Pool C -- 2013

Started by Ralph Turner, October 18, 2013, 10:39:56 PM

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bleedpurple

Quote from: hazzben on November 09, 2013, 11:25:48 PM
Quote from: bleedpurple on November 09, 2013, 10:11:41 PM
I have looked at the criteria for pool C. And I know that records against RRO is one of them.  My question is:  what are the criteria for Regional Rankings? More specifically, does it have anything to do with RRO? I"m guessing it can't because there's no way of knowing how another region will rank teams. For example, the committee for the West couldn't have known that Wash U would be ranked when they ranked UW-W #1, right?

RRO is a criteria for Regional Rankings. The first ranking is especially tricky, since for example, the West Com had no idea if Wash U would get ranked. The final RR can be adjusted by the national committee I believe. The RRO is certainly adjusted, especially this year since they just dropped the once-ranked-always-ranked criteria.

I know there aren't that many inter-region games like the UW-W/Wash U example. So maybe that makes it inconsequential.  But according to Keith (I believe), the committees' conversations start well before the rankings are announced on Wednesdays. I wonder if there might be some communication between the committees as well.  I know St. Thomas or St. John's could sneak into the West rankings this week and the #1 seed could flip. On the other hand, if UW-W was ranked #1 with the committee NOT knowing Wash U was ranked, maybe their ACTUAL presence in the rankings helps UW-W.  Again, my hat's off to you guys who study this and track it.  I just need the experts to tell me who are the winners and losers (both in terms of seedings and pool C contenders) of this weekend and we are good to go!  :)

hazzben

Quote from: bleedpurple on November 10, 2013, 12:12:30 AM
I know there aren't that many inter-region games like the UW-W/Wash U example. So maybe that makes it inconsequential.  But according to Keith (I believe), the committees' conversations start well before the rankings are announced on Wednesdays. I wonder if there might be some communication between the committees as well.  I know St. Thomas or St. John's could sneak into the West rankings this week and the #1 seed could flip. On the other hand, if UW-W was ranked #1 with the committee NOT knowing Wash U was ranked, maybe their ACTUAL presence in the rankings helps UW-W.  Again, my hat's off to you guys who study this and track it.  I just need the experts to tell me who are the winners and losers (both in terms of seedings and pool C contenders) of this weekend and we are good to go!  :)

The committee typically has a conference call earlier in the week, before the rankings are released on Wednesday. But I don't believe (in fact I'm almost sure) that they don't have multiple conference calls where they are interacting with the other committees. They discuss and rank, and then its released. They don't re-discuss after they hear how the other committees have ranked things. Since this would be a moot action, potentially shaking up the RR and possibly shuffling the pre-ranking. Which would then require another comparing of notes. At least that's how I understand it.

But you're correct, in UWW's case, this means they got the #1 spot in the first West ranking without the committee even knowing that Wash U was ranked in the South.

ExTartanPlayer

Quote from: bleedpurple on November 09, 2013, 10:11:41 PM
Quote from: wally_wabash on November 09, 2013, 09:09:00 PM
Quote from: bleedpurple on November 09, 2013, 08:59:39 PM
Mount Union. Now there's a team that is not talked about too often in this thread!

I have a question. With Franklin losing and Heidelberg getting destroyed today, the probability exists that, if John Carroll beat the Raiders next week, Mount will have zero wins against regionally ranked opponents. Assuming the Raiders are still a pool C lock, what kind of seed are they looking at with no RRO wins?

Mount Union hasn't lost a road game in 20 years.  I'm not sure it matters what their seed would be.

Even so, I think you're probably assuming that Heidelberg is dropping out of the North's RRs and I don't believe that they will.  I can't find a logical reason why the RAC wouldn't recognize Heidelberg as one of the top 10 teams in the region.   

To whit- The teams you would be looking at here are Concordia (Wis), Benedictine, Albion, and Hope.  The NACC teams both have worse SOSs than Heidelberg (which is no small feat).  Albion or Hope are going to pick up a loss.  So that pushes Heidelberg back in after week 11, even if they slipped out this week.

Not suggesting it would matter, was just curious. Didn't realize the north was quite so shallow that the 9th ranked team would lose by 6 touchdowns and stay ranked.  But I don't follow all this criteria stuff all that closely. I do love reading this board and thanks all of you who put the work in to sort it out for us. 

