2026 Conference Tournament and NCAA Selection Thread

[Kuiper]

North Park beats Wheaton in PKs to gain the CCIW AQ

@GregSager was right that this was no gimme for North Park.  Wheaton made a ferocious comeback to tie it up in regulation.

[stlawus]

Bad year to be on the bubble.  Another bid popped with Neumann beating Messiah.

[WUPHF]

The D3Datacast.com simulated NPI was re-run within the last hour or so.

https://d3datacast.com/npi/msoc/

[Kuiper]

The D3Datacast.com simulated NPI was re-run within the last hour or so.

https://d3datacast.com/npi/msoc/

A few finals on Sunday to keep an eye on where a highly ranked losing side would probably still get in as an at large and displace a team currently sitting in an at large spot, but the lower ranked team probably or certainly would not without winning the AQ.  Any upsets in these could knock someone out who is currently projected to get an at large bid:

Liberty:  Vasser (#56) v. St. Lawrence (#11)
NCAC:  Denison (#31) v. Kenyon (#19)
MASCAC:  Bridgewater State (#211) v. Salem State (#26)

There are other finals where one team is currently projected to occupy an at large spot or very close to it, but would potentially get knocked out completely if they lost.

Centennial:  Haverford (#44) v. Johns Hopkins (#36)
NEWMAC:  Coast Guard (#96) v. Wheaton (MA) (#34)
SAA:  Rhodes (#62) v. Trinity (TX) (#31)

[2Short2Slow]

Can anyone explain why Babson, Denison, CNU, Trinity and Hobart seem to have Adj wins added to their totals for ties and other teams (Carnegie, WashU, UChicago, North Park, Calvin, GAC) don't have any wins added and/or some subtracted? 

And watch out for Bates and Trinity if they both jump another 13 spots today??!!

[Cacfan1]

NESCAC holds 7 of the top 8 spots in the NPI rankings. WHAT?!

[Kuiper]

Can anyone explain why Babson, Denison, CNU, Trinity and Hobart seem to have Adj wins added to their totals for ties and other teams (Carnegie, WashU, UChicago, North Park, Calvin, GAC) don't have any wins added and/or some subtracted? 

And watch out for Bates and Trinity if they both jump another 13 spots today??!!

I haven't looked closely at all those teams, but under the NPI and the men's soccer committee rules, you only need 10 countable wins.  After that, you can drop (or not add) "bad wins," including bad half wins (ties), which are wins against lower ranked opponents.  The formula does that automatically if it helps your team's overall strength of schedule.  If you click on the rank number for Chicago (16), for example, you can see no net NPI was added for the three lowest opponents (Wheaton, Carroll, and Carthage). 

[BlueJay95]

Something has to hopefully change with the dials adjustments next year. Seven out of first eight is ludicrous. Perhaps someone who dives deeper into this can explain. Rowan and Montclair crash out of protected top 8 last night without playing and Montclair going from 8 to 14! Perhaps most ludicrous is 5-6-4 Bates going from 51 to 38 without playing. Could they move down even further today? The bracket release will be VERY interesting.

[2Short2Slow]

Babson keeps going up and up because they played Tufts and Amherst their 1st 2 games of the season. Crazy.

[Sandon Mibut]

Something has to hopefully change with the dials adjustments next year. Seven out of first eight is ludicrous. Perhaps someone who dives deeper into this can explain. Rowan and Montclair crash out of protected top 8 last night without playing and Montclair going from 8 to 14! Perhaps most ludicrous is 5-6-4 Bates going from 51 to 38 without playing. Could they move down even further today? The bracket release will be VERY interesting.

It looks like this will be addressed next year, particularly with the discount for ties.

For example Amherst-Tufts today. If they tie, Amherst would score 61.5 and Tufts would score 60.3.

Next year, the same result would only count for 55.3 and 54.3 which would have a massive effect on NESCAC since they don't do OT in their 10-game conference season.

The Championships Committee recently approved a decision by the Men's Soccer Committee to change its dials for the NPI calculation effective for Fall 2027

Men's soccer will make the following changes, some of which seems to pull back a little on the initial laser focus on opponent quality above everything.  Is it a sign of pushback on the advantages for NESCAC and other strong conferences getting too many tournament slots?  Maybe.

1.  Win%/SoS%

This dial controls how much emphasis goes to winning versus the strength-of-schedule.  Men's soccer initially was worried that teams would sacrifice strong opponents for easy wins by going away from the regional rankings approach and set this dial at 15%/85%.  Women's soccer, however, went with 20%/80%.  Men's soccer has now adopted the women's standard and moved to 20%/80%. It's still more emphasis on hard schedules than other sports like lacrosse, which is 25/75, but it is more in line with other team sports

2.  QWB

The Quality Win Bonus is another dial that rewards scheduling harder opponents.  It was originally set at 54 with a .750 multiplier, but it has been reduced to 51.5 with a .600 multiplier.  Not sure the exact rational for the individual numbers, but a .750 multiplier was significantly more than many other sports.

3.  Ties

It looks like they want to encourage teams to go for wins rather than to play from the start for the ties by bunkering.  It has been a .500 for ties, so each team got half a win, but now it will be .450 for a tie, which effectively means that a tie is worth a little less than half a win.  For a weaker team, that's still better than losing, but for two strong teams, this "tie discount" or "tie penalty," may have an effect on tactics.

 

[Kuiper]

SAA Finals:

Trinity 0 (4) - Rhodes 0 (2)

Trinity wins it in PKs.  Not the best PK shootout as a couple of players just lacked confidence even if their placement was good, but Trinity advances. 

[LibbyMoore]

Wheaton Lyons win 2-0 over the Coast Guard Bears, so will be the AQ for the Newmac. Too bad for the Cinderella run for Coast Guard, would have been a great upset!

[Kuiper]

FINAL:  Salem State 1 (7) - Bridgewater State 1 (6)

Bridgewater almost pulls off a massive upset, taking Salem State to Pks, but Salem wins 7-6 in the shootout.

[Kuiper]

Sounds like an interesting finals in the NCAC

Denison 1 - Kenyon 0

Kenyon lost on goals, but they did get two red cards.  One was in the 62nd minute and the other was in the 89th.  The second didn't affect much, but the first likely altered things significantly.  There were 10 cards total in the match and 28 fouls between the two teams.

That likely gets both in, with an At Large spot disappearing for someone lower down the NPI rankings.

[ronk]

 Re NCAA tourney hosting: multiple sports aren't allowed to be hosted by a school on the same weekend; in basketball they alternate priority by gender. Is the same done in soccer?
 Scranton has won the AQ in 3 sports this weekend and would seem to host in at least one(men's soccer). The 3rd sport is field hockey. How would they be affected by hosting decisions in soccer? Who would have priority between the sports?
  I suspect this has come up in the past with schools(thinking NESCAC) that have excellent teams in these sports.