MBB: Northwest Conference

Started by The Show, March 06, 2005, 08:40:16 PM

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madzillagd

If you are looking for somebody to defend the Bowdoin selection I'm not your guy.  I just brought them up because you were questioning why Amherst & Williams weren't in the same bracket and I just pointed out that Bowdoin was in the Amherst bracket so they had doubled-up the NESCAC teams, they just didn't triple them up. 

Quote from: A Buc Forever on March 19, 2014, 02:30:49 AM
Who would you pick between Whitman and Bowdoin?  Which one played the harder non-league schedule?

This pretty much was the point that I was making before, just in a different way.  If you look at it, Bowdoin got in the tournament (I'm assuming) because they had a good winning % and they had a good SOS.  Whitman didn't get in because they didn't have as good of a winning % and they didn't have as good a SOS.  Why is that?  As you pointed out - they had a good non-league schedule so why was their SOS not reflective of that?  Obviously that comes back to league games and the fact that the NWC isn't one of the top conferences in the country like a WIAC, CCIW, NESCAC, etc.   

If you take a look at the SOS of the NWC teams in the 3rd week Regional Rankings, only 3 of them had a SOS higher than .500 (Whiman .507, PS .516, WW .524).  (For SCIAC is was only 2 teams: Oxy .501, Pomona .508).  The NESCAC in comparison had all 11 teams above .500 (Amherst had the highest with .583, Bowdoin had the lowest in the league at .530).  I completely understand the self-fulfilling argument (I dislike the SEC in football for exactly that reason) so I get where there is dislike for the fact that the NESCAC teams build up a strong non-conference record on weaker conferences in the NE, East, MA, Atl regions and that builds up their SOS when they play each other.  I'm not going to argue against that result and there are reasons why they schedule the way they do that have been discussed.   

I'm not defending the Bowdoin selection against the entire field, but I can see why they would get in over Whitman.  The NWC / SCIAC are hurt by their location and that's a huge hurdle to try and overcome.  Even when you go out and play some UW teams, the rest of the NWC isn't doing that and/or aren't putting up great records so it's going to drag the top teams down because of their low SOS. 

madzillagd

Quote from: A Buc Forever on March 19, 2014, 02:30:49 AM
Before the tournament started which 2 brackets would you want to be in?

Whitworth didn't lose to the top teams in the bracket, they lost to T-D.  This is where we have a difference of opinion about how good a team Whitworth is every year.  I'm one to think that they tend to get ranked a little too high, I don't see them as a Top 10 team.  I think they should be in the 10-20 range every year at best and that's not a bad thing, I just think it's more accurate to the level of teams they go against every year in the West and their tournament history.  If you look at the SCIAC they don't get teams ranked up near the top 10 even when they have a great record and I think that's accurate. The SCIAC is not a top league and their lower ranking reflects that.  Whitworth however has built up a nice resume of consistency and they get ranked up high in the Top 25, but I don't think that's really a fair expectation of what they'll do in the tournament.   

Quote from: A Buc Forever on March 19, 2014, 02:30:49 AM
Whitworth has only lost 1 NCAA tournament game at home.   If they got more games in the later rounds my guess is that they would have made the final 4 a few times.

Quite possibly true. We can't ignore the fact that they've had a pretty easy path a few times to move on too- twice they've had Byes followed by a SCIAC team.  In fact, they've only played a West team 3 times in the past 5 years and every time it's been SCIAC.  They haven't gone up against the big boys in the WIAC & MIAC even if they've been in their bracket. You look at their schedule the last 5 years and you see 3-0 vs the SCIAC, 1-2 vs ASC, 0-2 vs ODAC it's hard not to come away from that with a bit of a hierarchy in your mind about how those conferences stack up against each other.  To take that one step further, Williams on the other hand has gone 3-0 against the ODAC in the tournament over that same period. 

A Buc Forever

Madzillagd,

Good posts.  You make some good points and we can go back and forth arguing about where the NWC stands compared to some of the eastern conferences, but I'd rather not. With the rules of tournament selection being the  way they are, there is an advantage to playing in some DIII dense areas--especially when you can get plenty of OOC wins beating up on weaker conferences in your area.  It is smart to play teams that make you look good at tournament time.  That's why Hayford scheduled Cal Tech back in the day.