I don't necessarily think this shows that the North is that shallow.  That 9th-ranked team lost by 10 to the first-ranked team the week before.  I think it shows common sense among committee members to consider that a good team can struggle against another really good team (John Carroll is really, really, really effing good in case you haven't noticed) a week after losing their biggest game of the season.  Heidelberg's body of work suggests that they should stay in (ranking a team from a lesser conference just because they didn't have to play the region's best teams is even dumber than ranking a team that lost by 6 touchdowns).  There are comparable examples in just about every region.  Pacific Lutheran lost by four touchdowns to the third-ranked team in the West (I'm well aware that game was competitive late, just making a statement similar to yours) and is still ranked seventh (as they should be).  Wesley got as obliterated as you can get by UMHB (I don't care that the score was 'only' 35-7, they were outgained 400 to 26 through three quarters) and is fourth in the South (a criminally high ranking, BTW, but a ranking nevertheless).  A blowout loss does not preclude a team from sticking around the bottom of the rankings.  There is a chance that your deep West Region will rank St. Norbert this week with Illinois College's loss; you'll note that SNC lost by 41 points to that same John Carroll team in the opener.
I was small but made up for it by being slow...

http://athletics.cmu.edu/sports/fball/2011-12/releases/20120629a4jaxa

hazzben

Quote from: ExTartanPlayer on November 10, 2013, 07:27:15 AM
There is a chance that your deep West Region will rank St. Norbert this week with Illinois College's loss; you'll note that SNC lost by 41 points to that same John Carroll team in the opener.

I think this goes to the depth of the region. Is SNC much different from the MIAA teams? But IC was unbeaten and sitting at 8. SNC has an ugly loss (albeit to a very strong North team), no quality wins and won't even play the 2nd place team in the conference. That's a lot working against them. They could get ranked, but week 1 seems to show a committee more concerned with quality of play, opponents, etc. than straight W-L. I'd be surprised to see SNC.

That said, I don't think the North is weak. Just not as strong as a very stacked and deep West.

I'd argue the difficulty of regions goes in this order:

West - very strong top teams, bottom teams are maybe the best of any region. A lot of 1 loss teams that can't even crack the board
North - very strong top teams, middle teams have quality as well. Bottom of the ranking are a little light in places (not all of them) and once you get off the board it probably drops off even more
South - very strong top team, one maybe two (Wesley) strong teams, then a pack of good not greats
East - strong top team, a pack of good not greats

For parities sake, if they don't shuffle some teams out of the West and North those regions will be absolutely brutal. For clarities sake, I'm using 'very strong team' to refer to a team I think is a threat to make the semi's depending on how their region & seeding stacks up. Strong means a Regional Finals threat. Good not great means more likely to lose second round than win, unless they draw another good not great and get a favorable matchup.

To this point. I think most of the teams in the West ranking would be a threat to win the East. So they might get stuck in the West and appear to fall into the good not great category, but it's more owing to their draw than their actual strength.

All that said, there's bound to be some movement yet. Each region will have some weak Pool A's added to the mix, some quality teams are bound to lose in the final week. And some teams are going to surprise us in the playoffs.

bleedpurple

Quote from: ExTartanPlayer on November 10, 2013, 07:27:15 AM
Quote from: bleedpurple on November 09, 2013, 10:11:41 PM
Quote from: wally_wabash on November 09, 2013, 09:09:00 PM
Quote from: bleedpurple on November 09, 2013, 08:59:39 PM
Mount Union. Now there's a team that is not talked about too often in this thread!

I have a question. With Franklin losing and Heidelberg getting destroyed today, the probability exists that, if John Carroll beat the Raiders next week, Mount will have zero wins against regionally ranked opponents. Assuming the Raiders are still a pool C lock, what kind of seed are they looking at with no RRO wins?

Mount Union hasn't lost a road game in 20 years.  I'm not sure it matters what their seed would be.

Even so, I think you're probably assuming that Heidelberg is dropping out of the North's RRs and I don't believe that they will.  I can't find a logical reason why the RAC wouldn't recognize Heidelberg as one of the top 10 teams in the region.   

To whit- The teams you would be looking at here are Concordia (Wis), Benedictine, Albion, and Hope.  The NACC teams both have worse SOSs than Heidelberg (which is no small feat).  Albion or Hope are going to pick up a loss.  So that pushes Heidelberg back in after week 11, even if they slipped out this week.

