2018 Great Lakes Region

Started by bestfancle, August 28, 2018, 12:09:17 PM

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PaulNewman

DePauw survives.  We'll find out later if it matters at all.  Denison could end the discussion by beating OWU tonight at OWU, so we can be pretty sure that won't happen.

Ommadawn

Quote from: PaulNewman on October 27, 2018, 05:04:28 PM
DePauw survives.  We'll find out later if it matters at all.  Denison could end the discussion by beating OWU tonight at OWU, so we can be pretty sure that won't happen.

Not so fast!  Denison pulls the upset 2-1 despite being outshot 34 (12) to 4 (3).

PaulNewman

I'm shocked.  Congrats to Denison.  And I feel bad for Wooster who must have felt like they were basically in for the first time in a good many years.

Domino1195

#93
Love the gutty effort by Denison. Love that teams with their fate in their hands take care of business. No joy for the 3rd and 4th place teams in the NCAC - but enjoy tonight Big Red.

Capital wins the tie-breaker vs JCU to take their first OAC title since 2009. I believe they also set a team record for goals scored. The 2009 team scored 57,including post season. This team has 58. Chewy was on the field for 1 minute as this was senior night - limited to less than 10 minutes combined the last two games. Didn't see the opportunity for Marietta to jump Wilmington but they did. Interesting first round games - Marietta with the 1-0 win at home over Mt Union, Otterbein with a 1-0 win over ONU. Watched a lot of the ONU game today - there's something off with this group - not playing like a team - too much individual effort.

Grove City and Westminster much more evenly played - tourney winner goes, GC doesn't want to test the Pool C waters. Would love to see them rematched in the final.
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midwest

Messy night at OWU, steady drizzle, wet fields. OWU was relentless. As a reward for beating OWU at OWU on Senior Night, Denison gets the pleasure of playing them on Wednesday. All of these players just want to play another game, congrats!

PaulNewman

I really like this CWRU squad....they may have the elements for a deep run.

Kudos to Wabash for another very good season, sitting at I believe 12-3-3 and again in the NCAC tournament.  Coach Keller really has the Little Giants going in the right direction.  The playoff cards also fell fortunately for Wabash.  By falling to #4 on a tiebreaker, Wabash will take on Kenyon in one semifinal, and Keller already is on record stating that OWU was the best team Wabash played all year, so they won't have to deal with the Battling Bishops until the final.

midwest

Tough for Wabash to get 2:30 game time at Kenyon, with a 4-4 1/2 hour drive to get to Gambier.

This has probably been addressed before, my apologies, but the no-lights at Kenyon soccer seems to create challenges for teams traveling further to Gambier, schools like Wabash and Depauw. I can imagine the funding may not be there for Wabash to leave Tuesday night so that they may find themselves traveling early Wed am. Or maybe programs keep pockets of funds available for those scenarios? Of course, as the conference winner, Kenyon gets to enjoy it's home field advantage, just the timing constraints seem a challenge.

PaulNewman

Quote from: midwest on October 29, 2018, 11:34:53 AM
Tough for Wabash to get 2:30 game time at Kenyon, with a 4-4 1/2 hour drive to get to Gambier.

This has probably been addressed before, my apologies, but the no-lights at Kenyon soccer seems to create challenges for teams traveling further to Gambier, schools like Wabash and Depauw. I can imagine the funding may not be there for Wabash to leave Tuesday night so that they may find themselves traveling early Wed am. Or maybe programs keep pockets of funds available for those scenarios? Of course, as the conference winner, Kenyon gets to enjoy it's home field advantage, just the timing constraints seem a challenge.

They probably will come in the night before....and not sure a 4.5 hour drive on the same day is any better if you play later at night.  And I have a feeling you'll be wishing Denison-OWU was at 2:30 as well instead of under the lights with a bigger crowd at historic Roy Rike.

FWIW, all of the NESCAC tourney games (and most in the regular season) are during the daytime, and some of those games involve bus rides of 6-8/9 hours.

