BB: Pool C

[Spence]

And you as well...that's a much more user-friendly look

Ithaca and Berry lost today. Shenandoah split but I don't think that hurts them that much.

Looks like the most likely multi-bid leagues (before upsets) are the OAC, LEC, NESCAC, and NJAC.

It does remind us how they may line up when they are on the table on Selection Day.

Add WIAC. UW-Whitewater vaulted to 14th in SOS after 4 games against UWSP. I figured that would happen, but didn't want to be presumptuous and wanted to keep this (mostly) factual and analytical rather than predictive.

[Spence]

Thanks, Spence. 

Oh, a slight factor

As I posted on another thread, the worst record for a Pool C team is 25-18 for Bowdoin in 2012. Obviously, they had an outstanding strength of schedule. I also personally think that any team with .800+ winning percentage is in the conversation regardless of SOS.

The game-is-a-game concept really shows in its accounting for playing tough teams in the southern schedule that may not necessarily have been in-region before.

Just going down the SOS list and eyeballing winning percentages (NOT in order of primacy), it looks like the list of teams competing for Pool C berths might be...

Mideast:              Marietta, Heidelberg, John Carroll, Case Western (likely Pool B though), Baldwin-Wallace
Midwest:              Stevens Point, St. Thomas, Concordia Ill, UW-Whitewater
New England:       Southern Maine, Amherst, ECSU, Tufts
Mid-Atlantic:          Rowan, Moravian, Rutgers-Camden, Ramapo, Gettysburg
New York:            Cortland State, St. John Fisher (Pool B possibility)
South :                Emory (could be Pool B), Shenandoah, Birmingham Southern (Pool B candidate), York PA
West:                   Linfield (likely won't need it), Trinity TX
Central:               Webster, Buena Vista

On a second pass down the list, the fringe might be something like...
Millsaps, UW-Oshkosh, Hendrix, Alvernia, Allegheny, Oswego State, Wheaton, Berry, Endicott, Adrian, Rhodes, Kean (surprised not higher, but SOS not good this year), Salisbury, Frostburg State, Ohio Northern (only because they have pretty much all the OAC heavies coming up), Ithaca.

Spence's breakdown, and his note about Bowdoin gives me doubt about some West team's candidacy for a pool C now.  Willamette winning out and going 27-11 (23-8 against D3) now really looks on the fringe given this context, despite the fact that I think they'd be extremely competitive in the regional.  George Fox is now done I believe, having dropped 2/3 to Pac Lu, save for a miracle finish in their five games against Fox.  Maybe the only Pool C might come from SCIAC if Chapman/Cal Lu each virtually win-out to the SCIAC tournament final.  If not, I am starting to believe a repeat of 2012, with two out-of-region teams (hopefully very competitive ones) flown in. 

I'm really curious to see how the committee handles this. Right now the top of the SOS rankings is dominated by 4 leagues (OAC, WIAC, UAA, NJAC). This is the first year that all games, regardless of region, count equally in SOS. This matches the selections most of us are probably most familiar with, the March Madness bracket picks -- Selection Sunday.

By the March Madness paradigm, schools like John Carroll and Rutgers-Camden would be looking like power conference bubble teams that typically make the tournament. Marietta and Stevens Point would be looking like virtual locks despite not leading their conferences right now. Strength of schedule is a very heavy consideration, and regional balance not really at all since the regionals are so in name only.

Question is: will it work out that way, will the committee value teams similarly to the March Madness selections, or will more consideration be given to other factors (without for now being specific as to what those might be).

I don't know if there's really a way to know this until Monday morning.

[CrashDavisD3]

If the committee truly follows the formula for 2014 this would mean fewer conferences with Pool B/C teams and more travel since out of regional teams would have to fly into a region with weaker teams/SOS/D3 Records.

Sorry but I would limit each conference to 2 teams in a Regional. Just my opinion. This is DIII baseball and not the DI March Madness basketball tournament with 68 teams.

