Pool C

Started by Pat Coleman, January 20, 2006, 02:35:54 PM

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smedindy

Quote from: Hoops Fan on March 05, 2014, 11:39:59 AM
Quote from: sac on March 05, 2014, 11:29:39 AM
Quote from: Pat Coleman on March 05, 2014, 11:07:58 AM
One thing Staten Island could have done to help itself was play New Jersey City instead of Rivier in its own tournament. That's something that cost zero money and that CSI had all sorts of control over. They could well have played both Randolph and NJCU but instead played a middling team from a poor conference.

This one move would have only boosted the SOS by .004, approximately.

Staten Island really needs something more dramatic like playing a .700 or better team, preferably on the road. 

If they replace this schedule with two .700 or better teams, even lose both games they might have made the tournament.

They need to get into New England more.  The top teams in the CCC are almost always over .700 - the only problem is you never know which teams are going to be in the top from year to year.  Makes scheduling tough.

That's probably more travel than they want to do or can afford, though.

smedindy

Quote from: pjunito on March 05, 2014, 01:49:24 PM
Quote from: KnightSlappy on March 05, 2014, 12:12:02 PM
Quote from: Pat Coleman on March 05, 2014, 11:09:23 AM
Quote from: Hoops Fan on March 05, 2014, 11:07:16 AM
It's about institutional philosophy.  Some schools aren't going to spend the money required to travel and compete the way other schools will (or can).  It's just the reality of d3.  If they want to improve their national standing, it's going to cost more money.

You can't really have it both ways.

It's possible, though, to play Western Connecticut or Wesleyan or Albertus Magnus instead of Kean or FDU-Florham. Those are all similar distance to some of the NJAC schools and get you into some SOS-rich conferences or in the case of Albertus, a team that is apparently begging for games.

Teams with NCAA Tournament aspirations should be lining up to play Albertus. They're going to shred their conference and give you good OWP. The fact that coaches don't schedule them indicates an endemic misunderstanding of how opponents affect your criteria, and how the criteria gets you selected.

As far as tournament resume goes, you don't need to play good teams so much as teams that look good based on the numbers.

I also think teams like Albertus and CSI, have to understand that they play in a one bid league. I think it causes a lot of issues 1. The fear that top tier schools in major conference won't want to schedule these top teams in poor conferences. 2. The fear that scheduling these top tier schools and losing won't help their pool C bid chances anyway. 3. So, how do you judge these teams?

I don't think there is a great way to identify which teams are tournament worthy without watching them play a lot. So, the coaches have to understand this and make one of two decisions. Schedule different and hope your resume is good enough or win your conference tournament (then when you play in the tournament, make some noise.)

But then there's the budget pickle...you can't just make that go away.

AO

Quote from: KnightSlappy on March 05, 2014, 12:12:02 PM
As far as tournament resume goes, you don't need to play good teams so much as teams that look good based on the numbers.
This is what I hoped Ulrich was referring to when talking about looking more deeply into the SOS for each team.  Maybe they can identify some intentional or unintentional "closed loop" scheduling schemes that inflate the SOS for poor conferences who only tend to play other poor conferences. 

CCHoopster

Quote from: KnightSlappy on March 05, 2014, 08:30:13 AM
Quote from: CardsFan on March 05, 2014, 02:29:23 AM
It's still puzzling that Dickinson stayed ahead of Stevenson in the final super-secret regional rankings.

Dickinson (21-6): .778 / .529 / 1-1
Stevenson (19-8): .704 / .530 / 4-4

Keeping Dickinson ahead of Stevenson is not clearly incorrect. Dickinson won two more games against the same SOS. Sure, you want to bump Stevenson up for the RRO, but it's not immediately clear that it should make up for the difference in winning percentage (remember: SOS already indicates their schedules are equally difficult).

I'm very sympathetic to the idea that RRO is a form of double-counting the SOS. I'm fine with using it as a sort of tiebreaker that shouldn't be placed on equal footing with WP and SOS.

Messiah (MACC) - .760/.532/2-4

Messiah had 2 of 3 criteria better than Stevenson. Is head to head a primary criteria? (see Scranton jumping cabrini) So why wouldn't the discussion be Dickinson vs Messiah?

Just asking, no argument. I don't really understand and this year has confused me even more. Which of the 3 criteria are most important?

