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Schedule Analysis – Whittier
It’s time for our lucky 7 schedule analysis article. The Latvians were able to uncover the Whittier Poets’ schedule and it’s intriguing enough to write about. I also like giving their coach who has too many names a hard time. He does pull out one scheduling trick that’s fun to see, too. More on that later. Whittier is a Region X team that plays out of the SCIAC. Here is a reminder on what I’m doing with this series.
This series attempts to look at schedules through an NCAA Power Index (NPI) viewfinder and evaluate them on an NPI basis. Ned has gifted me an Excel sheet that allows me to plug in the 2025 schedule of a team and see how it would do if they were playing the 2024 versions of their opponent. From this, I can see what their max NPI would theoretically be (with an undefeated season) and how their spread of opponents look when examining their NPIs. I can even play some what-if games with wins and losses. Remember, when looking at 2024 NPIs, that a win gives you a match NPI that is about 10 points higher while a loss will give you 80% less. If we assume the at-large bid cut-line will be around 59.5 NPI then this means any team above 50 NPI will be beneficial with a win. The Quality Win Bonus (QWB) is set to 55.5 in women’s volleyball so most of the opponents between 55 and 60 will also give you a QWB. In doing these simulations, just know that I do not feed in the results and alter team’s NPIs. Most importantly, 2024 NPIs will not equal that team’s NPI in 2025. If you want that information, someone will have to learn to look into the future.
Here is our table of the schedules analyzed so far in this series. I finally removed “Loss a” from the table as it wasn’t proving its worth.
(Loss n = Simulated losses against NCAA Tournament teams above the at-large cut-line.) (Max L = Maximum number of losses to their best opponents and stay above the at-large cut-line.)
Below is the Whittier Schedule with their opponent’s 2024 NPI. Whittier finished the 2024 season 56th in NPI at 58.10 winning 19 matches. They were the 11th team away from the at-large cut-line. They play in the tough SCIAC which features (Elite 8) La Verne and CMS. La Verne took Automatic Qualifier (AQ) while CMS received an at-large last year. Their 2025 schedule uses all of the 22 allowed play dates and consists of 28 matches.
Here is their spread of opponents across the NPI range:
60+…7 opponents
55-60…7 opponents
50-55…7 opponents
Less than 50…7 opponents
It really is the lucky 7 article!!!! All 7s across the board. Normally, you only see this on a Vegas slot machine…in a dream. This spread, so far, is a mixture of what Juniata and CMS put together. Where it differs is with the 7 low NPI opponents, which is more than both teams and will probably keep their maximum NPI just below their numbers. Whittier has a tough task ahead of them playing out of the SCIAC. La Verne is returning their Elite 8 team and are going to be the odds-on favorite of winning their AQ again this season. You then have perennial powerhouse CMS and always good Pomona-Pitzer. Their goal will be the title but realistically, it’s going to be an at-large bid. This schedule is a bit more top heavy than what CMS put together and a lot more than what ETBU did. I think it’s going to make this schedule riskier but let’s go through the numbers to make sure. Oh, it is interesting that they used the same number of play dates as CMS (22 being the maximum) but have 4 more matches on the schedule playing out of the same conference. I will touch on that in a bit.
With this schedule, Whittier has 21 matches that will be useful when determining NPI. Only Juniata and Oshkosh have more from the teams we’ve looked at. You really do want as many as you can have as you don’t want to start using the wins against the low NPI teams because it will drag your NPI towards or below the at-large cut-line.
Assuming Whittier goes undefeated in 2025, their maximum NPI with this schedule is 72.62. That is the fourth highest of our seven teams and falls just 0.32 points behind CMS. That maximum would be good for 2nd last season placing them behind Juniata.
