It’s officially April, which means a few things: showers, D3West’s favorite holiday (it just passed), Spring Training Baseball, and most importantly… POOL C UPDATES FOR DAYZ. Last year, I wrote a total of 7 Pool C Updates, accompanied with probably 4-5 Bracketologies from the Guru. We’ll probably have the same amount this year, depending on how crazy things get with the teams and how things play out. The blogger in me wants less craziness, because that means less writing for me, but the fan in me wants more craziness, because that’s what we live for. Pool C is literally always a conversation on this blog because of the general unfairness of the system towards DIII Tennis, specifically the “Big 3” Conferences (UAA, NESCAC, SCIAC). The NCAA is all about rules and uniformity, which means they all have to wear suit and tie when we go to work and get watched when they go to the bathroom to make sure they aren’t playing smartphone games on the toilet. Enough of the NCAA though, because we rise above our restrictions and provide great tennis for the DIII community every year no matter what.
If you are wondering how the tournament selection works, remember that I basically mapped it out for you in a previous article this year. That article is linked below for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to comment in this article if you have questions and I can answer the best I can.
http://www.division3tennis.com/ncaa-selection-work/
Now that you are familiar with the 6 Pool C spots that there are this year, who’s in the running for them? We’ve historically seen that the Pool C spots come from three conferences, barring any crazy stuff happening. Those conferences are the NESCAC, UAA, and SCIAC. I assume you’ve heard of them. In the below table, I’ve broken out for you the Pool C contenders at this time – complete with ITA Ranking, Power Ranking, Remaining Schedule, Notable Wins, and Notable Losses. Any matches against teams noted in the table are marked in different colors. Cool, right? I figured this would be a great way to break down the teams for you. I’ll give my thoughts after the table.
Okay, so I cheated a little bit. The 6 teams above the red line are the teams that I think will make the tournament at the end of the year. However, I didn’t go by ITA Ranking, I went by Blog Power Ranking, because these teams have a lot of tennis left to play. I’ll take you through the various takeaways that you can get from this table and you can decide for yourself on who you think should and should not get in. Unfortunately, I don’t get to decide, but hey, I hear that the actual people that matter in this selection process read the blog. So comment away, and get your team some brownie points.
Takeaways
Who’s a lock?
Right now, I think there are a couple locks for Pool C. Those teams are Bowdoin and Chicago. As you can see, Chicago has the wins going for them – they’ve beaten 3 separate Pool C teams, one from each of the Big 3 conferences. They are pretty much set. Bowdoin, as you remember, is your defending national champion. They have wins against the SCIAC and inevitably will have some wins against their NESCAC Pool C foes. Count them in, because they are two of the top 5 teams in the country. We don’t need to discuss what would happen if some crazy scandal occurs and they forfeit matches. It’s not going to happen.
Who’s feeling good right now?
Other than anyone that picked Gonzaga to the finals (D3Tree), there’s really one team that feels good other than the locks. That team is Wash U, who has wins against CMU and Pomona to give them two key Pool C wins. They can pretty much stay away from the whole NESCAC/UAA argument by beating those teams unless CMU totally poops the bed the rest of the way.
Last 3 In
I currently have CMU, Wesleyan, and Amherst as my last three in, but lots of things could change. Williams currently has a better ITA Ranking than Amherst, but I’ve been impressed by Amherst so far this year, especially taking Emory to a 5-4 match on a neutral court. That loss pushed my opinion of them up. Now, let it be noted that if the season ended today, Williams would be in the tournament. I just want to make that clear. For this exercise, I wanted to give you my thoughts, because my thoughts are more important than if the season hypothetically ended today. That’s just dumb.
Key Matches
There are simply way too many key matches to point out here, but I think I will go through the really really important ones.
Williams @ Wesleyan – It’s a shame for Williams that they have to play this match on the road, because they really need to win this one. Wesleyan is kind of like the key to Pool C for the NESCAC. They are the team that is currently in, has the highest ranking, and has the best chance of upsetting one of the top two teams in the NESCAC in Bowdoin/Middlebury. Wesleyan can provide anyone below them with a quality win and that puts more ammunition under the Williams belt if they pull it off.
Amherst vs Wesleyan – Same story here for Amherst, who gets to play the Cardinals at home instead of on the road. Amherst is currently ranked #14 in the nation and needs a big win to move up. As you can see above, I think Amherst gets in the tournament and that means that they need a win somewhere over Wesleyan or Williams, whether that be directly or indirectly. Their best shot is against Wesleyan at home, where the Hamsters will try and force themselves into Pool C consideration.
