With March Madness over, you’d think Bracketology was over right? Nah, it’s just getting started! I’m jamming out to Kendrick Lamar right now so you know I’m going to go hard on this Bracketology like Wade Heerboth goes hard in Pedialyte Pong. Shout-out to the new account @D3TennisBro for adding some much needed humor in my life, and shout-out to my multiple personality bloggers for keeping me honest and not going too off the rails. Anyways, I feel like this article is what everyone has been waiting for in Pool C Week even though my Pool C Update #1 was pretty on point. I hope you enjoyed that because it took me a hell of a long time to do.
First off, let’s get everyone up to speed on how the NCAA tournament works! I know we have a ton of new freshman that read the blog as well as people who simply haven’t experienced the NCAA craziness before, like our Resident Pest Matthew Heinrich. Kidding, Matty. Just wanted to get one last shot in there because of the “Stevens Reads Mean Blog Posts” video, which you should watch by the way (top left of the site). So, I cheated and went back to my old bracketology articles because every single one of the posts had the rules in them. Copy paste, here I come.
“First, I’ll take you through the amount of teams this year. Overall, there will be 43 teams competing in the NCAA tournament. This includes 34 Teams from Pool A. Pool A competitors are from conference championship winners. There will also be 4 teams from Pool B (independents) and 5 teams from Pool C (at large bids). Since it’s currently projected that there will be only 1 Pool C competitor from California this year, this really puts a changeup in our bracket. Secondly, it’s important to know the flying rules for the tournament. Usually, the NCAA committee provides no more than 3 flights for DIII Tennis. What that means is any team that travels more than 500 miles will be flown to the host site. Yes, this means the return of the “As The Crow Flies” Calculator (This was an old joke about one of our favorite readers, you can probably guess who it is)! Kidding, we don’t actually use that. You’ll see that the bracket below incorporates that rule into the projected bracket. In addition, the bracket below incorporates which schools will put in bids to host. If you are unfamiliar, schools may opt out of putting in bids for a few reasons. The most common reason is that this may be a year where it’s the women’s team’s turn to host. This happens at Emory, CMU, and a few other schools. The bracket below assumes Emory can host this year. Okay, now that you have some of the basic rules down – time to take you through our thinking behind the bracket.”
Because I know all of you will ask, the below Pool A, B, and C contenders are all based on speculation. Pool A winners will be using the team from last year that won unless someone has already emailed me or one of my writers has done research on the teams. That means, there may be some errors here. If you are one of the Pool A hopefuls this year that thinks you will be a winner, state your case in the comments or via email at d3atlanticsouth@gmail.com. That way, I can incorporate into the next bracketology and have a more accurate one. Anyways, here goes.
Pool A
Allegheny Mountain – Franciscan
American Southwest – UT-Tyler
Capital Athletic – Mary Washington
Centennial – Johns Hopkins
CCIW – Elmhurst
CUNY – Baruch
Colonial States – Neumann
Commonwealth Coast – Nichols
Commonwealth – Messiah
Empire 8 – Stevens
Great Northeast – Albertus Magnus
Freedom – Wilkes
Heartland – Earlham
IIAC – Coe
Landmark – Catholic
Liberty League – Skidmore
Little East – Southern Maine
MIAA – Kalamazoo
Midwest – Grinnell
MIAC – Gustavus
NESCAC – Amherst
North Atlantic – Colby-Sawyer
NCAC – Kenyon
Northern Athletics – Wisc. Lutheran
Northwest – Whitman
Ohio Athletic – Otterbein
Old Dominion – Washington & Lee
Presidents – Grove City
Skyline – Yeshiva
Southern Athletic – Sewanee
SCIAC – CMS
SCAC – Trinity TX
UAA – Emory
USA South – NC Wesleyan
Pool B: UC Santa Cruz, Wisconsin-Whitewater, Babson, MIT
Pool C: Pomona Pitzer, Wash U, Middlebury, Bowdoin, CMU
Again, Pool A was using last year’s winners, Pool B is using independents who don’t have a true conference and will make it, and Pool C is your at large bids, as you know from my previous articles. Shoutout to the Guru for basically doing this bracketology that you see below. Next time, I will have a couple of scenarios to get you all thinking, but this one will be the straight forward bracketology that you expect. Now, I’ve gotten some (one) callout from writers (guess who) that I mis-led people with bracketology last year because unfortunately what I said might happen didn’t happen. So, as a disclaimer, this is very difficult, and this may not be what happens in the NCAA Bracket. As Joe Lunardi does it for DI Men’s Basketball, this is meant to get you guys thinking and give you a great opportunity to see who’s in the tournament and who can theoretically go where. So, without further ado, the below bracketology is what we’ve come up with first, using historical data and what we expect.
