshkosh, which was in the last ranking, and has a close loss to the Region 6 No. 1 team, UW-Whitewater. 

UW-La Crosse is replaced by Bethel.

1 Merchant Marine, 8-1, .488, 0-1 vs. RRO
2 Ithaca, 8-2, .613, 2-2 vs. RRO
3 Birmingham-Southern, 8-1, .505, 2-1 vs. RRO
4 Baldwin Wallace, 8-2, .522, 1-2 vs. RRO
5 Wheaton, 9-1, .481, 0-1 vs. RRO
6 Bethel 8-2, .570, 1-2 vs. RRO

Out of this group, we have one more one-loss team with a win against a regionally ranked opponent, and that's Birmingham-Southern. They have two, actually, against Huntingdon and Centre, and a loss to the Region 3 No. 2 team, Trinity (Texas). We feel Birmingham-Southern should comfortably be in the field.

Birmingham-Southern is replaced by Hardin-Simmons.

1 Merchant Marine, 8-1, .488, 0-1 vs. RRO
2 Ithaca, 8-2, .613, 2-2 vs. RRO
3 Hardin-Simmons, 8-1, .511, 0-1 vs. RRO
4 Baldwin Wallace, 8-2, .522, 1-2 vs. RRO
5 Wheaton, 9-1, .481, 0-1 vs. RRO
6 Bethel 8-2, .570, 1-2 vs. RRO

We are now out of our easy candidates. Now we are comparing losses. Of the one-loss teams, Merchant Marine's loss is to the Region 1 No. 8 team, Springfield. Hardin-Simmons and Wheaton each lost to the No. 1 team in their respective region. Because at this stage, Hardin-Simmons has the better strength of schedule, we put Hardin-Simmons in the field.

You may accurately point out that Hardin-Simmons' non-conference game is a non-D3 win against Wayland Baptist, a team in the NAIA which is 2-8. If counted, that would lower their SOS significantly and hey, shouldn't Wheaton get in instead? We'll deal with that in a minute.

Hardin-Simmons is replaced by Randolph-Macon.

1 Merchant Marine, 8-1, .488, 0-1 vs. RRO
2 Ithaca, 8-2, .613, 2-2 vs. RRO
3 Randolph-Macon, 7-1, .556, 0-1 vs. RRO
4 Baldwin Wallace, 8-2, .522, 1-2 vs. RRO
5 Wheaton, 9-1, .481, 0-1 vs. RRO
6 Bethel 8-2, .570, 1-2 vs. RRO

Now we have Randolph-Macon, whose loss is to a team which lost this week and won't be in the next Region 3 rankings. Washington & Lee fell to Shenandoah on Saturday and that hurts Macon's candidacy. We take Wheaton here, as the team remaining from the list of "one-loss teams who lost to the No. 1 team in a region."

Wheaton is replaced by Coe.

1 Merchant Marine, 8-1, .488, 0-1 vs. RRO
2 Ithaca, 8-2, .613, 2-2 vs. RRO
3 Randolph-Macon, 7-1, .556, 0-1 vs. RRO
4 Baldwin Wallace, 8-2, .522, 1-2 vs. RRO
5 Coe 8-2, .517, 1-2 vs. RRO
6 Bethel 8-2, .570, 1-2 vs. RRO

We have one spot left. We've worked all along under the assumption that the Region 2 committee will rank Ithaca ahead of Johns Hopkins (9-1, .494, 0-1 with loss to Region 2's No. 3). We're continuing with that for the moment. Because we are now left with some interesting choices, where a couple of two-loss teams look really good compared to Merchant Marine, and pretty good compared to Randolph-Macon. 

So when we look at Ithaca vs. Bethel, because really, that's what this is, we have fairly similar profiles. Bethel has two close losses to St. John's, the Region 6 No. 2 team. Ithaca has two close losses, to the Region 2 No. 1 and Region 2 No. 2 teams. Ithaca's SOS is significantly higher and the Bombers do have two wins against RRO, although one of those is against Hobart, which we feel would drop out of this week's ranking and be replaced by Carnegie Mellon.

If Ithaca is here, we take Ithaca.

If the committee ranked Johns Hopkins ahead of Ithaca, we take Bethel.

Now to the bracketing. 

Since we can bus teams 600 miles, and we did confirm this was correct on Saturday evening even though the NCAA manual for football still says 500, we are definitely going to do so. Here's what we did with these 32 teams.

Click to enlarge or tap to download if on mobile:

Having Hardin-Simmons in the bracket means we can send them to Trinity (Texas) in the first round and someone has to fly in to play Mary Hardin-Baylor. We have two Alabama teams, so it's not like we have an obvious island team to send to UMHB, plus, a 600-mile radius would put some destinations in play by bus. But we have to fly someone to UMHB, and it's a charter flight regardless, so we send Anna Maria. Anna Maria could also bus 590 miles to Mount Union. Redlands we fly back to Linfield. Redlands could fly to UMHB and someone could fly to Linfield, but Redlands is regionally ranked higher than a team you would want to send to a No. 1.

Some of these matchups use those extra 100 miles, but not many. We tried to avoid sending Aurora to St. John's for a second playoff in a row, and that is something the committee has also tried to avoid doing recently. Lake Forest isn't getting a great first-round matchup here because of it, however. Aurora going to Wheaton instead of St. John's is a pretty equitable swap from a competition standpoint.

North Central is our top overall seed, followed by UW-Whitewater, Mary Hardin-Baylor and Mount Union. St. John's, Linfield, Delaware Valley and Muhlenberg are our 2 seeds.

Here's the set of regional rankings we worked with. This includes the ranked teams in each region, although the committee likely has more in reserve in case a region runs out of them. Also, please keep in mind that although we use a shorthand to refer to results against regionally ranked opponents (RRO) and only list numbers of wins and losses against them, the process is more in-depth than that. 

Remember to keep an eye out for the official bracket announcement show. We'll have it for you at 5:30 p.m. ET.