NPI Impact on Regionals

In my Top 25 article I started to ramble on about the 2024 regionals and how difficult they would be for certain teams. Nothing earth shattering there but I did mention that the NCAA Power Index (NPI) will impact regionals this year. I thought I might spend some time explaining that a bit more.

In past years, with the selection criteria, there were always “too many” New England teams represented. There wasn’t a conspiracy it was just that the criteria liked what the New England schools did by way of scheduling. There were just so many schools in that area (and the New York area) that they could feed on each other which would raise a number of them to elite heights. That’s fine if the area was a true cross-section of teams in the nation but often that wasn’t the case. They existed in a bubble and when the bubble was popped in a reginal final (or more often the Elite 8), we were left shaking our heads as to whether the teams were really worthy. The following year it would be rinse and repeat and the cycle continued. When the NCAA moved to a 10-region system, something interesting happened. Not every region was guaranteed a regional. The thinking was that the New England and New York regions would now get more regionals, which at the time seemed like a very bad idea. Something that wasn’t widely considered was that the West (Region X) dropped off a bit in overall quality right before the change. Now it makes no sense to have a West Regional because it means additional flights to fill out the bracket. (Of course, there was a CMS Regional in 2022 although I suspect it was mainly to give them a dry run for the NCAA Championship the following year.) What happened instead in the other years was that the Region X teams got sent to other regionals and for the first time in forever, we saw west coast teams heading to the east coast and invading the New England Regionals (specifically CMS flying to MIT in 2023). This really isn’t a big deal to these other regions except for one minor problem. The overall quality has dropped in the west but the elite teams (specifically CMS and Trinity) are still elite and typically better than other elite teams. This led to two Region X teams making the Elite 8 twice in the last three years. The exception was when the region held their own regional in 2022 and gave us one of the best regional finals I’ve ever seen. (Seriously, how did Trinity win that match?)

Now, none of that has anything to do with NPI, but my theory is that NPI will cause more teams from the tougher regions to be selected for at-large bids at the expense of the New England schools. This will cause a shift from the east coast to the mid-west. I figure we should take a look at our simulated NPI numbers from 2023 and see which teams would have been out and which would have been in if we had discarded the criteria a year early.

Out

• Stevenson (Region V / Ithaca Regional)

• Middlebury (Region I / Johns Hopkins Regional)

• St Olaf (Region IX / Cornell Regional)

• Williams (Region I / MIT Regional)

• Tufts (Region I / Ithaca Regional)

In

• UW-Platteville (Region VIII)

• Virginia Wesleyan (Region VI)

• Mary Hardin-Baylor (Region X)

• Ohio Wesleyan (Region VII)

• UW-River Falls (Region VIII)

The difference between our simulated 21^st Pool C (at-large) team (Christopher Newport) and a number of other teams is quite small so we may be off depending on how the real NPI formula is calculated and how many iterations they run. Still, this is what we are going with.

Back to the in/out lists and you can see the bigger numbers (regionally) are replacing the smaller ones with the exception of St Olaf. Region I takes a huge hit while Region VIII (generally considered the toughest by far last year) gaining two spots. So, again, this means a shift in the teams from the east to the mid-west.  

If we then look at the NCAA bracket from 2023, we see that four of the “out” teams played on the east coast while only St Olaf played in the Midwest. The first question is whether we could insert these new teams into the existing 2023 regionals without an additional flight. This gets answered pretty quickly when I see that none of the new schools are within 500 miles of MIT. (The NCAA mandates that over 500 miles, a flight is required.) Instead, we will have to swing one of the remaining New England schools playing in the Johns Hopkins Regional over to fill out the MIT bracket. With two spots now open in the Johns Hopkins Regional, we can drive over the Wesleyan twins in Virginia and Ohio.

Ithaca is now the problem as those two spots cannot be filled by any of our three remaining teams. Both of the “in” UW schools are near Cornell so we can drop them there but that gives us three UW schools in the same regional. (Not a big deal as it has happened before.) Of course, they could also be dropped into the UW-Oshkosh Regional (giving them 3 UW schools) and that’s what we are going to do, instead. The reason is that the NCAA flew into that regional both La Verne and East Texas Baptist and now we are going to fly them to Ithaca. That leaves our last spot in the Cornell Regional to Mary Hardin-Baylor, which means one extra flight if NPI was deciding things last year.

I think there were 5 flights last year and all went to the Region X schools? Someone correct me on that. There always seems to be a random flight but with Berry hosting instead of Emory, I don’t think that happened. (Wittenberg was 499 miles officially from Berry so I assume they drove.) With six Region X schools making the NPI 2023 NCAA Tournament, it means 6 flights. The alternative would have been giving Trinity a hosting gig with both Mary Hardin-Baylor and ETBU driving over. That’s still 5 flights to fill out that regional and then, I think, a sixth to get a different team to Berry? Maybe, as Transylvania could have driven. That also might mean an adjustment to a regional hosting location but that will hurt my brain to think about.

So, one of the things I mentioned in the Top 25 article is that NPI may force Texas or SoCal to have 4 teams drivable instead of 3 in order to host a regional. Well, if it means one less flight (to the NCAA) then it looks like only 3 teams would be needed based on my example above. The fallout to this is interesting. First, I don’t think Emory will get a hosting gig as long as Region X has a regional. That’s just too many flights needed between the two locations. (Note – “Too many flights” as defined by the NCAA is one more flight than is absolutely necessary and if we need to drive Wittenberg 499-miles we will do it, instead.) Second, you’ll notice that CMS is no longer at the MIT Regional (or Trinity at the Berry Regional) and that means, at best, only one Region X team to the Elite 8. Finally, it means we are back to a pure New England Regional where, most likely, an undeserving team makes the Elite 8.

Back to the point of this article. What is the impact of NPI to the regionals? Based on just one year’s data, we do see a shift from the east to the mid-west. If we want to say that Mary Hardin-Baylor was a one-off situation and, by this, I mean a team that absolutely didn’t deserve an at-large bid due to their 0.460 Strength of Schedule (SOS) and a fluke schedule, then we probably see another Region VIII team making the tournament (Augustana or Carthage was who we had up next). I think we could then see an additional regional in that area of the country. That actually might be good news for the New England schools because the Region X teams will be used to fill out regionals that need teams. The flip side of that is if they keep the regionals like they did in 2023 (not necessarily the same schools but the same areas), then it means more of the Region X schools flying to the east coast because the mid-west will be able to fill their own with their extra teams.

I guess the last thing I’ll point out is that we did have data for 2019, 2021 and 2022 but we didn’t see as many teams in/out as we did in 2023. We also didn’t see the negative impact to the New England Region as we did in 2023. The caveat is that we’ve only run 2023 data with the official dials (or parameters). What will 2024 bring? We simply don’t know. The one constant, however, is that high SOS teams are not loved by NPI unless you also win. Winning matters more than who you play generally speaking because you can never be hurt by a win. So, the impact by NPI to the regionals will be determined by which regions game the formula the best but the real impact will be whether Region X hosts a regional or not. If that ends up being our truth then, in that regard, NPI really hasn’t changed anything.