Also IMO at the DIII level teams should only play in their region Regional. I am sure many will disagree.

1. All conferences should have conference tournaments. These are the Automatic Qualifier bids
2. Pool B/C get combines into At Large Berths
3. Add D3 percentage and SOS. Top teams get the At large Berths.
4. All teams play in their regional. No fly in's from out of region.
5. No committee required to choose teams.
6. Limit conferences to 2 teams to a regional
7. D3 winning percentage plus SOS is how teams get seeded.

8. Win it on the field via Conference tourney or win on the field and play top teams to get at large berth.

[Spence]

Just to add a little more context here, I've bolded the teams that are NOT in 1st place in their Pool A conference right now...

Mideast:              Marietta, Heidelberg, John Carroll, Case Western (likely Pool B though), Baldwin-Wallace
Midwest:              Stevens Point, St. Thomas, Concordia Ill, UW-Whitewater
New England:       Southern Maine, Amherst, ECSU, Tufts
Mid-Atlantic:          Rowan, Moravian, Rutgers-Camden, Ramapo, Gettysburg
New York:            Cortland State, St. John Fisher (Pool B possibility)
South :                Emory (could be Pool B), Shenandoah, Birmingham Southern (Pool B candidate), York PA
West:                   Linfield (likely won't need it), Trinity TX
Central:               Webster, Buena Vista

On a second pass down the list, the fringe might be something like...
Millsaps, UW-Oshkosh, Hendrix, Alvernia, Allegheny, Oswego State, Wheaton, Berry, Endicott, Adrian, Rhodes, Kean (surprised not higher, but SOS not good this year), Salisbury, Frostburg State, Ohio Northern (only because they have pretty much all the OAC heavies coming up), Ithaca.

[motorman]

Nice work Spence, see we can be civil to each other.

[CrashDavisD3]

Just to add a little more context here, I've bolded the teams that are NOT in 1st place in their Pool A conference right now...

Mideast:              Marietta, Heidelberg, John Carroll, Case Western (likely Pool B though), Baldwin-Wallace
Midwest:              Stevens Point, St. Thomas, Concordia Ill, UW-Whitewater
New England:       Southern Maine, Amherst, ECSU, Tufts
Mid-Atlantic:          Rowan, Moravian, Rutgers-Camden, Ramapo, Gettysburg
New York:            Cortland State, St. John Fisher (Pool B possibility)
South :                Emory (could be Pool B), Shenandoah, Birmingham Southern (Pool B candidate), York PA
West:                   Linfield (likely won't need it), Trinity TX
Central:               Webster, Buena Vista

On a second pass down the list, the fringe might be something like...
Millsaps, UW-Oshkosh, Hendrix, Alvernia, Allegheny, Oswego State, Wheaton, Berry, Endicott, Adrian, Rhodes, Kean (surprised not higher, but SOS not good this year), Salisbury, Frostburg State, Ohio Northern (only because they have pretty much all the OAC heavies coming up), Ithaca.

Great job. So looks like no Pool C out of the West IF Linfield and Trinity get they get their conference Pool A bid. A few years back West had 4 Pool A bids from conference winners and ZERO Pool B/C bids with 2 fly in from outside the region. 2014 could be a repeat

[Spence]

I think maybe there are still slight possibilities for a couple of teams, but it doesn't look likely unless there's a conference upset.

Pacific Lutheran has a pretty good SOS, but can't afford many (any?) slip ups.

Rutgers-Camden, Ramapo, Ohio Northern, Fisher and Frostburg have not had helpful weekends. Rhodes beat Birmingham Southern, Allegheny moved into a tie with Wooster coming into their divisional series, Kean and Ithaca had strong Saturdays.

[CrashDavisD3]

I think maybe there are still slight possibilities for a couple of teams, but it doesn't look likely unless there's a conference upset.

