West Region’s Lack of Depth

I think it’s time to take a serious look at the state of the West Region. We have now had two straight years without a West Regional and frankly that is a damning accusation by the NCAA that the region lacks quality depth. I wanted to look into this and see if they are correct.

Some history is required first before I dive into this topic. The West Region, as we know it today, was formed in 2014 as the members of the two Texas conferences (ASC and SCAC) were moved from the South Region. The year prior (2013) there were actually 6 teams from what is now the West Region in the NCAA Tournament by way of the Pool C (at-large) bid. In 2012 there were 5 at-large bids doled out to what is now the West Region teams. Since 2013, the high water mark is 4 (2014 and 2016) but since 2016 the at-large bids have decreased each year such that in 2019 there was only 1 (given to Colorado College). It’s obvious that the reorganization in 2014 has not benefited the West Region and specifically the two Texas conferences. The question still remains whether that is a function of selection day politics or an actual decrease in the level of play by these West Region teams. (Note – I did write a reorganization article about a year ago if you are interested, which you can find here.)

I’m not sure there is a way to factually show the selection committee is playing games here. So, I’m going to provide my opinion based on following this division for most of this past decade. I do think there was one case in the past three years where, for whatever reason, a West Region team was snubbed by the selection committee (UMHB in 2017). I also think that for the past two years the West RAC has strictly followed the selection criteria when a broader view would have put a better candidate higher up the list. In 2018 it was UT-Dallas that ended up being blocked by La Verne and this past season UMHB ended up being blocked by Chapman. I think UT-Dallas would have been selected in 2018 but UMHB had only a slightly better chance than Chapman this past season and probably wouldn’t have made it either. So, are these the political games that are being played? I honestly don’t think so. If someone tells me the selection committee forced the West RAC’s ordering these past two years then maybe I’d buy in, but I don’t think that has happened. The snub to UMHB in 2017 was silly but snubs happen every year and it’s quite possible that it was just the West Region’s year. No, I think there is a problem in the West Region when it comes to quality depth (as indicated by the NCAA) so let’s take a closer look at that.

The West Region has four conferences so there are four automatic qualifiers each year. We’ve seen these past two years that the West requires 3 at-large bids (or a combination of at-large and Pool B bids, which goes to the best independent teams) in order to host a regional. Taking UC Santa Cruz out of the independent Pool B bid discussion, why can’t the West get 3 at-large teams? To begin, one issue is that the ASC and Northwest Conference have been unable to get an at-large team into the tournament since 2014. This is despite that fact that the ASC has had two excellent programs in UT-Dallas and Mary Hardin-Baylor and the NWC has had excellence with Pacific Lutheran and Whitworth. This has left the load to be carried by the SCAC and the SCIAC. Since 2012, the SCAC has put 12 at-large teams into the tournament but these have all been Colorado College, Southwestern or Trinity. The SCIAC has placed 11 teams in during this time frame. Most of the bids have been by CMS, Cal Lutheran and La Verne, but there have also been Whittier, Pomona-Pitzer and Chapman bids. (To be fair, since 2012 but before 2014, we have seen bids go to Mary Hardin-Baylor, UT-Dallas, Pacific Lutheran and Puget Sound. Hardin-Simmons also won the ASC to win the automatic qualifier during this time period.)

From the above, we can basically say that the top teams in the West from the past 8 years are UT-Dallas, Mary Hardin-Baylor, Hardin-Simmons, Pacific Lutheran, Whitworth, Puget Sound, Colorado College, Southwestern, Trinity, CMS, Cal Lutheran, La Verne, Whittier, Pomona-Pitzer and Chapman. That’s a pool of 15 teams that have received a bid in the last 8 years. In the last 3 years, however, we’ve only seen bids to Colorado College (3 bids), Trinity (3), Southwestern (1), CMS (3), Cal Lutheran (1) and Whittier (1). Our pool of 15 has been reduced to 6 with only three teams receiving a bid each year. More on this later because I think this is important.

Another issue I see is that Strength of Schedule (SOS) is really driving selection more and as I’ve written about in the past, this statistic is rather unfair to the West Region. In summary this is because the West Region exists on three small series of islands (Southern California, Northwest and Texas) and without huge travel budgets it means a majority of matches must be played against the same number of teams forcing the SOS towards 0.500. We can certainly chalk this up to selection day politics (i.e., not diving deeper into SOS) but I’m not sure it advances the West Region’s cause. As a side issue to this, we saw in previous years that the West RAC sort of demands that teams play each other in order to get a decent regionally ranking (thinking of Colorado College) and, in fact, the NCAA demands that each team play at least 70% of their matches in-region. Again, when you have one of the smallest regions with limited teams in driving distance and are forced to play 70% of your matches in-region you really can’t avoid playing teams with poor records.