Not suggesting it would matter, was just curious. Didn't realize the north was quite so shallow that the 9th ranked team would lose by 6 touchdowns and stay ranked.  But I don't follow all this criteria stuff all that closely. I do love reading this board and thanks all of you who put the work in to sort it out for us. 

I don't necessarily think this shows that the North is that shallow. That 9th-ranked team lost by 10 to the first-ranked team the week before.  I think it shows common sense among committee members to consider that a good team can struggle against another really good team (John Carroll is really, really, really effing good in case you haven't noticed) a week after losing their biggest game of the season.  Heidelberg's body of work suggests that they should stay in (ranking a team from a lesser conference just because they didn't have to play the region's best teams is even dumber than ranking a team that lost by 6 touchdowns).  There are comparable examples in just about every region.  Pacific Lutheran lost by four touchdowns to the third-ranked team in the West (I'm well aware that game was competitive late, just making a statement similar to yours) and is still ranked seventh (as they should be).  Wesley got as obliterated as you can get by UMHB (I don't care that the score was 'only' 35-7, they were outgained 400 to 26 through three quarters) and is fourth in the South (a criminally high ranking, BTW, but a ranking nevertheless).  A blowout loss does not preclude a team from sticking around the bottom of the rankings.  There is a chance that your deep West Region will rank St. Norbert this week with Illinois College's loss; you'll note that SNC lost by 41 points to that same John Carroll team in the opener.

Poor choice of words. My bad. I wasn't trying to slap the north. I was trying to make my point without being too wordy. What I should have said was that I didn't realize quite how set the top 10 must be in the North that a team could lose by 42 in week 10 and still probably remain ranked.  I think highly of the north. That's why I was thinking there must be a team on the edges of the Top 10 that would be ready to jump in there upon a result like that.

Bob.Gregg

Quote from: 02 Warhawk on November 05, 2013, 11:39:09 AM
Sure, but not everybody is undefeated like IC
So much for THAT!
Been wrong before.  Will be wrong again.

Mr. Ypsi

#171
I imagine the better experts are waiting for the new RRs on Wednesday before prognosticating, but I can't wait. ;)

Locks:
(9-1) loser of UMU/JCU
(9-1) winner of UWP/UWO
(9-1) IWU (assuming no monumental upset at home vs Elmhurst)

Veritable Lock:
(8-1) Pac Lu (end of regular season)

That leaves for spot #5:
9-1 Wabash (assuming they win the Monon Bell)
9-1 Thomas More (assuming they win the Bridge Bowl)
the top 8-2 MIAC team (SJU if they upset Bethel, otherwise UST)
the top 8-2 E8 team (the winner of SJF/Alfred)
[I don't think one-loss Illinois College or Tx Lu has a prayer.  Nor do I think Wheaton, Heidelberg, or the UWP/UWO loser has a chance.]]

Anyone I've inadvertently omitted?

K-Mack

Ypsi, this is my group. And the SOS might mean that PLU goes in ahead of UWP/UWO, although they all have a common opponent in UWEC, which PLU beat just 21-19.

IWU might go in before UWP/O as well, but that would matter less since they won't likely be in the same bracket, although they could be.

QuotePool C (Seven for five spots)
John Carroll/Mount Union loser
UW-Platteville/UW-Oshkosh winner
Pacific Lutheran, 8-1, .545
Illinois Wesleyan, 8-1, .502
Wabash, 8-1, .514
Thomas More, 8-1, .470
Illinois College, 8-1, .460

That's not including Chapman, which is 7-1 with a .428
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smedindy

Keith, you don't think a St. Thomas or St. John's would jump ahead of Illinois College and Chapman in the West rankings?

K-Mack

Quote from: smedindy on November 11, 2013, 03:51:35 PM
Keith, you don't think a St. Thomas or St. John's would jump ahead of Illinois College and Chapman in the West rankings?

I haven't given it a ton of thought, but I think it's both possible and a mostly moot point.

Certainly St. John's, on the heels of a win over Bethel, would be hard to keep out, and their SoS will rise from .464. The MIAC SoS numbers aren't as good as you might expect, Bethel aside.
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AO

Quote from: K-Mack on November 11, 2013, 04:06:44 PM
Quote from: smedindy on November 11, 2013, 03:51:35 PM
Keith, you don't think a St. Thomas or St. John's would jump ahead of Illinois College and Chapman in the West rankings?