KnightSlappy

Quote from: CCHoopster on March 05, 2014, 02:50:04 PM
Quote from: KnightSlappy on March 05, 2014, 08:30:13 AM
Quote from: CardsFan on March 05, 2014, 02:29:23 AM
It's still puzzling that Dickinson stayed ahead of Stevenson in the final super-secret regional rankings.

Dickinson (21-6): .778 / .529 / 1-1
Stevenson (19-8): .704 / .530 / 4-4

Keeping Dickinson ahead of Stevenson is not clearly incorrect. Dickinson won two more games against the same SOS. Sure, you want to bump Stevenson up for the RRO, but it's not immediately clear that it should make up for the difference in winning percentage (remember: SOS already indicates their schedules are equally difficult).

I'm very sympathetic to the idea that RRO is a form of double-counting the SOS. I'm fine with using it as a sort of tiebreaker that shouldn't be placed on equal footing with WP and SOS.

Messiah (MACC) - .760/.532/2-4

Messiah had 2 of 3 criteria better than Stevenson. Is head to head a primary criteria? (see Scranton jumping cabrini) So why wouldn't the discussion be Dickinson vs Messiah?

Just asking, no argument. I don't really understand and this year has confused me even more. Which of the 3 criteria are most important?

Head-to-head is primary, yes. And 2 of 3 criteria being better is only sort of because .530 and .532 are basically the same.

Primary Criteria are:
--Winning percentage vs. D3
--SOS vs. D3
--Results vs. Regionally Ranked Opponents
--Heat-to-head results
--Results vs. common opponents.

I don't believe the handbook spells out any sort of relative importance.

sac

Wittenberg head coach Bill Brown was on hoopsville a few weeks ago and suggested using a 3 year win% of your opponents to calculate strength of schedule. 

His rationale was it would help identify who you should be playing, and that if you schedule a good program that has a 'down' year you aren't burned by it so much.  Interesting idea I thought.

Pat Coleman

Quote from: sac on March 05, 2014, 11:29:39 AM
Quote from: Pat Coleman on March 05, 2014, 11:07:58 AM
One thing Staten Island could have done to help itself was play New Jersey City instead of Rivier in its own tournament. That's something that cost zero money and that CSI had all sorts of control over. They could well have played both Randolph and NJCU but instead played a middling team from a poor conference.

This one move would have only boosted the SOS by .004, approximately.

Staten Island really needs something more dramatic like playing a .700 or better team, preferably on the road. 

If they replace this schedule with two .700 or better teams, even lose both games they might have made the tournament.

Oh, I get that one game isn't the be-all and end-all but my point was that they didn't even do something that was completely in their control and cost no money.
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sac

Quote from: Pat Coleman on March 05, 2014, 03:32:17 PM
Quote from: sac on March 05, 2014, 11:29:39 AM
Quote from: Pat Coleman on March 05, 2014, 11:07:58 AM
One thing Staten Island could have done to help itself was play New Jersey City instead of Rivier in its own tournament. That's something that cost zero money and that CSI had all sorts of control over. They could well have played both Randolph and NJCU but instead played a middling team from a poor conference.

This one move would have only boosted the SOS by .004, approximately.

Staten Island really needs something more dramatic like playing a .700 or better team, preferably on the road. 

If they replace this schedule with two .700 or better teams, even lose both games they might have made the tournament.

Oh, I get that one game isn't the be-all and end-all but my point was that they didn't even do something that was completely in their control and cost no money.

Devil's advocate

Rivier came a long way to play at Staten Island, perhaps the agreement was to give Rivier a good non-conference opponent in Staten Island.

NJC was 15-13 last year, 2 games worse than the year before, Rivier was 10-16 and 5 games better, perhaps Staten Island was hoping Rivier would have the better season.

This is part of what makes scheduling so difficult. :-\

KnightSlappy

Quote from: Pat Coleman on March 05, 2014, 03:32:17 PM
Quote from: sac on March 05, 2014, 11:29:39 AM
Quote from: Pat Coleman on March 05, 2014, 11:07:58 AM
One thing Staten Island could have done to help itself was play New Jersey City instead of Rivier in its own tournament. That's something that cost zero money and that CSI had all sorts of control over. They could well have played both Randolph and NJCU but instead played a middling team from a poor conference.

This one move would have only boosted the SOS by .004, approximately.

Staten Island really needs something more dramatic like playing a .700 or better team, preferably on the road. 

If they replace this schedule with two .700 or better teams, even lose both games they might have made the tournament.