Pacific Lutheran has a pretty good SOS, but can't afford many (any?) slip ups.

Rutgers-Camden, Ramapo, Ohio Northern, Fisher and Frostburg have not had helpful weekends. Rhodes beat Birmingham Southern, Allegheny moved into a tie with Wooster coming into their divisional series, Kean and Ithaca had strong Saturdays.

Pac Lu at 21-14 has too many losses in IMO. if the win out they will end up 25-14.

[Spence]

Several of those are non D3 though.

But I think losing to Lewis & Clark pretty well ends it. With a win, they could have finished second had they won out and been 26-13, 22-10 against D3. I think that *might* have been enough.

[Spence]

So in my continuing quest to crack a code that can't be cracked because the code is everchanging (meh), and more importantly to put off doing economics homework, I've been messing around with a bit more objective way to look at the Pool C berths.

The best I've come up with so far is a "1.3/1.2" rule. The idea of it being that if you add together a team's D3 record and their NCAA SOS, if a team has a total of 1.3 or higher, they're very likely to be a Pool C team, and if they're under 1.2, they're quite unlikely. In between could be characterized as the bubble.

Disclaimer: I HAVE NO IDEA IF THIS WORKS. It just seems like it should from the numbers.
Disclaimer 2: I didn't get out a calculator for this.

This turned out to be a bigger group than I thought, so I broke it down further. Case is almost certainly going to be Pool B, so I underlined them.

1.400+ (7)
Heidelberg, UW-Whitewater, St. Thomas, Concordia-Ill., Linfield, Webster, Tufts

1.350-1.399 (5)
Southern Maine 1.358, Case Western 1.379, Moravian 1.383, Shenandoah 1.362, Amherst 1.365

1.300-1.349 (11, 1 Pool A)
Stevens Point 1.348, Marietta 1.300, Cortland State 1.349, Rowan 1.339, Birmingham Southern 1.307, ECSU 1.313, Salisbury 1.329, Gettysburg 1.346, St. John Fisher 1.307, Buena Vista 1.345, Trinity 1.312

1.250-1.299 (12)
York 1.298, Kean 1.298, Baldwin-Wallace 1.289, Allegheny 1.289, Emory 1.286, Concordia-TX 1.281, Adrian 1.279, Cal Lutheran 1.277, Bethel 1.269, Endicott 1.258, Ithaca 1.257, Rutgers-Camden 1.256

1.200-1.249 (16)
St. John's 1.249 John Carroll 1.243 Oswego State 1.243 Rhodes 1.233 Salem State 1.226 Wheaton MA 1.244 Alvernia 1.221 Berry 1.204 Frostburg State 1.213 Augustana 1.214 Susquehanna 1.244 George Fox 1.214 Bridgewater 1.209 Union 1.200 Chapman 1.224 Wesleyan 1.232

1.180-1.199 -- just to see if anything slips through the cracks (13)
Willamette 1.184 Ramapo 1.181 Millsaps 1.177 Randolph-Macon 1.188 RPI 1.184
Wooster 1.198 Hampden-Sydney 1.192 Illinois Wesleyan 1.182 Brockport State 1.182 La Roche 1.184 UW Stout 1.198 LeTourneau 1.183 Widener 1.199

In the event anyone has made it this far, feel free to comment with how this works, doesn't work, could be better, are surprised it's not worse...basically anything.

[BigPoppa]

Logically, this makes sense. Teams with with a solid win percentage AND a high SoS SHOULD have a higher number(1.3 and above). Secondly, teams that have a lower SoS are forced to have a much higher win percentage to be considered.... the same as teams with a lower win percentage need a high SoS to stay in contention.

Good work, Spence. I have thought of this in the past, but never knew where the line needed to be drawn. Curious if this magical "1.3" is usually the line or if it moves from year to year.

Love this time of year... warm sunshine and baseball games that prove to be very meaningful.

[Spence]

And we're finally getting spring here in Minneapolis!