I haven't given it a ton of thought, but I think it's both possible and a mostly moot point.

Certainly St. John's, on the heels of a win over Bethel, would be hard to keep out, and their SoS will rise from .464. The MIAC SoS numbers aren't as good as you might expect, Bethel aside.
How could the SOS get much better?  The MIAC has one non-conference loss.
Concordia-Moorhead .558 Regionally ranked win over St. John's
St. Thomas .537 Regionally ranked win over Concordia
Gustavus .568 Regionally ranked win over St. John's

Illinois College should be out of the West Top Ten with their .460

ExTartanPlayer

Quote from: Mr. Ypsi on November 10, 2013, 07:25:22 PM
I imagine the better experts are waiting for the new RRs on Wednesday before prognosticating, but I can't wait. ;)

Locks:
(9-1) loser of UMU/JCU
(9-1) winner of UWP/UWO
(9-1) IWU (assuming no monumental upset at home vs Elmhurst)

Veritable Lock:
(8-1) Pac Lu (end of regular season)

That leaves for spot #5:
9-1 Wabash (assuming they win the Monon Bell)
9-1 Thomas More (assuming they win the Bridge Bowl)
the top 8-2 MIAC team (SJU if they upset Bethel, otherwise UST)
the top 8-2 E8 team (the winner of SJF/Alfred)
[I don't think one-loss Illinois College or Tx Lu has a prayer.  Nor do I think Wheaton, Heidelberg, or the UWP/UWO loser has a chance.]]

Anyone I've inadvertently omitted?

Basically my take as well, under the assumption that the three Pool B teams are Millsaps, Wesley, and Framingham State.  If TLU somehow gets picked over Framingham for the third Pool B bid, then I think Framingham will be atop the East's Pool C board and have a decent chance to get in.  I don't think that really should happen, but who knows exactly what we'll see.  Further out on the fringes is WashU, but that is wayyyy on the fringes (and being ranked behind TMC at the moment in the RR's, I think they're unlikely to ever reach the table for discussion).
I was small but made up for it by being slow...

http://athletics.cmu.edu/sports/fball/2011-12/releases/20120629a4jaxa

ExTartanPlayer

Quote from: bleedpurple on November 10, 2013, 01:45:48 PM
Quote from: ExTartanPlayer on November 10, 2013, 07:27:15 AM
Quote from: bleedpurple on November 09, 2013, 10:11:41 PM
Quote from: wally_wabash on November 09, 2013, 09:09:00 PM
Quote from: bleedpurple on November 09, 2013, 08:59:39 PM
Mount Union. Now there's a team that is not talked about too often in this thread!

I have a question. With Franklin losing and Heidelberg getting destroyed today, the probability exists that, if John Carroll beat the Raiders next week, Mount will have zero wins against regionally ranked opponents. Assuming the Raiders are still a pool C lock, what kind of seed are they looking at with no RRO wins?

Mount Union hasn't lost a road game in 20 years.  I'm not sure it matters what their seed would be.

Even so, I think you're probably assuming that Heidelberg is dropping out of the North's RRs and I don't believe that they will.  I can't find a logical reason why the RAC wouldn't recognize Heidelberg as one of the top 10 teams in the region.   

To whit- The teams you would be looking at here are Concordia (Wis), Benedictine, Albion, and Hope.  The NACC teams both have worse SOSs than Heidelberg (which is no small feat).  Albion or Hope are going to pick up a loss.  So that pushes Heidelberg back in after week 11, even if they slipped out this week.

Not suggesting it would matter, was just curious. Didn't realize the north was quite so shallow that the 9th ranked team would lose by 6 touchdowns and stay ranked.  But I don't follow all this criteria stuff all that closely. I do love reading this board and thanks all of you who put the work in to sort it out for us. 