Domino1195

D3 Soccer poll serves Capital the ultimate bulletin board material. Not worthy of a single vote - I disagree

Flying Weasel

Quote from: Domino1195 on October 30, 2018, 03:44:36 PM
D3 Soccer poll serves Capital the ultimate bulletin board material. Not worthy of a single vote - I disagree

Fair or not, Capital did itself no favors with Top 25 voters with the timing and margin of their losses.  At 6-1-0 after four weeks, Capital was tied for fourth most points among unranked teams receiving votes in the Week 4 poll.  And what did they do when the voters were paying the most attention?  They lost 3-0 to Ohio Wesleyan who hadn't received a single vote in that Week 4 poll.  If voters didn't rate Ohio Wesleyan at that point, why would they rate a team who lost to them by 3 goals?  Then, after Capital ran off 4 straight wins (including one over John Carroll) and were poised to gain votes in the Week 7 poll, what did they do?  They lost 3-1 to Mount Union who hadn't received any votes in the previous poll following a 2-loss week.  So, again, if voters didn't rate Mount Union at that point, why would they rate a team who lost to them 3-1? 

I'm not personally agreeing or disagreeing with Capital being shutout by the voters, but looking at the sequence of things, each time voters would have been ready to pull the trigger on Capital, they went out and gave the voters a big reason not to.

But if Capital can use being passed over by the voters as motivation to go out and win games, great!  More power to them.

PaulNewman

Quote from: Flying Weasel on October 30, 2018, 11:19:56 PM
Quote from: Domino1195 on October 30, 2018, 03:44:36 PM
D3 Soccer poll serves Capital the ultimate bulletin board material. Not worthy of a single vote - I disagree

Fair or not, Capital did itself no favors with Top 25 voters with the timing and margin of their losses.  At 6-1-0 after four weeks, Capital was tied for fourth most points among unranked teams receiving votes in the Week 4 poll.  And what did they do when the voters were paying the most attention?  They lost 3-0 to Ohio Wesleyan who hadn't received a single vote in that Week 4 poll.  If voters didn't rate Ohio Wesleyan at that point, why would they rate a team who lost to them by 3 goals?  Then, after Capital ran off 4 straight wins (including one over John Carroll) and were poised to gain votes in the Week 7 poll, what did they do?  They lost 3-1 to Mount Union who hadn't received any votes in the previous poll following a 2-loss week.  So, again, if voters didn't rate Mount Union at that point, why would they rate a team who lost to them 3-1? 

I'm not personally agreeing or disagreeing with Capital being shutout by the voters, but looking at the sequence of things, each time voters would have been ready to pull the trigger on Capital, they went out and gave the voters a big reason not to.

But if Capital can use being passed over by the voters as motivation to go out and win games, great!  More power to them.

I follow your analysis and while plausible the reasoning seems a bit speculative.  In addition to OWU and Mt Union proving to be good teams there is an internal contradiction as well.  Capital DID receive votes in Week 8, and then after only additional wins did not receive any for Week 9.  IMO Capital at 14-3, 8-1 in the OAC, regular season OAC winners, pretty strong SoS, etc probably deserves a national ranking.  Not receiving ANY votes seems like a blip or overlook of some sort.  I think the OAC is underrated this year compared to last year's hype, as Capital, John Carroll, and Mt. Union have proven to be good teams and Ohio Northern and Otterbein are at least decent.  I also can see the frustration when teams like Emory, Dickinson, maybe CMU, etc seemingly can lose time after time and stay in the rankings for weeks on end (although I think Emory finally is out).  On the other hand, what made no sense at all was the ranting about D3soccer and preseason since D3soccer doesn't do a preseason poll, and certainly I haven't seen anyone arguing that current rankings of teams should be based even in small part on performance in years past.  BTW, the Capital poster seems to be forgetting that just 2 weeks ago he doubted whether Capital had the "guts and grit" to be competitive.

Domino1195

That was "internal" bulletin board material. The OWU game was their worst performance of the year, yet OWU's three losses come from teams Cap beat: 3-0 record, 10-0 GF/GA. But it a single vote? As John Gruden would say:"C'mon man!"

PaulNewman

Quote from: Domino1195 on October 31, 2018, 10:27:50 AM
That was "internal" bulletin board material. The OWU game was their worst performance of the year, yet OWU's three losses come from teams Cap beat: 3-0 record, 10-0 GF/GA. But it a single vote? As John Gruden would say:"C'mon man!"

Fair enough.  I'm rooting for Capital (up to a point) and definitely rooting for Mr. Gordon.

Now please feel free to provide some additional "external" bulletin board material for the Lords.