Next, we’ll look at their “Loss n” number which is the result when we assign losses to every match where they play a team that was above the at-large cut-line last year. For this schedule, that would give them 8-losses (CWRU, Whitworth, Hope, Gallaudet, La Verne twice and CMS twice) and result in a 20-8 record. Their NPI would be 58.39, which would place them under the 2024 cut-line. In fact, they would be very close to where they finished in reality last season. To compensate for all of those losses, they would have to use all of their remaining good NPI wins.
When considering the maximum losses a team can afford while still being above the 2024 at-large cut-line, I simply switch their next best win to a loss. For Whittier, we are already under the cut-line in “Loss n” so we know we can’t switch anymore to losses. If I switch their Gallaudet loss to a win, their NPI increases to 59.47 but that still has them slightly under the cut-line. If I switch one of their simulated CMS losses to a win then they move well above the cut-line at 60.59. This makes their maximum number of losses a 6 matching them with CMS. One thing I’ve been looking at of late is how does the maximum loss number relate to how many elite teams they are playing. In the cases of Calvin, ETBU, Juniata, CMS and St Norbert, they can afford to lose to all of the elite teams and still make the cut-line. Only Oshkosh, and now Whittier, cannot. What this is sort of showing is that you want to have a high number of matches against the elite but you want to have MORE matches against the 55 to 60 range teams to compensate for any losses. It then helps to have even more matches against the 50-55 range teams to compensate even more. It’s possible that the perfect NPI schedule might be one that has a split of 4/8/12/# across the NPI ranges.
Let’s look at the table from the top and include Whittier.
With the Whittier schedule we see that it’s similar to CMS by the numbers but has a lower ceiling while being a tad riskier because to make the cut-line they have to beat one of those elite teams, which CMS does not. It also has the second lowest floor (next to Oshkosh) when looking at that “Loss n” number. It certainly is a fair schedule but it appears that 7’s across the board isn’t as lucky here as it would be on a slot machine.
The coach with too many names is Whittier’s Chris Duarte-McDermott and he was nice enough to comment on his schedule and some of the uniqueness in it. But, first, more of me.
The uniqueness of the schedule doesn’t come from its even split across the NPI ranges but how the Poets’ will triple up on some teams. They do this twice. Once against Occidental (Oxy) and once against UC Santa Cruz. Oxy also plays out of the SCIAC so they get their two conference matches but the two teams will also play a non-conference match that second weekend. Oxy’s NPI was only 43.55 last season so this really makes no sense to me other than betting on the future success of Occidental. It’s not a bad bet as Coach Emily Foster came over from St Olaf (a very good program) and is getting her first real recruiting class this year. I think this may be one season to soon but it’s an interesting play by Whittier that didn’t take up an additional play date. The three matches against UC Santa Cruz is a no brainer as the Slugs had an NPI of 55.88 last season. To make this happen, Whittier will travel up to UCSC for a double-header, which (again) saves a play date. With the old selection criteria and humans at the helm, this type of scheduling wasn’t really done but NPI just sees numbers and spits out more numbers. Playing teams multiple times and conference opponents out of conference is a real solution for those teams in conferences that are particularly isolated (like the SCIAC). I understand the Oxy play and it is low risk because it doesn’t take a play date but Whittier does schedule 3 low NPI matches outside of conference. The other two are Lake Forest (part of the PCC Tournament) and Whitman, which is part of the Whittier Tournament. Again, neither takes a play date away because the Poets actually play an elite team the same day so I don’t have an issue with this. (That’s probably a better way to look at these low NPI matches…do they take a play date away being the real issue.) Whittier played an Opponent NPI schedule of 0.550 last season and this one comes in at 0.542 so slightly worse but not that bad. I imagine that Whittier had some issues putting their schedule together. We already know from the CMS write-up that the PCC Tournament week one wasn’t as highly attended as it has been in the past. I imagine their own tournament week two was also an issue to fill. It’s actually pretty impressive Whittier was able to do what they did with the end result being a tough schedule that maybe is a bit too tough.