Amherst vs. Williams – This is another chance for Amherst to get into the tournament by taking out Williams. As you can see, Williams holds two key wins over SCIAC foes that put the NESCAC in higher standing. If Amherst wins this match, that vaults them over Williams, Redlands, and Pomona. It’s nice to pass teams when you’re fighting for your playoff lives, don’t you think? Amherst basically needs to win one of their two matches against Wesleyan/Williams to make it while also avoiding a loss to some team ranked below them. Kinda like beating Tufts 5-4 this past weekend. Great job, Hamsters.
UAA 3rd Place Match – Depending on who is playing in the UAA third place match, this could be extremely important. Case Western has really dug themselves a hole here as they’ve lost to Pomona twice, Wesleyan, and CMU. That’s four direct losses to Pool C competitors and I’m not sure if they can overtake anyone with just a win against CMU in the 4/5 matchup. The third place match could potentially feature Wash U vs. CMU/Case. If it’s CMU, that match is unbelievably important because CMU can notch themselves another big win. They don’t have many Pool C wins other than Case Western, so beating Wash U here would be massive for them and their resume. They’d basically be in the tournament. If they lose, they get into a resume battle with Williams/Amherst and honestly at this point their resume is not very good. Their normal wins over Hopkins/Kenyon are not going to be in great standing as both teams haven’t done much this year.
All NESCAC Tournament matches – The NESCAC is where crazy sometimes happens. We have no idea what the NESCAC standings are going to be so I won’t try and predict them, but the potential matches between the 4/5 seed (right now Amherst/Williams) and eventual semifinals will give these teams a chance to notch one or two last wins to give the NCAA a reason to select them. Again, the fact that the NESCAC doesn’t play a 3rd place match will hurt them, because that is again another chance to notch a win. Shame on the NESCAC.
Final Thoughts
There are no final thoughts for Pool C right now. Everything is so up in the air. One thing that I would like to ask the readers – what do you think about the CMU vs. Williams/Amherst potential debate? CMU doesn’t really have a strong resume and is currently riding the coattails of their previous season. They do have a big win against Case Western, but have not played outside of the UAA and will not do so rest of season. They could pick up nice wins against UMW and Hopkins, potentially, but that’s it. Do you think that Williams/Amherst should get in over them even if they don’t beat anyone ranked “above” them? Let me know your thoughts! And with that, ASouth, OUT.
Where’s Brandeis on the list?
Unfortunately, with direct losses to Pool C competitors Redlands, NYU, Bowdoin/Middlebury, and Bates, I cannot foresee a scenario in which Brandeis gets in the tournament through Pool C. They’ll just have to do it the old fashioned way, by running the table in the UAA tournament
OK, I’ll bite. I don’t see why CMU should be ranked ahead of any of Wesleyan, Amherst or Williams.
CMU’s only top 20 win this year is against #12 CWRU. Other than that one match, they have played no one in the range of #7 to #23, which is where the Pool C rubber meets the road.
Wesleyan also beat CWRU, and beat #10 Redlands as well. Their worst loss is against #2 CMS.
Amherst hasn’t played anyone ranked above #15 yet (except #1 Emory) but has beaten three top 20 teams (#15, #17, and #19). Their worst loss is against # 1 Emory.
Williams has beaten #10 Redlands and #11 Pomona-Pitzer. Their worst losses are against #2 CMS and #5 Chicago.
And, while CWRU is #12, they have lost twice to #11 Pomona-Pitzer. Arguably, the gap between #11 and #12 is larger than typical based on those two results.
I don’t see any reasonable justification for ranking CMU higher than any of those three NESCAC teams based on current year results. CMU shouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt for Pool C when they have played so much less of their Pool C competition than the NESCAC schools.
My conclusion — based on where things stand today, the NESCAC should get four of the six Pool C spots.
(Side note – if CMU drops to #10, which is about where they belong, I think, then Wash U’s ranking is harmed as well since their only good win is against CMU).
As you can see from my Power Rankings, I’m like 98% with you. Williams’ and Wesleyan’s results are definitely better than CMU’s so far this year. I don’t necessarily agree that Amherst should clearly be ranked ahead of CMU because I don’t really buy the notion that wins over #15, #17, and #19 are definitely better than wins over #12, #24, #26, etc. etc.
Defending D3AS, he clearly stated that the power rankings are based on our subjective feelings about the relative strength of the teams. Amherst does not deserve to be ahead of either Williams or Wesleyan based on results, but he has them up there on gut feeling about what will happen the rest of the way. Similarly, CMU has 5-4 losses to Emory and Wash U, and AS probably feels that they are close to those teams, and the results will come later in the year.
