Quote from: Gregory Sager on March 11, 2020, 10:54:11 AMQuote from: BluesBrother on March 10, 2020, 03:42:00 PM
It's also nice to see SCIAC advancing after three consecutive years of getting knocked out in the second round vs Whitman. I know these conferences aren't as deep as others, but the top end programs are absolutely national contenders
History has not demonstrated that to be true, especially for the SCIAC -- and keep in mind that the SCIAC has been part of D3 since the late '70s. No SCIAC team has ever reached the Final Four, and only the 2017 Whitman team has gotten that far from the NWC. The list of SCIAC and NWC teams that have reached the Elite Eight is not extensive, either:
1981 Whittier
2002 Lewis & Clark
2003 Occidental
2006 Puget Sound
2011 Whitworth
2017 Whitman
2018 Whitman
It would seem that the West Coast teams have made strides in the new millennium, seeing as how they've made six of the 20 Elite Eights played since Y2K. But their performance once they've reached that level has been dismal. The five teams listed above that have reached the Elite Eight but gone no further since 2000 each lost their Elite Eight game by double digits, and the average margin of defeat in those six games was 15 points.
No doubt about it, Whitman has been very solid over the past four seasons. But the 2017 Whitman team distorted what has been the actual record of NWC teams over the past two decades -- and the SCIAC's legacy is in fact far more dismal than the NWC's in the big dance.
As I have said on this string before, single elimination tournaments are a poor way to judge teams. A team that has a 90% chance of winning every game against the team they are playing against, will win a 6 game tournament 54% of the time. Add in the fact that when you get to the 3rd and 4th rounds, the West Coast teams are playing in the home gyms of good teams, there is very little chance to get to the Final 4. I was at the 2011 Whitworth game against Wooster. First of all, Wooster and WW had been the two teams that had been ranked #1 that year for the greatest amount of time and they were meeting in the Elite 8 game. They were equivalent to #1 seeds. They should have not played this round. Second, unbelievable homer job. That's not sour grapes, it was bad. To be expected to some degree, but still bad. The coach of the team Whitworth beat in the Sweet Sixteen said WW was the best DIII team he'd ever seen. Some of the recent Whitman teams would rank up there with the WW 2011 team. These teams are as good as anyone in the country, but a single elimination tournament with the road blocks the west coast teams face is not a fair way to judge the conference.