The NCAA is going to be reorganizing the regions, most likely in 2021, so we’ll have to see what impact that will have. It won’t help increasing the teams within driving distance but it could force teams in these larger regions to play more teams with weaker records if the 70% in-region rule remains. Regardless, one recommendation I can make to increase the number of at-large bids for the West Region is to improve scheduling with an eye on better SOS numbers. Chapman had a wonderful team this past season that was certainly worthy of the NCAA Tournament but their schedule was horrid. They have to start playing the better teams that come into the CMS/Pomona-Pitzer/Cal Lutheran Tournaments and THEY HAVE TO START MAKING A TRIP OUT OF REGION TO PLAY BETTER TEAMS! This same advice is applicable to all of the teams in that pool of 15 I listed previously. I number of these teams already do this and they are the same teams that seem to have the best “luck” getting into the NCAA Tournament. Go figure. But teams like Mary Hardin-Baylor and the top teams in the Northwest Conference need to step up because the SOS issue is simply killing their chances.

The last issue I wanted to discuss is ranked wins and the fact that the West Region’s three islands don’t help the West teams garner enough matches when compared against other teams nationally. Like SOS, the West can’t be fairly compared against teams that have a lot more regionally ranked teams within driving distance but the NCAA doesn’t take that into consideration. The West had only two pockets of regional ranked teams that were within driving distance. In Texas there was Trinity, UT-Dallas and Mary Hardin-Baylor and in California there was CMS, Chapman and Cal Lutheran. That’s it. Excluding the South, because I didn’t feel like getting my map out, every other region could drive to every regional ranked team in their region. Teams in the Northeast could also drive to other region’s regionally ranked teams. It’s really a mind blowing advantage that the West has to figure out how to overcome.

I want to loop back to this pool of 15 that becomes the pool of 6 that really is the pool of 3 (Colorado College, CMS and Trinity). The West Region is responsible for two of the last 5 national champions and it’s now rare to see Colorado College, CMS and Trinity fall out of the rankings let alone the Top 10. I don’t think anyone can argue that the elite of the West Region can hold its own against any of the other 7 regions. The issue the West seems to be facing is that next level of teams. In the past this next level, as well as the very top level, have been populated by teams like Cal Lutheran, La Verne, Southwestern and UT-Dallas. You can make an argument for Mary Hardin-Baylor, Pacific Lutheran and Whitworth but it’s tough to really put them there without, again, the at-large bids to back it up. The rest of the pool of 15 have made cameo appearances but haven’t had the staying power. This past season there unfortunately wasn’t a second level from the West Region that had the quality to garner an at-large bid. In the end it was UT-Dallas, Chapman and Mary Hardin-Baylor but only UTD got into the tournament and that was through the automatic qualifier. (With their 0.542 SOS I would wager that they would have been a tough sell for an at-large bid. And, yes, I know UTD was regionally ranked ahead of Colorado College, incorrectly in my mind, but that was another example of the RAC not considering national selection to the detriment to the region.) So, I guess I’m saying at this point that we need that second level to once again rise up for the West to reclaim their regional.

The only way I see this happening is to get the SOS and ranked wins numbers up and the only way to do this without hurting other teams in the region is to travel out-of-region. This is a common theme in my articles and the cold facts are that most schools, at best, only travel once every two years due to the financial limitations. Bottom line, however, is that teams that want an at-large bid need to get as close as they can (if not exceed) a 0.600 SOS and play at least 10 matches against regionally ranked teams. The teams from last season that had a 0.585 SOS or higher and played 10 regionally ranked teams were Cal Lutheran, Mary Hardin-Baylor and Trinity. Only three teams. You may question why Cal Lutheran and Mary Hardin-Baylor, if they achieved the selection criteria I’m requesting, didn’t make NCAA Tournament and that’s because they failed to win enough of those regionally ranked matches. If Mary Hardin-Baylor just beats one of St. Ben (lost in 4 sets) or Berry (lost in 5-sets) or Ohio Northern (lost in 4-sets) then they probably get in. They positioned themselves correctly but just couldn’t get that one win they needed. For comparison sake, there were 7 teams in the West that reached these marks in 2018 and 5 in 2017.