The NWC is probably a little behind some of the top conferences in the country, but not by much. In addition, I do think the league is down right now.  Linfield and Willamette used to be decent teams. They are flat out bad right now. UPS is a shadow of what it was 6 or 7 years ago. So maybe WW looks better than they are because of the league they are in. That said, I think WW is still a national level team and it's hard to argue that they don't deserve their rankings.   Except for 2009, the team has pretty much rolled through the NWC and made noise in the tournament.  Yes, they have had some easy roads.  However, when they got beat, it was usually to teams that went far or were on a roll.  For example, last year and 2007 when they lost to the eventual national champs.  The 2010 team easily deserved the top 5 record.   The thing is, beating a good team on the road is tough. Also, it's hard to have the best team roll through a tournament and win it all consistently just by chance alone.  If you are playing teams you have a 70% chance of beating you aren't going to go undefeated over 6 games very often. That's why Warren Buffet's billion dollar bet is pretty safe.

As for convincing me that the NWC gets a fair shake when it comes to playoffs and rankings, you are going to have a hard time ever convincing me of that.  I'm more of a football guy than basketball guy (my son's quote).  In 2007 WW won the NWC after their numbers had dropped to 7 teams and the conference did not get an automatic bid to the post-season.  WW was left out of the playoffs because of a first game loss to a D3 team and a loss to an NAIA team.  The NWC had won the national championships in 2004 and 1999 in football--two different teams won it--hard to argue that the conference's reputation was tainted then.  So I'll just end by stating my position that WW basketball has more than earned the rankings they have received over the last few years.

blackhawks4

When it comes to arguing for more national respect, whether it be through higher rankings or a postseason at large bid, I don't think the NWC has a leg to stand on.  The NWC hasn't made the Final Four in how long?  Elite 8 twice in 10 years?  Unfortunately we can't justify our teams deserving a national ranking above #10.  In terms of postseason at-large bids, I think you've got to continue to pull the 2nd place teams in Wisconsin/Midwest/Eastern conferences, etc. that are consistently there at the end.

madzillagd

I think the best thing that could ever happen to the NWC and the SCIAC is if a D3 conference could get established in Northern California. There are plenty of D2 NAIA schools that are potential targets, it's just a matter of whether they could field enough teams to switch to NCAA. If that ever happened it would make scheduling so much easier and of course would help during tournament time.

Gregory Sager

Quote from: madzillagd on March 20, 2014, 11:53:10 AM
I think the best thing that could ever happen to the NWC and the SCIAC is if a D3 conference could get established in Northern California. There are plenty of D2 NAIA schools that are potential targets, it's just a matter of whether they could field enough teams to switch to NCAA. If that ever happened it would make scheduling so much easier and of course would help during tournament time.

I've often thought that this league would be an ideal candidate to switch over from NAIA D2 to NCAA D3. One of its members, Menlo College, is already a dual member of the two organizations.
"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

frodotwo

Quote from: Gregory Sager on March 18, 2014, 08:52:05 PM
Quote from: A Buc Forever on March 18, 2014, 08:31:34 PM
Have to disagree madzillagd.

Yes, WW and UWSP lost to lower ranked teams, but  with WW it was 12 vs 16.  Steven's Point had a bad night.

UW-Stevens Point had three bad nights in this tourney, ABF, which should tell you something. The Pointers barely eked out a win over unheralded Marian from the lower-tier NACC in the first round at UWSP, 66-64. The Sabres actually had a chance to hit a buzzer-beater that would've brought about the biggest upset in D3 tourney history. The next night, the homestanding Pointers again struggled in beating a Central team that, like Marian, wasn't receiving any d3hoops.com Top 25 votes and which also came from a dark-horse conference (the IIAC). The Pointers won by five, 76-71.

UWSP clearly peaked in the WIAC tourney championship win over UWW, and went straight downhill from there. My guess is that the Pointers will take a similar slide in the final poll due to how poorly they played in all three tourney games, not just in the loss to Emory. Therefore, I'm with madzilla on this one: UWSP has nothing to complain about with regard to this season's bracket structure.

I certainly hope that the pollsters do not ignore a 26-1 start and rank them only on their poor 2-1 finish.

John Gleich

Quote from: frodotwo on March 22, 2014, 12:08:24 AM
Quote from: Gregory Sager on March 18, 2014, 08:52:05 PM
Quote from: A Buc Forever on March 18, 2014, 08:31:34 PM
Have to disagree madzillagd.

Yes, WW and UWSP lost to lower ranked teams, but  with WW it was 12 vs 16.  Steven's Point had a bad night.

UW-Stevens Point had three bad nights in this tourney, ABF, which should tell you something. The Pointers barely eked out a win over unheralded Marian from the lower-tier NACC in the first round at UWSP, 66-64. The Sabres actually had a chance to hit a buzzer-beater that would've brought about the biggest upset in D3 tourney history. The next night, the homestanding Pointers again struggled in beating a Central team that, like Marian, wasn't receiving any d3hoops.com Top 25 votes and which also came from a dark-horse conference (the IIAC). The Pointers won by five, 76-71.