Ultimately, it comes down to the UAA tournament. If CMU beats Case and wins the 3rd place match, they will almost certainly make Pool C (and a loss to CMU won’t be enough to drop Wash U behind the NESCAC teams because they’re Wash U, and they always get the benefit of the doubt). To me, that’s the scenario that results in 3 UAA/3 NESCAC. If that doesn’t happen, and if NESCAC goes chalk, I think it’s likely that the NESCAC will end up with four bids to the UAA’s two.
A very possible scenario which West somewhat touched on is as follows:
1) Williams loses in the NESCAC regular season to Midd, Bowdoin, Wesleyan and Amherst. They beat Tufts and enter the NESCAC tournament as the #5 seed. They lose their quarterfinal.
2) CMU beats Hopkins and Mary Wash this weekend, beats Case in the quarters of the UAA tournament, loses to Emory in the semis and then loses to either Wash U or Chicago in the 3rd place match.
If this plays out exactly as I’ve described, it’s going to be a very difficult decision for the committee. I’d almost tend to lean toward Williams here as I think there could be something in the back of the selection committee’s mind about how they opted for the four UAA Pool C teams last year only for the two NESCAC teams to meet each other in the finals. It would be a very tough pill to swallow for CMU because they likely won’t have any losses outside the top seven teams in the country. What should they have done differently within reason? Scheduled Redlands and/or Pomona?
My hope is that either Williams or CMU overachieves beyond what I’ve described above and this is a clear cut choice at the end of the season. It’s never a good situation for someone to get left out due to a judgment call.
Let’s define Tier 1 to be the top 2 schools in each of the Big 3 conferences — CMS and Redlands in the SCIAC, Middlebury and Bowdoin in the NESCAC, and Emory and Chicago in the UAA.
It seems to me that the real problem is lack of interconference play between the Tier 2 UAA schools (Wash U, CMU and CWRU) and the Tier 2 NESCAC schools (Amherst, Wesleyan and Williams). There are plenty of Tier 2 NESCAC-SCIAC data points (as well as a few UAA-SCIAC data points), but at the level of tier 2 the only NESCAC-UAA data point is Wesleyan vs CWRU, which helps only a little.
In future years we need to see Wash U, CMU and CWRU against Amherst, Wesleyan and Williams. I’m not sure how to make that happen, but that would make this Pool C process much cleaner.
This is really a simple argument but most of this comes from the fact that the NESCAC season starts 3 weeks after the UAA season, and the NESCACs always choose to go to California for Spring Break. Then, they start conference play and don’t schedule any of the other teams because Wash U and Case are out of the way. CMU is somewhat near them, but still pretty far, and again, the focus is conference matches at this point. CMU fills their schedule with other teams because the UAA includes all teams in their tournament and you don’t need to “play your way in” like the NESCAC. Makes those NESCAC matches so much more important to schedule than a random match that you’d have to travel 7+ hours for.
Amherst’s 5-4 loss to Emory wasn’t on a neutral court it was @ Emory, just a heads up.
The best part about this is that I got mad at D3Northeast for making the same mistake about two weeks ago. Good catch! Even more impressive!
Do you think Redlands has any shot at pool c? Or is their only entry into nationals by winning the SCIAC tournament?
A regular season win over CMS, and a SCIAC semifinal win over PP could certainly put the Dawgs back in the race, but the direct losses to Wesleyan and Williams is brutal. Others might want to give their two cents on that scenario, but I think that would at least make things interesting (even if I don’t think it would be quite enough).
I totally disagree. I think a win over CMS would get them in Pool C
A win over CMS should be VERY impressive in the eyes of the committee, but my question is just HOW much does it help Redlands. UR directly lost to Bowdoin, Wesleyan, and Williams. All three of those NESCAC teams lost to CMS, but are we really valuing an indirect over a direct result? I guess it could boost Redlands over Amherst considering those two didn’t play. Perhaps it could also vault the Dawgs over CMU if the Tartans were in position to grab the final spot?
One should never underestimate the power of a huge win. Sure, those direct wins matter, but a win for Redlands gives them a huge boost in three major categories (indirect win, late season strength-of-victory, late season winning percentage), kind of like how Bowdoin was never really in danger of missing the tournament last year despite their direct loss to Tufts (thanks to their emphatic win over CMS).