I don't necessarily think this shows that the North is that shallow. That 9th-ranked team lost by 10 to the first-ranked team the week before.  I think it shows common sense among committee members to consider that a good team can struggle against another really good team (John Carroll is really, really, really effing good in case you haven't noticed) a week after losing their biggest game of the season.  Heidelberg's body of work suggests that they should stay in (ranking a team from a lesser conference just because they didn't have to play the region's best teams is even dumber than ranking a team that lost by 6 touchdowns).  There are comparable examples in just about every region.  Pacific Lutheran lost by four touchdowns to the third-ranked team in the West (I'm well aware that game was competitive late, just making a statement similar to yours) and is still ranked seventh (as they should be).  Wesley got as obliterated as you can get by UMHB (I don't care that the score was 'only' 35-7, they were outgained 400 to 26 through three quarters) and is fourth in the South (a criminally high ranking, BTW, but a ranking nevertheless).  A blowout loss does not preclude a team from sticking around the bottom of the rankings.  There is a chance that your deep West Region will rank St. Norbert this week with Illinois College's loss; you'll note that SNC lost by 41 points to that same John Carroll team in the opener.

Poor choice of words. My bad. I wasn't trying to slap the north. I was trying to make my point without being too wordy. What I should have said was that I didn't realize quite how set the top 10 must be in the North that a team could lose by 42 in week 10 and still probably remain ranked.  I think highly of the north. That's why I was thinking there must be a team on the edges of the Top 10 that would be ready to jump in there upon a result like that.

Understood - the bolded is probably a more accurate phrasing.  The North is very good...but it's pretty well-accepted that the top 9 teams, in particular, are well ahead of the teams on the fringes in that 10-14 range, which can either be used to say that the North is deep to have nine teams that are so good, or that it is shallow to say that there is a steep drop-off after the top 9 (although Hope's close loss to IWU and impressive run since their first MIAA loss suggests that they might be a worthy #10).  So it's kind of "both" deep and shallow.
I was small but made up for it by being slow...

http://athletics.cmu.edu/sports/fball/2011-12/releases/20120629a4jaxa

wally_wabash

Quote from: AO on November 11, 2013, 04:19:08 PM
Quote from: K-Mack on November 11, 2013, 04:06:44 PM
Quote from: smedindy on November 11, 2013, 03:51:35 PM
Keith, you don't think a St. Thomas or St. John's would jump ahead of Illinois College and Chapman in the West rankings?

I haven't given it a ton of thought, but I think it's both possible and a mostly moot point.

Certainly St. John's, on the heels of a win over Bethel, would be hard to keep out, and their SoS will rise from .464. The MIAC SoS numbers aren't as good as you might expect, Bethel aside.
How could the SOS get much better?  The MIAC has one non-conference loss.Concordia-Moorhead .558 Regionally ranked win over St. John's
St. Thomas .537 Regionally ranked win over Concordia
Gustavus .568 Regionally ranked win over St. John's

Illinois College should be out of the West Top Ten with their .460

That is phenomenal.  It also doesn't mean that God's own D-III conference is out there wailing away on D-III elites on the reg.  Among the giants slain by the mighty MIAC:

0-9 UW-River Falls...twice
1-8 UW-Eau Claire...twice
3-6 Buena Vista...twice
3-6 Macalester...twice
2-7 Grinnell
3-7 Minnesota-Morris
something called Jamestown, which appears to be a 3-7 NAIA team
"Nothing in the world is more expensive than free."- The Deacon of HBO's The Wire

K-Mack

Quote from: AO on November 11, 2013, 04:19:08 PM
Quote from: K-Mack on November 11, 2013, 04:06:44 PM
Quote from: smedindy on November 11, 2013, 03:51:35 PM
Keith, you don't think a St. Thomas or St. John's would jump ahead of Illinois College and Chapman in the West rankings?

I haven't given it a ton of thought, but I think it's both possible and a mostly moot point.

Certainly St. John's, on the heels of a win over Bethel, would be hard to keep out, and their SoS will rise from .464. The MIAC SoS numbers aren't as good as you might expect, Bethel aside.

How could the SOS get much better?  The MIAC has one non-conference loss.
Concordia-Moorhead .558 Regionally ranked win over St. John's
St. Thomas .537 Regionally ranked win over Concordia
Gustavus .568 Regionally ranked win over St. John's

Illinois College should be out of the West Top Ten with their .460

Guess I was mostly referring to St. John's and St. Thomas and the fact that as you mention, the conference has one non-conference loss, yet nobody has an outlandish SoS. I realize that it can only grow so much when big conferences have few non-conference games ... it was just a ham-handed compliment, saying that my opinion of this year's MIAC is even higher than the SoS numbers are.
Former author, Around the Nation ('01-'13)
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Voter, Top 25/Play of the Week/Gagliardi Trophy/Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year
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and one of the two voices behind the sonic #d3fb nerdery that is the ATN Podcast.