UWSP clearly peaked in the WIAC tourney championship win over UWW, and went straight downhill from there. My guess is that the Pointers will take a similar slide in the final poll due to how poorly they played in all three tourney games, not just in the loss to Emory. Therefore, I'm with madzilla on this one: UWSP has nothing to complain about with regard to this season's bracket structure.

I certainly hope that the pollsters do not ignore a 26-1 start and rank them only on their poor 2-1 finish.

Or their 2-1 result vs either the National Champion or the runner up (though I project a UWW victory).
UWSP Men's Basketball

National Champions: 2015, 2010, 2005, 2004

NCAA appearances: 2018, '15, '14, '13, '12, '11, '10, '09, '08, '07, '05, '04, '03, '00, 1997

WIAC/WSUC Champs: 2015, '14, '13, '11, '09, '07, '05, '03, '02, '01, '00, 1993, '92, '87, '86, '85, '84, '83, '82, '69, '61, '57, '48, '42, '37, '36, '35, '33, '18

Twitter: @JohnGleich

A Buc Forever

UWSP certainly deserves a high rank despite losing early in the playoffs. Rankings and a tournaments are two ways to pick champions or rank teams.  When you use 5 and 7 game playoffs to decide champions, you probably pick the best teams with tournaments.  When you use a single elimination tournament, it really is a crap shoot.  Look at the probabilities involved with a team winning a 6 game tournament.  If a team has a 90% chance of winning (i.e. they beat the other team 9 out of 10 times), the chances that they will win a 6 game tournament is 53%.  A more realistic calculation for the top team before a single elimination 6 team tournament is something like this:

First game: 99% chance of winning
2nd game: 90% chance
3rd game: 80%
4th game: 70%
5th game: 60%
6th game: 60%

With those probabilities the chance that they win it all is about 18%.  These kind of calculations make UCLA's run of 8 straight even more amazing.  So UWSP had a great season and losing in the playoffs shouldn't take much away from what they did all year.  Congrats to them--they should be proud of the high rank that they will deservedly end up with. 

Gregory Sager

Please reread my earlier post, ABF. It's not simply the fact that UWSP lost that will cause the Pointers to drop a relatively long distance. After all, 61 of the 62 teams in the tournament lost their last game -- and yet somebody still has to be #2 (and #3, and #4, and #5 ...) in the final poll. As I said before, the fact that UWSP played so poorly, and came so close to being upset on its own floor, against two relative nobodies in the opening weekend of the tourney will probably hurt the Pointers as much, if not more so, than their loss to Emory (which was, incidentally, a team that wasn't receiving any votes at all in the most recent d3hoops.com poll -- just like Marian and Central).

Getting back to your original statement, it's not true that UWSP had one bad night in this tournament. It had three bad nights. And I think that those three ugly performances will cost the Pointers in the final poll -- although frodotwo and JG are correct in mentioning that the impressive record that the Pointers assembled prior to their March stumble (including the 2-1 record against the national champions) will cushion whatever fall the Pointers take in the final poll.
"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

bleedpurple

#5965
I'm guessing UW-SP ends up 5th.

And I'm also guessing that they couldn't care less about anything other than first.

cawcdad

Quote from: Gregory Sager on March 20, 2014, 06:09:00 PM
Quote from: madzillagd on March 20, 2014, 11:53:10 AM
I think the best thing that could ever happen to the NWC and the SCIAC is if a D3 conference could get established in Northern California. There are plenty of D2 NAIA schools that are potential targets, it's just a matter of whether they could field enough teams to switch to NCAA. If that ever happened it would make scheduling so much easier and of course would help during tournament time.

I've often thought that this league would be an ideal candidate to switch over from NAIA D2 to NCAA D3. One of its members, Menlo College, is already a dual member of the two organizations.
Don't think it will happen Greg. Menlo used to be a partial D-III and returned to full NAIA. William Jessup is looking to go NCAA D-II in the future (Following former league members Dominican, Cal State East Bay and Notre Dame de Namur). UC Merced also has eyes on a future move to NCAA D-II. The rest of the schools don't have enough sports.

Gregory Sager

No, I've never really thought it would happen, either. California becomes more fertile ground for D2 with every passing year; D2s are everywhere in that state now. But the Calpac is really the only viable source of northern Cal schools that would fit madzilla's musings about a D3 geographic bridge between the NWC and the SCIAC.
"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

playball

Tillema plays for the West Region WIAC, but is on the East squad.  Ironic much?

http://www.d3hoops.com/playoffs/men/2014/d3-all-star-game-box-score

Gregory Sager

As I said in another room on d3boards.com, I really dislike the fact that the D3 All-Star game has de-emphasized regionality in terms of constructing the two rosters. Even though the game still features an East team and a West team, the team names are now nothing more than a tease.
"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell