#PoolCWeek – A Historical Look

It’s time for a history lesson!!

As you see in the POTW article, mid-March is not only the time for March Madness (although the Madness is over for me) but also time for me to start writing crazy articles like Pool C and Bracketology.  I personally love both of those things especially because I only have four teams in my region that I cover!  And you guys thought that I hired @D3Regional for the readers…. Lol.  Kidding of course.  Like I said, now is the time to start thinking PLAYOFFS?! PLAYOFFS?!  With the playoffs inherently comes Pool C talk because a lot of the best teams will get in through an at-large bid because the conferences are extremely imbalanced and unfair.  Actually, I’m going to officially dub this week the #PoolCWeek because we’re dropping a ton of Pool C articles this week.  NE already brought Coach Bizot in to take us through the new Pool C changes (down to 5 teams) to give us some clarity on what actually went down like it’s a Friday night at 4AM.

For this article, I actually wanted to take a historical look at Pool C to determine what actually happens with teams and how they get selected.  I have NO idea where this article is going to go at this time, but the results will speak for themselves I’m sure.  Let’s go year by year and see what we can find, and then determine what we can conclude about this season.  I’m going to use this nifty little table that Dante Quazzo made (even though the actual table is pretty easy to make in any Microsoft Office function) to make it a bit more readable for you.

2014

Pool C Teams (no particular order):

Taking a quick look at last year’s Pool C bids aren’t actually that interesting.  With the three teams slotted in behind the qualifiers all struggling, the Pool C contenders were cut and dry and didn’t have to worry.  A quick takeaway from this season is below:

• Pool C teams are obviously legit. There have been a few people that have asked me or simply straight out said that we shouldn’t be griping about Pool C because the last teams to make it into the NCAA tournament are never threats to make the national championship.  This may or may not be true, but even the last team (Bowdoin) had the goods to beat a top 10 team in Pomona Pitzer last year.  You also have to remember the feeling it is to play in NCAAs and potentially play in the Elite 8.  I can say from experience that the NCAA tournament Elite 8 was always one of the moments that will stay with me for the rest of my life.  Robbing kids of what they’ve worked for their whole lives because “they can’t win it all” doesn’t make any sense, when you’re letting teams that don’t even have a chance to make it out of the third round in.  Don’t be a party pooper.

2013

If you don’t remember, this was the year UT-Tyler inexplicably lost to UT-Dallas in their conference tournament, dropping them to a Pool C berth and huge debate on whether or not they should get into the tournament.  This was a year where I thought that Tyler, CMU, Whittier, AND Pomona all had arguments to get into the tournament.  I wrote a huge article about it actually.  I think some key takeaways from this year that we can take into this year are as follows.

• Direct wins matter more than big resume wins, especially ones in the fall. The reason I say this is because of the debate between UT-Tyler and CMU, who probably had the best chances for that last spot in the tournament.  Despite CMU beating Amherst in the fall, the committee simply looked at UT-Tyler’s direct win over CMU in the Spring and made their decision.  It makes sense, but not everyone always gets this.  What does this mean for this year?  Believe it or not, CMU hopes to not fall in a similar situation as their only big win is against Trinity TX, a non-Pool C competitor.  They have losses to two direct competitors in Pomona and Bowdoin.
• Wins define you more than losses. Take a look at UT-Tyler’s season and their loss against a sub 50 team in UT-Dallas.  CMU had not lost to anyone outside the top 20 that whole year, but simply didn’t beat anyone in the Spring.  UT-Tyler went out and took the Pool C spot by beating two direct competitors in Pomona and CMU.  That did it for them.
• Out of Region matches matter more for West teams than anyone else. Take the case of the three West teams fighting for Pool C spots. Redlands, Whittier, and PP had direct wins or indirect wins over each other at the end of the year.   However, the key was this – Redlands had a win over Case Western, giving them victories over a ton of other teams.  That made Redlands season stronger than any of those other SCIAC teams, and got them in.

2012

Again, most of the same points are coming out of 2012, but it’s important to note a few things:

• One win can get you in. Look at the cases of Wash U (who got a ridiculously easy draw that year) and Middlebury.  Wash U basically beat Case Western and CMU while Middlebury beat Bates and Pomona.  None of those teams made it other than Pomona.  If you can get your Pool C win while also avoiding any significant losses (like UT-Dallas) you’re basically in.  You leave no argument for anyone to take you out, whether that be fair or not.
• ITA Ranking does NOT mean you will be in. There are always the exercises that everyone pulls when they say “if the season ended today, blah blah and blah would be in.” It’s trickier than that. Way trickier.  If you can see the past two years, a “lower ranked” Pool C contender snuck in over a team that was one in front of them in the rankings.

Final Thoughts:

As you look through the years, you can tell that no year shows the same Pool C trend.  This year is no different, considering there may be more teams than ever competing for those 5 spots.  I came into this article wanting to answer the question “How much do direct wins matter?” and came away thinking they actually matter more than I thought they would.  A team can rely on a Pool C direct win much more than that resume win, contrary to popular belief.  This year, that’s important to note because Bowdoin gave the big up to the NESCAC by beating CMU, who is on track to be the 3^rd place in the UAA.  If Williams/Bowdoin whoever else can make an argument to be better than CMU, could we see 4 NESCAC teams making the tournament again?!  The world will never know (until May).

WHEW!! That was a lot of research.  I’ve almost gotten to the point where I’m writing way too much, but I had to take a look back on all this stuff to get a gauge of what to expect this year.  In honor of #PoolCWeek, this is only the first article I have that will touch on the intricacies of this crazy system.  Soon enough, I will be going through our Pool C contenders this year, very similar to what I did last year.  Basically, it’s going to be your bubble watch.  Then, I’ll be going into some bracketology, which is my favorite article year after year.  Keep an eye out for more Pool C articles from us as well as the women’s side, potentially!  It’s going to be an exciting rest of the season and we’re glad y’all are still joining us at the only DIII tennis destination.  ASouth, OUT.