Oh, I get that one game isn't the be-all and end-all but my point was that they didn't even do something that was completely in their control and cost no money.

If they had moved ALL road games to home games (leaving the neutrals as neutrals) they could have improved their SOS by 0.002.

Playing both games against Medgar Evers at home instead of one at home and one on the road would have raised their SOS by 0.005!

bopol

Here's a simple solution to the Staten Island controversy...the conference could award the NCAA bid to the regular season championship instead of the tournament championship.

There were two conferences (SAA and SCAC) that had tournament finals with no particular meaning.  In the SAA, everyone knew Centre would get the Pool B bid no matter what Oglethorpe did.  In the SCAC, Centenary wasn't eligible for the postseason, so no matter what happened in that final, Trinity was going.  The games were still excellent.

I don't think there is a rule that the autobid has to go to the tournament winner, so you could still have the tournament, but Staten Island doesn't get hurt by their first bad game in three months.

wally_wabash

Quote from: bopol on March 05, 2014, 04:02:58 PM
Here's a simple solution to the Staten Island controversy...the conference could award the NCAA bid to the regular season championship instead of the tournament championship.

There were two conferences (SAA and SCAC) that had tournament finals with no particular meaning.  In the SAA, everyone knew Centre would get the Pool B bid no matter what Oglethorpe did.  In the SCAC, Centenary wasn't eligible for the postseason, so no matter what happened in that final, Trinity was going.  The games were still excellent.

I don't think there is a rule that the autobid has to go to the tournament winner, so you could still have the tournament, but Staten Island doesn't get hurt by their first bad game in three months.

This.  One thousand times- THIS. 
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pjunito

At the Division 1 level, the IVY league regular season champion gets the automatic bid. They don't have a tournament.

It would make more sense at the division three level to send the regular season champion, since no conference is making tons of money because of having a tournament. However, the argument could be made that for the weaker conferences, teams that have begun to play better in late January and February but finish 4 games out of first and in third place won't have an opportunity to get the to NCAAs.

I believe that as a coach, you need to understand what the committee is going to be looking for and with 19 at large bids, you can't take any chances.

The NCAA tournament is a one game playoff tournament. If you win, you advance or if you lose, your season is over. I think that teams in weak conferences need to think of their conference tournament as an extension of the NCAAs. If you win, you advance, if you lose, your season is over.

Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)

I've always thought they should just scrap the conference tournaments (at least for d1 - d3 it might be too expensive) and just throw every eligible team into the national tournament.  Seed them straight by RPI or something - maybe the top 64 - and give them byes for a few rounds.  Play the lower teams regionally - you might have a few teams from your own conference in your early bracket, but it's not really different than a conference tournament - just a little more open.

You could sell those early rounds better than you could conference tournaments for low-tier conferences, but you'd still have upset potential.


You could do it regionally in d3 without a ton of extra costs (especially with cost savings from no conference tournament).
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gordonmann

#5353
QuoteHere's a simple solution to the Staten Island controversy...the conference could award the NCAA bid to the regular season championship instead of the tournament championship.

Yes, I advocate for this, too.

If the conference has decided to give its automatic bid to the conference tournament winner because that's more exciting, more inclusive, etc., then they have to accept that their best overall team may not get to play in the NCAA tournament.  I think more conferences with limited NCAA tournament success should go to this model, though the folks at York (NY) would likely disagree.  But at some point conferences and schools have to decide what they value most. 

HOPEful

Quote from: wally_wabash on March 05, 2014, 04:12:33 PM
Quote from: bopol on March 05, 2014, 04:02:58 PM
Here's a simple solution to the Staten Island controversy...the conference could award the NCAA bid to the regular season championship instead of the tournament championship.

There were two conferences (SAA and SCAC) that had tournament finals with no particular meaning.  In the SAA, everyone knew Centre would get the Pool B bid no matter what Oglethorpe did.  In the SCAC, Centenary wasn't eligible for the postseason, so no matter what happened in that final, Trinity was going.  The games were still excellent.

I don't think there is a rule that the autobid has to go to the tournament winner, so you could still have the tournament, but Staten Island doesn't get hurt by their first bad game in three months.

This.  One thousand times- THIS.

Yes, but the flip side of the coin is, how often does a conference get two in when they otherwise would have only gotten one? (MIAA this year getting in Calvin b/c they beat Hope in the tournament final)
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