Bracketology (killin it)
*denotes Host Site
1) CMS*, Pomona-Pitzer, UT-Tyler, Santa Cruz
2) Emory, NC Wesleyan, Sewanee, Washington & Lee*, Wilkes, Grove City
3) Amherst*, Mary Washington, Babson, Catholic, Baruch, Neumann
4) Wash U*, Whitman, Coe, Earlham, Elmhurst
5) Middlebury*, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Yeshiva, Albertus Magnus
6) Trinity TX, Gustavus*, Whitewater, Grinnell, Wisc. Lutheran
7) Bowdoin*, Stevens, Skidmore, Colby-Sawyer, Nichols, Southern Maine
8) Kenyon*, Carnegie Mellon, Kalamazoo, Otterbein, Messiah, Franciscan
Thoughts
I would love for all of you to provide your thoughts about the bracketology in the comments below because as I mentioned this is a work in progress and there are many different scenarios. However, here are our thoughts behind the bracketology above for your reference.
- Obviously, Pomona Pitzer is the #2 seed in the CMS region. Is this a perfect scenario? Absolutely not, because they deserve a #1 seed somewhere. Next go round, we will provide TWO bracketologies, one with the likely scenario we see above, and the other with Pomona going somewhere else as a #1 seed.
- Since there are less Pool C bids this year, there are less valid #2 seeds that we can put in the tournament to make challenging brackets. This is why you see NC Wesleyan, Stevens, and Mary Washington all as #2 seeds.
- Your three flights in this bracket are as follows – Whitman to Wash U, UT-Tyler to CMS, and Trinity TX to Gustavus. These have all happened in the past which is why we expect it could happen again this year. We had briefly considered sending Whitman to Bowdoin and some other teams somewhere else, but we figured this was the most viable option.
- Bowdoin really lucks out in this bracket due to the plethora of #1 seed Northeast teams there are as well as their geography. Hopkins, one of the higher #2 seeds, cannot travel to Bowdoin assuming they put in a bid to host. That rules Hopkins out unless they meet in the middle. Middlebury on the other hand gets the short end of the stick and has Hopkins as their two seed as they are within the 500 mile radius that is required.
- Kenyon/CMU will do battle a third time, at Kenyon, to determine who goes on to likely play CMS in the Elite 8. That will be some match.
- Again, if you are a Pool A team that really believes you will win your conference this year and are not listed above, please email me with your best argument and I will decide if I should put you in. These Pool A teams are pretty impactful in terms of traveling and hosting, so it’s important!!
- All of this also depends on which teams put in bids to host. There are situations like Emory, CMU, and Hopkins where the guys and girls teams switch off bids for hosting because they sometimes are unable to host both tournaments. We have tried to take into account this fact. Sometimes, the Men’s teams get preference for hosting because if you are a top Women’s team, a coach may decide they can bite the bullet and go somewhere and easily handle their two seed whether they be on the road or not.
Okay! I have to get back to work but this is what we got. I expect some interesting discussion on this topic, and be sure to keep up with the blog because I will start to provide weekly bracketologies based on everyone’s matches and input. Thanks all, and it’s time to save the world. ASouth, OUT. Oh, and big shoutout to the Guru again. What a boss.
Thanks so much for the article! It is very tough to fit all of those puzzle pieces together and make it work.
Not to be needy, but I would love to see a bracketology article where the bloggers are free from the current NCAA rules and can put together a bracket that is as fair as they see fit. Maybe a better combination of AQs and At-large bids (think the Great Compromise from US History). Also, showing 2 different brackets associated with different Pool C numbers might make a strong(ish) argument for expanding Pool C. It would be ideal if the options were financially feasible so that the comparison to the current system would be more valid.
Also, I fear that the regular season might begin to become much more exciting than the NCAA regionals, which would be a total shame. It would be interesting to see how much more exciting a tournament set up by the bloggers could be.
You got it Matt – I’ve been working on a few scenarios, one of them being Pomona moving to a different region. I can’t say that I will totally throw out the rules, but I may do one that expands Pool C. We’ll keep you all updated.
My ideal scenario: take the top 32 ranked teams and seed them accordingly. Have all 32 teams meet at the same location (Vegas, to add a discipline aspect to things). Play a COMPASS draw over the course of a week with one day off after the first two matches and a day off before the last match. It would be so awesome because there would be so many matches between teams that would otherwise never see each other due to geographical constraints. I can’t imagine anything more awesome, but it makes me sad because it’s never gonna happen.
As far as compromise goes, the only think I can think of is to have all conferences without a nationally-ranked team in them play off for the last couple spots in the draw of 32.
That sounds amazing. Imagine playing all 16 matches at once over 96 courts at the new USTA center being built! and 80 ranked matches over 7 days…Wow.
If it were me, I would add enough at-large bids to make a 64 draw (forget pool B and pool C divisions), then send the final 16 somewhere (maybe Mobile, so you could play all matches at once) and re-seed/shuffle the draw. Then play a full feed-in like most big junior tournaments. Or if you keep the number at 8 for nationals, I think a compass would be perfect.
Seriously, the Elite 8 should definitely be a compass draw now.
That sounds crazy, but I like 32 better just so we don’t have to see CMS play Franciscan or whoever is the 64th best team in the country. Also, with 32, making the national tournament becomes a pretty major accomplishment (which is what it is now for about half the teams in the field that actually have to fight for it). Nevertheless, that would also be far and away better than what we have right now.
Having played both Baruch and Hunter, I think Hunter will take the CUNY. It is a hard sometimes in that league to predict because apparently people can move their lineups all over the place from match to match. Also, getting players to consistently play is also a challenge. Another team that I would expect to win would be Ramapo over Albertus Magnus. I haven’t seen AM play, but Ramapo is pretty solid at that level.
If I’m not mistaken, I count 20 un-ranked teams that pose no threat to any of the top 20 teams (no offense, but probably why they are un-ranked). While this happens…6 top twenty teams miss out on the tournament, who presumably would give a majority of the #1 seeds a tough match if not pulled an upset. Why do we have to see these uninteresting (no offense) match ups in the tournament? It is a farce.
I can tell you that my team is unranked and can compete with teams that are ranked. We don’t get ranked because we don’t have the schedule to allow us to get ranked. Doesn’t mean that we can’t compete against those teams. If it was 12 on 12 instead of 6 on 6, we would have no shot, but that isn’t how college tennis is played.
Tennisjon, your unranked team cannot compete with the top 20. That’s what he was alluding to. He is upset there are 6 teams in the top 20, including a couple of top 15 teams, that are missing the playoffs.
Compete with and defeat are two different things. To me it can be competitive if you can win 3 or 4 courts or very much push players at several positions. Although I think my guys can win courts against any team, that doesn’t mean its going to happen. I don’t know if beating a top 20 team is doable at this point. Top 30, I am pretty confident we could if things fall our way. Not going to be easy. I picked a team ranked in the top 30. Looked at their UTR rating. In each of the first 4 positions, they were rated 1 point higher than my team. Meaning, we could be blanked 9-0 or, if things fall our way, are close enough to pull off an upset. Certainly should mean we could compete with a team ranked around top 30.
I’m with you regarding compete and defeat. However, competing with a top 20 team (as the commenter mentioned) is something that I don’t believe you guys can do at this stage in the game. Let’s say we use your definition of possibly winning 3 or 4 courts or push players at several positions, which I honestly don’t agree with as “competing” but more of just being on the same level as a team. You may push a team such as Mary Washington at #1 and #2 singles, and MAYBE #1 doubles on the right day. Other than that, I believe the other matches would be relatively routine.
Please keep in mind that a difference of 1 point in UTR is actually huge. Take a look at some UTR comparisons, such as the Case/Kenyon/CMU weekend last weekend (I have them in the article). All of those matchups were within 1 point for the most part, thus being “competitive” matches. Greater than 1 point is a huge difference.
Its an absolutely ridiculous statement considering that the writers of this blog have stated very clearly that the only way to get ranked is to play a challenging enough schedule against other ranked teams. How can anyone possibly judge that without having seen my team play and probably no comparison data on our opponents either since probably no one has seen any of the teams we play. I am not saying that we will go out and beat anyone in NCAAs if we make it, but I am saying that we can certainly go out, compete with, and maybe pull off an “upset” if things go our way.
It’s not a ridiculous statement, because we have a large amount of data at our hands.
1) You use UTR, which I just gave you an example of why those numbers are not within your favor. Take a look at a matchup of Yeshiva vs. Mary Washington. You would be underdogs by AT LEAST one UTR point at all potential singles spots, and most likely all doubles spots unless you are the Jesus of doubles coaching.