Was going to go to St. Thomas Friday but got a late start, and they were done with 4 innings in 45 minutes. Then it started looking like rain.

Need to get my bicycle fixed now!

[108 Stitches]

Nice job Spence.

I was wondering where George Fox was, they have two more games against Linfield, which will be make or break for them. They took one from Linflield over the weekend, but got clobbered in the other two games. I am guess they are done unless they win out.

[Spence]

I don't know really if this is a good job or not haha. We'll find out.

My guess would be everyone in the first 3 groups makes it, most of the 4th, and a few in the 5th. Very few or none in the last.

Of course the members of these groups are fluid. Some of the MIAC teams still have plenty of games left, for example.

It would be nice to have pre-selection numbers from previous years, but I kind of doubt those are available.

[Ralph Turner]

So in my continuing quest to crack a code that can't be cracked because the code is everchanging (meh), and more importantly to put off doing economics homework, I've been messing around with a bit more objective way to look at the Pool C berths.

The best I've come up with so far is a "1.3/1.2" rule. The idea of it being that if you add together a team's D3 record and their NCAA SOS, if a team has a total of 1.3 or higher, they're very likely to be a Pool C team, and if they're under 1.2, they're quite unlikely. In between could be characterized as the bubble.

Disclaimer: I HAVE NO IDEA IF THIS WORKS. It just seems like it should from the numbers.
Disclaimer 2: I didn't get out a calculator for this.

This turned out to be a bigger group than I thought, so I broke it down further. Case is almost certainly going to be Pool B, so I underlined them.

1.400+ (7)
Heidelberg, UW-Whitewater, St. Thomas, Concordia-Ill., Linfield, Webster, Tufts

1.350-1.399 (5)
Southern Maine 1.358, Case Western 1.379, Moravian 1.383, Shenandoah 1.362, Amherst* 1.365

1.300-1.349 (11, 1 Pool A)
Stevens Point* 1.348, Marietta* 1.300, Cortland State 1.349, Rowan 1.339, Birmingham Southern 1.307, ECSU* 1.313, Salisbury 1.329, Gettysburg 1.346, St. John Fisher 1.307, Buena Vista 1.345, Trinity 1.312

1.250-1.299 (12)
York PA* 1.298, Kean* 1.298, Baldwin-Wallace* 1.289, Allegheny 1.289, Emory 1.286, Concordia-TX 1.281, Adrian 1.279, Cal Lutheran 1.277, Bethel* 1.269, Endicott 1.258, Ithaca 1.257, Rutgers-Camden 1.256

1.200-1.249 (16)
St. John's 1.249 John Carroll 1.243 Oswego State 1.243 Rhodes 1.233 Salem State 1.226 Wheaton MA 1.244 Alvernia 1.221 Berry 1.204 Frostburg State* 1.213 Augustana 1.214 Susquehanna* 1.244 George Fox* 1.214 Bridgewater* 1.209 Union* 1.200 Chapman* 1.224 Wesleyan* 1.232

1.180-1.199 -- just to see if anything slips through the cracks (13)
Willamette* 1.184 Ramapo* 1.181 Millsaps 1.177 Randolph-Macon* 1.188 RPI* 1.184
Wooster* 1.198 Hampden-Sydney* 1.192 Illinois Wesleyan* 1.182 Brockport State* 1.182 La Roche* 1.184 UW Stout* 1.198 LeTourneau* 1.183 Widener 1.199

In the event anyone has made it this far, feel free to comment with how this works, doesn't work, could be better, are surprised it's not worse...basically anything.

I saw that you had underlined CWRU.  I underlined the rest of the Pool B teams to give us an idea of who will be cluttering up Pool C.

Thanks for putting Salisbury, the CAC Pool A, in italics.

I have added an asterisk to the second, third, etc., teams from a conference in which there is a team with a "better number" so we can see how "upsets" impact the list.