Now, to the questions and answers:
Question: How much did NPI go through your thought process as you put your 2025 schedule together?
Answer: “It definitely was a big consideration for me. We were pretty close all year to that At Large line and it always makes me wonder what I could do to help us push over the edge and get the bid to the NCAA tournament. I always like to plan our schedule with playing good competition to be battle tested since we have a strong conference each year and a strong region. So, I like to think I plan for success at a high level and not making a schedule easy if that makes sense.”
Question: We already know that the Pacific Coast Classic didn’t have as many teams come in as years past, probably due to NPI and reduced budgets. Did you see the same issues with your tournament week two?
Answer: “Absolutely! My tournament was growing and getting better each year. This year was very difficult to get as many teams. Fortunately, we have had some great regional teams that have participated consistently over the last 4 years such as or however long I have been running our tournament that agreed to participate again and hopefully look forward to a good regional weekend.”
Question: You really tried to maximum your play dates. Talk a bit about your thoughts there and why you decided to triple up on matches against Oxy and UCSC?
Answer: “This is something that I went back and forth with. For UCSC, We lost a date in the first weekend of play since the PCC had less teams, so I had talked to Chad (new UCSC Head Coach Chad Koenegstein) about coming up to UCSC on a date that worked for both of us. Looking at NPI this last year I tried to take a different perspective than I did when I was on the committee. NPI doesn’t care who you play, it’s all numbers based. UCSC is a solid team each year so I figured it would be a good NPI matchup and provide three opportunities while making it worth the trip up to Santa Cruz. With OXY, I know that they still had dates available so I figured them playing a division III match instead of an NAIA match locally might help them out and in turn hopefully our conference. I am all for doing whatever we can to help elevate our overall Conference NPI match worth since we are geographically at a disadvantage compared to almost the rest of the country. I also know that Emily (Occidental Head Coach Emily Foster) built St. Olaf into a great program so assuming it will already be a better NPI match than the year before. And then there is the overarching thought that a lot of teams that made the tournament just seemed to have a higher volume of wins and NPI opportunities, so I wanted to maximize our potential. NPI is new so why not experiment and see if anything comes of it. Plus, we all know it is hard to beat a team 3 times so I would love to get my team that kind of experience and hopefully succeed (haha) to be ready for potential conference playoff matchups/NCAA matchups etc. Every experience is valuable.”
Question: How important was it to schedule that Gallaudet Tournament week three where you’ll face four really good NPI opponents?
Answer: “We had two options that were both great potential opportunities. The dates for the Gallaudet tournament worked better and when I saw who was participating (Mary Washington, Mount Union, Hope and Gallaudet) it was a no brainer. We have some really solid teams that had great NPI’s this past year so wanted to give our team a shot at some big wins just like we did last year when we went to Boston and played MIT, Tufts and Calvin.”
Question: Does the fact that you have an Elite 8 team in La Verne and an always good CMS team in conference impact your out-of-conference schedule?
Answer: “Yes and no. I mean Jeff (La Verne Head Coach Jeff Hendershot) and Kurt (CMS Head Coach Kurt Vlasich) do a great job with their programs and are always competitive nationally. Our conference as a whole is deep even when “data/criteria” doesn’t always show it the way anyone with a volleyball eye/experience would see the depth. It’s my favorite part about coaching in the conference. It is always a challenge every night. That being said, it does impact the out of conference schedule in the way that more volume of good NPI opportunities can help get more NPI wins to help your ranking for the at large bid and hopefully make a potential loss not be the nail in the coffin for your team.”
Good stuff from Chris who was really one of the first coaches I interacted with when I started this site. He’s always been willing to help except for the years he was a RAC Chair and then he was annoyingly silent.
That’s our seventh baseline in the system as we search for the perfect NPI schedule. This was the second team we’ve looked at that finished 2024 just under the at-large cut-line. Two different approaches applied and it will be interesting to see which works out better.
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