As to the future I do think there is hope. Cal Lutheran is an excellent program that consistently travels and is always among the top teams in the West in SOS. They just need to win a few more important matches. La Verne is another storied program that will travel but just hasn’t put the wins together. Mary Hardin-Baylor stepped up in their schedule in 2019 and if they can continue that they have a chance to elevate their program. Southwestern continues to travel and rack up good SOS numbers and regionally ranked matches but with only 3 ranked wins in the last two seasons, you can see what needs to improve. UT-Dallas normally travels twice a year but “only” took one trip last season and it hurt their SOS. Winning their conference put these concerns to rest but as I said they were no lock for an at-large this year if they needed it. These are 5 programs that put themselves in position for at-large bids but, in most cases, just haven’t gotten the one or two important wins they needed these last two seasons.

I didn’t include Chapman in the above list because frankly they haven’t shown me they have the finances to travel consistently. As I said earlier, Chapman has some amazing talent right now and is an NCAA Tournament worthy team, but they were killed by their 0.549 SOS and having CMS in their conference. They can only control one of those factors (Hint – You are not getting rid of CMS). For the next two years, at least, this team has the ability to be one of the best in the West but they need to travel east at least once each year.

The Northwest Conference teams of Pacific Lutheran, Puget Sound and Whitworth are really just unmined gold. While other programs have figured out the importance of SOS, the NWC is stuck because of geography and finances with getting just one week away and that typically means going to California. I really struggle with seeing how the NWC can place two teams into the tournament without getting at least two trips on the schedule each year. The only other way is for most of the conference to win their few out-of-conference matches, which improves everyone’s record giving a boost in SOS. They also need those teams they beat to also do well in their schedules. It’s a lot to ask but has happened in the past (Pacific Lutheran in 2014). You just can’t count on it.

The other schools mentioned in my pool of 15 are really good programs and all can rise up again in the future but there needs to be more consistency. The SCIAC teams (Pomona-Pitzer and Whittier) are further disadvantaged because when everything is clicking, it’s a really deep conference and it’s a fight every conference match.

I certainly don’t want to end this article without touching on the other 25 or so schools in the West. We never know who can step up on any given year but each conference has their elite, which will be tough to get by. We’ve seen Austin College consistently win 20 matches for a number of years. Concordia is another program that’s put up good records the last couple of seasons. Dallas looks to be trying to improve their schedule and raise that program up. George Fox played an amazing second half last season and it will be interesting to see how they start 2020. LeTourneau took a great stride forward last year. Pacific has been a team near the top of the NWC for the last couple of years. TLU had a drop off in 2018 before playing well last season and have always been a tough team. Two other schools you wouldn’t necessarily think of but that I wanted to touch on are St. Thomas (TX) and UC Santa Cruz. St. Thomas still has a few years left of their reclassification period before we see them even be allowed in the tournament, but they had a surprising first season in DIII. If they can dominate the Houston recruiting scene at the DIII level they could become a player in the SCAC and in the West. UC Santa Cruz just needs to figure out what they are and this has nothing to do with the team. Too much talk in the past about cancelling the program and whether they are focused on DIII long-term has hurt them. They need to commit at the highest level of the school and go get the SCIAC to let them in the door. As for the team, they have a chance to make some noise and get the Pool B bid this year, which would make a West Regional more likely in 2020. There are others that show promise but the common thread for all of these teams is that you have to improve your schedule and with few exceptions it can only be done by flying. The way scheduling works, you can’t just sit at home for years and then pop up when you think you have a good team and schedule Emory or Calvin. You have to foster those coaching relationships and build up a reputation to where you can attract those next level players and be positioned to schedule those teams that then take you to the next level nationally.

As I wrap this up I don’t think there has been some JFK level conspiracy to keep the West out of the NCAA Tournament. I think the West Region just hit a dry period that has impacted a number of programs. It also feeds on itself because beating a west regionally ranked team that has struggled out-of-conference isn’t going to help your program that much. Sure, it helps you in the west but as we’ve seen the last two years not on selection day. The West still has a lot of quality programs and if it keeps its form after the 2021 reorganization then I think things will go back to having a West Regional that is widely considered the “Region of Death”. The West Region current dry spell, however, should make it clear that teams can’t solely rely on others in their region to go off an do great and then hope you beat them to get that lofty regional ranking. Every team needs to pull their weight and frankly that hasn’t been the case. We can’t blame Cal Lutheran, La Verne or Southwestern for having an off year or two but I’m fine placing blame on schools that have potential NCAA Tournament level talent that don’t go out-of-region and show it off. (After reading this right before I posted, it might seem like I’m dumping on Chapman, which was not the intention. There is enough “blame” to go around…if only “blame” was money, right?)