I think a win over CMS catapults the Dawgs ahead of both Wesleyan and Williams depending on other results. If it’s going to happen, however, I propose that they keep things simple and just beat CMS in the conference tournament
Year in and year out the committee shows us that direct Pool C wins matter above all else. Seriously, there are all these other categories that the committee is supposed to consider but they will always default to direct Pool C wins. Even if Redlands beats CMS they won’t get in over Wesleyan or Williams. Maybe over CMU. Two years ago CMU beat the #1 team in the country at the time in Texas Trinity, but that didn’t matter because they had direct losses to Pomona and Bowdoin, which put them on the outside looking in. 4 years ago UT-Tyler lost to UNRANKED UT-Dallas in there conference tournament (late season performance category?), but they still got in over CMU because they had a direct win over CMU.
Though you have pointed to two example that affect a team you are directly affiliated with, I can point to several examples where that was not the case.
First, though Trinity was the #1 team at the time CMU beat them (I believe they were actually #2 or #3 but coming off the Indoors victory), you neglect to mention that Trinity finished that season in the 8-12 range. It doesn’t really matter what a team’s ranking is at the time if they lose a bunch of subsequent matches.
w/r/t the Tyler/UT-Dallas year, you’re forgetting that CMU did not have other significant wins to lift them over Tyler, and the committee took the Ybarra injury into account. That very same year (I believe), Redlands got in via Pool C after a direct loss to PP (who did not get in) in the conference tournament. Similarly, Tufts did not get in last year despite a direct win over Bowdoin. Redlands did not get in in 2015 despite a direct win over PP.
All other things being equal, a direct win is the most important factor. This is true. A win over CMS would take Redlands out of the “all other things being equal” category.
Apologies if I missed it, but is it now 100% confirmed that there will be six Pool C spots this year, up from five last year? If so, what is the status of the possible further increase from six to some larger number next year?
Personally, I anticipate the NESCAC beating up on each other–and could see Wesleyan/Williams/Amherst beating Midd or Bowdoin on the right day. If this happens, I think the NESCAC should earn 4 Pool C spots, unless (perhaps) CMU takes 3rd place at UAAs.
Also, this isn’t specific to Pool C, but it feels like we have more injured players than usual. This may well just be recency bias on my part, but with Rozenvasser, David Liu, Parodi, Hull, Cuba, Derbani, and others missing time (4 players from the Small College Nationals singles field), I can’t remember a year that was so impacted by players getting hurt.
Is there somewhere I can go to learn in what manner the tournament proceeds once the 44 teams have been selected?
This shows you an example of last year’s bracket: http://www.ncaa.com/interactive-bracket/tennis-men/d3
We will post a “Bracketology” article next week that will be very informative for you! In general, the 44 teams are separated (mostly geographically) into 8 regions. The top 8 seeds overall are supposed to be the top seeds in their respective regions, and (if geography allows) usually host their own region. In the linked bracket, the top 8 seeds were: 1. Emory, 2. CMS, 3. Middlebury, 4. Bowdoin, 5. CMU, 6. Wash U, 7. Chicago, 8. Case Western
Question for you, how does Case Western do such a good job of developing relatively untalented players? Every year they have amazing results and get similar recruits to teams ranked 30-40.
Roger, thanks for your question! I’ll answer in two parts –
1) Case Western does a great job of developing “relatively untalented” players because of Coach Woj’s system over in Case Western. He makes it a goal to recruit players of his ideal personality – underdogs who want to work to be better. Coach Todd seems to a good way of finding these players as well as selling them the idea that Case Western is the team that no one believes in. He certainly has done a great job in promoting that culture in Cleveland. Also, fact of the matter is that he is a very good technical coach. Case has now become known for player development and that is a testament to the culture he has built there.
2) However, that’s not without saying that there are not talented players in Case. William Drougas (2011 recruit) was ranked as high as 180 in his class. CJ Krimbill (2012) was ranked at #150 when he graduated. James Fojtasek (2013) was ranked in the top 200. Case Western is not a team that is devoid of all talent. In Case’s Elite 8 year, they had all three of those players playing in their lineup. So, it’s not like this team isn’t talented to some extent.
To expand on AS’s point, I did a quick calculation of the average TRN rankings of the starting singles players of Case and three West region teams sandwiching Case in the rankings and found this:
Redlands – 279.5
Case – 312.66
Whitman – 309.33
Trinity – 251.00
I contend that Case is basically right with its contemporaries in the rankings (pointing out that Trinity’s rankings are relatively higher because they’re playing with five underclassmen in the starting singles lineup compared to Case’s 3, Redlands’ 2, and Whitman’s 1)