Flying Weasel

#103
Paul Newman, not sure what you mean by "seems a bit speculative".  There is nothing speculative about pointing out the timing of their big losses and to whom.  And it's not going out on a limb to suggest that teams rarely go from unranked to ranked after a week in which they lose by 2 or 3 goals to an unranked team.  On the other hand, it's always 100% speculation when discussing why voters voted how they did.  I limited myself to presenting some things the voters might have been considering on two given occasions during the season without theorizing on the full reasons for their votes (or lack thereof) on those two occasions, much less on other weeks.

Inertia definitely plays a part in the Top 25 rankings, too big a part probably.  Until a team gets ranked, that inertia is against them, but once ranked it can benefit them.  In order to drop a team from the rankings, a voter needs to find another team to take their place.  So even when a ranked team has a bad result, if the teams a voter was considering (but just missed the cut previously) don't do anything to impress that week, or worse, also have a bad result, then there's a chance that the ranked team remains so due to a perceived lack of a better alternative.  In actuality, it's usually several ranked teams on the chopping block due to poor results which means trying to find several unranked teams that seem to deserve to take their place.  The former can often exceed the latter, meaning some ranked team escapes the chopping block.

And certainly results from earlier in the season should be re-evaluated.  What may have at the moment seemed like a poor result might not deserve to be considered as such a negative when additional results show that the opponent was much stronger than realized at the time.  And vice versa, what was thought to be a quality win at the time might later in the season be judged quite differently when the opponent is seen to be having a down year.  However, is this sort of re-visiting earlier results/opponents actually being done by all the voters for all the opponents of all the teams they are considering for their ballot?  Is that even reasonable?  What time commitment would be required to do so and is that the kind of time coaches and SIDS have to give?  I'm not sure.

As to having 7 points last week and none this week despite two wins, who knows?  They were probably on just a single ballot last week.  Once you get past the first 20 teams on your ballot, there's usually a lot of teams that are hard to pick between, and whichever ones you go with you aren't especially married to.  It is a little curious, for sure, but I'm not sure it ever makes much sense to draw any conclusions from the "receiving votes" list beyond the first several teams.  Just remember, if you had complete consensus, the 26th best team in the nation would receive zero votes.  There could have been five (or even twenty) voters who had Capital as their 26th team and Capital would still have had zero votes while a vote went to Team XYZ who wasn't on anyone voter's radar accept one lone voter who threw them on their ballot as one of their last five pick 'ems (maybe because it was a team from their region/conference).  That's why I say, don't draw any conclusions from the "receiving votes" list beyond the first several teams.  It doesn't really tell you what some people seem to think it does.

PaulNewman

Quote from: Flying Weasel on October 31, 2018, 11:31:03 AM
Paul Newman, not sure what you mean by "seems a bit speculative".  There is nothing speculative about pointing out the timing of their big losses and to whom.  And it's not going out on a limb to suggest that teams rarely go from unranked to ranked after a week in which they lose by 2 or 3 goals to an unranked team.  On the other hand, it's always 100% speculation when discussing why voters voted how they did.  I limited myself to presenting some things the voters might have been considering on two given occasions during the season without theorizing on the full reasons for their votes (or lack thereof) on those two occasions, much less on other weeks.

Flying Weasel, you described above in your own words how it was 'speculative.'  You stated some factual info which you were citing, and which you then suggested might correlate with a failure to be ranked.  I'm not sure what the difference is between 'not going out on a limb' and 'speculation,' but fair enough.  The thing is, though, that the original question was why they weren't ranked NOW.  No one other than you was asking why they weren't ranked the immediate weeks following those losses, so the correlation you were implying, it seemed to me, was between 'not going out on a limb' to why they weren't ranked at the times of those losses to 'speculation' about why not now.  You were offering thoughts about why not ranked or receiving votes currently, correct?

At any rate, I don't have any issue with the D3 poll in general, and there will always be fans thinking their team got slighted.  That's to be expected.  I also don't expect voters to go 4 and 5 layers deep in some analysis to reach their votes (which, btw, is why I don't criticize preseason rankings, because who could expect voters to do a deep dive on what team lost a bunch of key seniors, which didn't, which teams have superb recruiting classes coming in, etc?). 

The polls are fun.  And most of us who have some understanding of the regional rankings understand that those are the ones that really "count."