Regional Rankings II

The second official Regional Rankings are out! As I went through the changes, which I’ll detail below, I was pretty proud that I identified most of the teams in trouble and their possible replacements in my Regional Rankings Fallout article last week. I often pat myself on the back when I don’t deserve it so this is kind of a cool feeling when I think I do.

Here are the changes for each region from the last rankings:

Region I

• Removed Hamilton and Simmons.

• Replaced them with Middlebury and Colby.

Region II

• No changes.

Region III

• Removed Clarkson.

• Replaced them with SUNY Geneseo.

Region IV

• Removed Misericordia.

• Replaced them with Montclair State.

Region V

• Removed Franklin & Marshall.

• Replaced them with Susquehanna.

Region VI

• No changes.

Region VII

• Removed Ohio Northern.

• Replaced them with Mount Union.

Region VIII

• No changes.

Region IX

• Removed Saint Benedict.

• Replaced them with Cornell College.

Region X

• Removed Pomona-Pitzer.

• Replaced them with Whitworth.

It’s obviously worth a look through the rankings to see where teams are ordered. The ordering that was interesting to me:

• Middlebury (Region I) jumps into the rankings at 5^th after being skipped over last week.

• Johns Hopkins (Region V) sits third. They struggled with injuries so it will be interesting to see if they hold up another team or get an at-large.

• Emory (Region VI) is 5^th behind some teams that may not be a shoe in to get a bid. This is probably worth a closer look tomorrow.

• Surprised a bit Ohio Northern got removed but Region VII is pretty deep. Mount Union comes in over a team like Albion.

• Carnegie Mellon (Region VII) sits above Otterbein and Hope.

• WashU (Region VIII) sits in first over the WIAC teams. Worth a closer look.

• Oshkosh is ahead of the other WIAC teams. They have been playing the best of late.

• Cornell College (Region IX) jumps into the rankings at 5^th. Augsburg in 6^th has been faltering of late.

I’ll probably do some closer looks tomorrow on a couple of these teams and where they were ranked. I think it’s good to try to see what mindset the RACs and Selection Committee are using this year.

For now, let’s look at Region X as I spent some time trying to predict this order. In the end, the RAC decided to leave in La Verne and remove Pomona-Pitzer while bringing in Whitworth. The ordering is also different so let’s go through the rankings team by team.

1. CMS

No issues with this. It was obvious.

2. Trinity

Another obvious choice.

3. UC Santa Cruz

Not as obvious but I was pretty firm in my placement here.

4. Cal Lutheran

I had UT-Dallas here. I wrote that things started to get murky with the 4^th spot and that the RAC could have Cal Lu over UT-Dallas. Here is what I wrote:

“A quick check between Cal Lu and UT-Dallas results in a 2-2-1 tie. Cal Lu has SOS and Ranked Results while UT-Dallas has Record and H2H. Common Opponent is tied at 0-2. I have UCSC ahead of Cal Lu 3-2. I’m going to leave UT-Dallas ahead of Cal Lu for now. The last 25% record is even, by the way.”

So, what happened here? I think it’s clear that this RAC favored SOS and/or Ranked Results. Now, UTD did beat Cal Lutheran on a neutral court so although that means they are the better team, it only counts for 20% of the score card. I will say that Cal Lutheran has a better chance nationally to get an at-large so I’m fine with this ordering and it’s something I’ve recommended in the past. I just thought the RAC might stick with head-to-head here.

5. UT-Dallas

There really was no other spot for UT-Dallas if they didn’t get 4^th.

6. La Verne

7. Whitworth

I have to assume that the team that just missed out was Pomona-Pitzer. I had Whitworth 6^th and Pomona-Pitzer 7^th but I wrote that these three teams were basically tied. Let’s look at their numbers again:

La Verne:  0.653 Record, 0.574 SOS, 0-7 Ranked RecordPomona-Pitzer: 0.636, 0.567, 2-7Whitworth: 0.700, 0.554, 2-2

Pomona-Pitzer has the Head-to-Head advantage over La Verne. La Verne has the Common Opponent advantage.

No Head-to-Head between La Verne and Whitworth. La Verne has the Common Opponent advantage.

No Head-to-Head between Pomona-Pitzer and Whitworth. Pomona-Pitzer has the Common Opponent advantage.

ULV/P-P Score card: TIE 2-2-1 (SOS is too close to call for one or the other. La Verne is ahead in this, however.)

ULV/Whitworth Score card: TIE 2-2-1

P-P/Whitworth Score card: WHITWORTH 2-1-2 (SOS is borderline on the tolerance. I made it a tie but it could have gone to Pomona-Pitzer.)

We don’t know the tolerance being used for SOS by the RACs. I am assuming 0.014. I think with Whitworth winning one of the three comparisons, you have to include them in the rankings.

Going back to La Verne/Pomona-Pitzer, the RAC decided to favor Record and Common Opponent over Head-to-Head and Ranked Results. They may have broken the tie by saying that SOS doesn’t score in this comparison, but La Verne did have a better Record while still having a slightly better SOS so they get the edge. I really can’t quibble with this and, again, we are seeing that Head-to-Head is not going to be a big player in this RAC’s decisions.

I was surprised to see Whitworth 7^th but I was comparing them to Pomona-Pitzer. They tied with La Verne in the score card so it means that this RAC took SOS and Common Opponent over Record and Ranked Results. I mean, that’s fine but the problem is that the La Verne Ranked Results don’t play in this game. They are 0-7 and that won’t beat anyone so you are giving up an entire criterion to the entire nation when you do this. When you look at the teams dropped by the other RACs they were pretty much all teams with 0 Ranked Wins. I feel our RAC is out-of-touch with respect to this criterion and what all of the other RACs are doing. You simply cannot have a ranked team with 0 Ranked Wins especially when they don’t have an outstanding Record AND SOS. Now, in fairness, the SOS tolerance might be 0.012 and that would give the score card win to La Verne outright. We simply don’t know but I’ll be curious when I see Ned’s update as to whether any other regionally ranked team has 0 Ranked Wins.

I will finish with this. The backside of our regional rankings just don’t matter this year, unfortunately. We still go through all of this to see what the RACs are favoring in their comparisons.