Case Study Region V

The next area of selection criteria investigation is going to focus on Region V. That region did very well for itself for the second straight year getting at-large bids for Stevenson, Scranton, Swarthmore and Salisbury. Let’s take a look at the base criteria for those four teams:

Stevenson: 25-5 (0.833), 0.581 SOS, 6-4 Ranked RecordScranton: 21-12 (0.636), 0.631, 4-9Swarthmore: 17-8 (0.680), 0.628, 3-7Salisbury: 20-8 (0.714), 0.611, 7-8

Stevenson has the best record here by a good margin but also the worst SOS. As we saw from our At-Large Criteria Averages article, Stevenson exceeded two of the three averages and that’s a free pass to a bid. The other three teams make up for any deficiencies with those SOS numbers. Each team, other than Salisbury, has at least one bad loss.

Ricky had made a comment that outside of Stevenson, he only liked Salisbury as an at-large but they were blocked by the other 2 teams. As it turned out, the three errors in Ricky’s projected at-large field were all Region V teams. Not to just pick on Ricky, but I also didn’t think Scranton or Swarthmore were worthy, but did take Salisbury with the thought the RAC Chair would do everything they could to get their most worthy team in the tournament despite the ranking.

Normally in these articles, I’m looking at comparisons with teams that didn’t make it and we’ll do some of that below but I think the more interesting question is why did these three teams get an at-large? What did they have that other teams, that we thought were more worthy, lack?

In the Williams Case Study, we focused on UW-Platteville and Case Western Reserve so we’ll bring those teams into this discussion.

UW-Platteville: 23-9 (0.719), 0.579, 4-6Case Western: 22-6 (0.786), 0.561, 3-6

Of the three Region V teams, the least liked from a criteria perspective was Swarthmore so let’s do a quick comparison between them and these two teams.

With CWRU, Swarthmore has a better SOS but a worse Record with no Common Opponent or Head-to-Head component. The same is true when compared against UW-Platteville. (It should be pointed out that Common Opponent is 0-1 for Swarthmore and 0-2 for Platteville but that’s only because Platteville played Whitewater twice. I don’t feel there should be an advantage given here.) In both cases, it all comes down to Ranked Results. Here are the three Ranked Wins for Swarthmore: Kean [5], Eastern [3] and Salisbury [7].

The UW-Platteville wins were Coe [3], St Olaf [7], UW-Stevens Point [3] and UW-Eau Claire [ranked previous week].

The CWRU wins were Mount Union [previously ranked], Carnegie Mellon [2] and WashU [1].

The loss side is pretty equal between the three teams as they all lost to (mostly) really good teams. CWRU is interesting because they are the only one of the three with no bad losses.

You can make your own decision on Ranked Results but I like the wins of UWP and CRWR better than Swarthmore’s wins. I don’t think they are that particularly close, in fact. When looking at the loss side, the CWRU comparison really stands out as they simply didn’t lose to a team they shouldn’t have.

For Swarthmore to have been selected (or Scranton who’s Ranked Results were similar), the Selection Committee had to pick their Results over UWP and CWRU. In both cases Swarthmore’s Ranked Winning Percentage was worse so it wasn’t a pure numbers decision. Even the ranked positions were worse for Swarthmore so I’m struggling to see what the Committee was thinking here. Frankly, it looks like they went rogue. I mean does anyone think that Eastern, Kean or Salisbury could have beaten Coe, Stevens Point, WashU or Carnegie Mellon?

It’s clear to me that the criteria didn’t support at-large bids for either Swarthmore or Scranton but the Committee saw differently. What these two teams did have were good SOS numbers. Did the Selection Committee disregard the published rules for evaluating teams in favor of a single criterion advantage? Last year, we had a similar case with Ithaca who had an even better SOS but they failed to win the matches against the quality teams. They were essentially a one-trick pony but got a bid just like these two one-trick ponies did.

I decided to go through all of the teams and see if there were other high SOS teams that didn’t get selected. In every case, they didn’t have a Record above 0.500 or they had a really poor Ranked Record. One team that sort of stood out was Ohio Northern. They were 16-10 (0.615) with a 0.608 SOS and a 3-4 Ranked Record. ONU wasn’t Regionally Ranked (Region VII) and, therefore, had no chance at selection but they almost look like a Region V team. They ended the season 2-5 and had 6 bad losses so I certainly see why they weren’t ranked but it would have been interesting if they had been considered. Their wins were Oshkosh, Mount Union and Otterbein. For the Region X fans, it also shows you how close Cal Lutheran probably was for selection. Same 16-10 Record as ONU (but no bad losses), a 0.604 SOS but a 4-10 Ranked Record. That’s pretty close to those Region V teams. Now, I don’t think ONU or Cal Lutheran were at-large worthy but it’s obvious the Selection Committee was doing their own thing this year.

What did we learn here? I’m not sure. I think that the RAC V Chairs the last two years have figured out the secret sauce for selection. It appears that SOS was a huge player this year and covers up a lot of selection sins. Again, this is all telling us to either move to Region V or schedule well.