QWI Picks NCAA Tournament Teams

“Ned” sent me his latest QWI file on Monday so it’s good through the matches this past weekend. I thought it might be interesting to see who his tool thinks should be in the NCAA Tournament. Let’s get the arguments started earlier, I say!

“Ned” uses his QWI number to determine the winner of each conference and how the regional rankings will turn out. From there, I can simply select the highest numbers as if I’m doing the at-large selections.

Here are his automatic qualifiers:

These are the teams QWI thinks will win their conference. Region is the region the team is from. The All Rank is the overall rank of the school among all DIII schools. The Region Rk is where they would rank in their region. QWI is the score with SOS being the strength of schedule calculation that mimics what the NCAA uses. Finally, Conf is the conference identifier that sometimes can be quite confusing.

Not sure if we need to talk much about this. I do think it’s interesting that the overall rankings goes from 1 (CMS) to 368 (New England College). There are three schools at 300 or higher getting automatic bids. There are also three between 200 and 300. It would be nice if there was a way to get more deserving teams into the tournament while making these teams play an extra match or something to get in.

Now to the at-large selections (there will be 19 this year):

The first six at-large teams according to QWI will all come out of the same region! I’ve added some different information in this chart and I’m sure it won’t display well on the phones. D3 win and D3 loss are the team’s record. Ranked W and Ranked L are what QWI thinks is the record against teams that will most likely be regionally ranked. Strong SOS numbers here with Oshkosh being the lowest. Chicago’s record is not good but with those ranked wins and that SOS it will be hard to keep them out. Remember that the criterion is Ranked Results and not Ranked Record so there is a case where they will not match. Still, if you are playing a lot of ranked teams and coming away around 0.500 that will look very good when you analyze the results.

Here are the next 7:

Another Region 8 team! Remember that the number of teams regionally ranked is based on a formula that depends on the total teams in a region. Mount St Joseph wouldn’t be regionally ranked but QWI has them as the 9^th team in the tournament as an at-large. You’ll also notice that we only have at-large teams from four of the ten regions. I don’t think that will happen when humans get involved. Looking through these teams and Augsburg is going to be a tough sell. Great record but only three regionally ranked matches and a very poor SOS. I don’t have all of the data in front of me but I’d be hard press to take them over the two teams below them in this chart if using the actual selection criteria.

That’s 13 teams in the tournament, which only leaves 6 more. Here are the next three:

I give you these three because I don’t disagree as much as the next three. Carthage is probably a tough call with only four ranked matches and only one win with a good but not great SOS. Ithaca is a lock as they are helped by wins over poor regionally ranked teams in the NY regions. Emory is really low in the QWI rankings but still make it in.

Here is where things get nuts and I think only the last of the three has a chance of getting in.

That’s right, everyone’s favorite team, the Southwestern Pirates, make it in! I really don’t think TLU makes it in with that SOS. Southwestern has a great SOS but that’s about it right now. I actually don’t think the ordering of these two teams makes sense with the Southwestern win against TLU. CMU has a chance with a decent record and a good SOS and a good ranked record right now.

That’s only 7 of the 10 regions represented and that will never happen. No at-large bids to New England teams and THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. Only one at-large to a New York team, which is possible.

The next team not to make the tournament based on QWI:

Uh, Tufts is a lock with those numbers. QWI is trying to tell us that maybe that SOS and ranked record isn’t that strong when you look at the teams they played. The selection committee will not look at it that way.

The next team on the list is North Park followed by Albion, La Verne (who beat Southwestern), Chris Newport and (wait for it) Calvin. QWI doesn’t really like Calvin and Hope too much at this point. (Hope got the automatic qualifier, in case you missed it.)

Jumping back up to the automatic qualifier, the lowest at-large team’s QWI was 11.18. Only 13 teams that got the automatic qualifier (per QWI) were higher than that score. Berry is the first team to get a qualifier that wouldn’t have made it as an at-large.

What’s all this telling us? QWI is interesting in how it looks at schedules and tries to dive into a more quality of results look than a simple numbers program. The selection committee, usually pressed for time, will tend to look at the numbers more. I think if you disregard some of the Region 8 love (which I actually think is valid), you probably have a really good at-large list up to 16 (still unsure on Augsburg and Carthage). Replace the last three with New England teams and you might be pretty close to what the selection will look like.

From a Region X perspective, if you do what I just said it means no at-large bids from that region. I’ve never seen that happen but there is a very real chance this year.

I did go down through the list and look for Region 1 and 2 teams (New England) that could make it in. Tufts is a lock, as I said. MIT is the next school way down the list but their predicted SOS is only 0.517. That’s really strange for a New England team and that won’t get them in the tournament. Springfield was next but their SOS is only 0.558 but their other numbers are okay. Emerson has typical New England numbers and could get in (8-1 and 3-1 ranked record with a 0.597 SOS). Their loss was a 5-set defeat to MIT. All of those teams were from Region 2. Region 1 doesn’t look good this year per QWI. It’s basically Wesleyan and Tufts. Maybe QWI is on to something here? Nah. There will always be at least 3 at-large bids given to New England teams.

Because this is primarily a Region X website, here is the QWI order for Region 10:

Notice I added in UC Santa Cruz as they will be Region X this year. “Ned” will fix this in a later update.

It’s interesting to note that in my brief attempt at a regional ranking I came up with:

1. CMS

2. Trinity

3. Whitworth

4. UT-Dallas

5. La Verne

6. Cal Lutheran

7. Southwestern

We agreed on the top 3 but not the next 4. I think I like my ordering more per the selection criteria. Remember that I factored in head-to-head and common opponent, which aren’t a direct player in QWI. It factors in that they played and the result but it won’t hold a team up because of a head-to-head loss.

One last note is that I do think it’s really strange that seven Region X teams have SOS numbers over 0.600 while the New England regions are suffering. This normally isn’t the case. (We also have a number of teams with SOS numbers that wouldn’t prevent them from getting an at-large.) You can look at the East/West Challenge, the Cal Lutheran Tournament, the Trinity Tournaments and even the Southwestern Tournament as the cause (for Region X being better in SOS). Bottom line, these Region X teams set themselves up for an at-large bid but most simply just didn’t win the matches they needed to win. That happens but my hope is that Region X teams see the need for more of these tournaments.