2) Using your results last year (again, unless your players made significant improvements), you would not challenge a team like Mary Washington.
3) Using Tennis Recruiting, your team is at a severe disadvantage in past rankings and stars, which as we can attest, is usually a good indicator of talent level.
Conclusion – Instead of trumpeting how good your team is, let’s see how you do if/when you make the NCAA tournament. Let the rackets do the talking.
Additionally – let’s say Yeshiva is as good as TCNJ, for example. Which is a stretch already, but let’s say it’s true. TCNJ has lost to RPI, who is unranked. RPI got beat 8-1 by Pacific, who just makes the top 40. Pacific got beaten by Redlands 8-1 with Pacific’s lone win coming from a retired player.
Redlands is ranked #17. I can say “any given day” all I want, but I can say any given day about when I win the lottery as well. The fact of the matter is that Redlands won’t even make the tournament. To say that you would have the chance to knock off a top 20 team is naive, and I am looking forward to seeing Yeshiva in the NCAA tournament.
I am trumpeting my team in as I just believe its overlooked due to past history and scheduling. I am not saying it is deserving of a ranking, its going to win nationals or even advance out of our own conference. I am saying that we have a chance. Maybe its 5-10% chance of taking out a top 20 team and 10-15% chance against a team in the top 30. The remaining ranked teams and unranked teams I would say we have at least a 30% chance of winning. We don’t have the depth of the higher ranked teams. It gives us very little margin for error. One bad day by one player and its over. Other teams can have someone be off and still win the match.
I agree you have a chance. But it’s not a 5%-10% chance of taking out a top 20 team. Do you know what the statistic is for an unranked team taking out a Top 20 team in the NCAA tournament? In the past 10 years, it’s 0%. That’s right, 0 unranked teams have done so. I’d have to check (and I won’t) but an unranked team taking out the top 30 is probably around 2%, if that high.
The fact you think an unranked team only has a 5% chance better to upset a top 30 team and top 20 team tells me you don’t understand the big talent gap between the top 20 and 20-30. Especially when only the best top 20 schools get in with the Pool C rules we have today. Again, see you at nationals (if you make it). As the top of the site reads, Let the rackets do the talking
I think almost all of us can agree that having essentially 8 teams from the big 3 conferences (UAA, SCIAC, NESCAC) and 31 other Pool A conferences is not a fair distribution. Additionally, when kids choose schools they don’t only look at tennis. I personally would rather go to Williams than Franciscan University (no offense to Franciscan, just an example), even though Williams may not make the tournament this year and did not make it last year. Additionally, if I had been playing tennis my whole life to be a top 200 player (like some on Williams) I would want to play with people around my level, and I feel like I would deserve to make the tournament.
Also, having the 7 spots it used to be (as I mentioned in my article) would get most of the top 20 in. It would add Williams and Case Western this year, which would add no flights. It could add Redlands, Wesleyan, Bates, or Chicago, which would also add no flights. Adding Redlands might even make it possible to fly Pomona somewhere. So, I’m not sure where you are getting “additional flights” from adding Pool C teams considering we’ve had 7 Pool C teams in the past and still gotten three flights.
I agree with you that Williams should have been included in the tournament last year. They were a great team in a very tough conference and certainly had a greater shot to advance than many other schools that did not get invited to the dance. That being said, they should not get in over other schools that qualified by winning their conference.
I spent the first 6 or 7 years coaching a team that worked really hard to win their conference. We worked hard on and off the court just like the teams that got in and just like the teams that miss out now. We were mid-level regionally ranked team, bordering on a national ranking, but never got there. We never got into the tournament because they didn’t have the AQ at that point. People who never saw us play a match made a decision that we didn’t deserve to get in. It didn’t help that our entire conference was located in a different region, but that didn’t stop us from competing against and in some cases beating TCNJ, Vassar, NYU, Stevens, and Amherst.
Now, no matter where you go, if the team improves, you have a chance of going. Its a great selling point. Go to a school like Bates and you get to play great competition every year. Maybe once or twice your team is good enough that you get to go. You are certainly in the mix year after year. Play in a weaker conference, sometimes you have obvious locks to win and sometimes it is a battle each season to advance. Winning your conference means that much more because now you get that bonus of going to NCAAs.
That being said, the NCAA should allow for more teams to get into each region. Maybe 8 per location. It doesn’t really cost that much more if those teams have to pay their own way. Maybe the NCAA only pays for pool A winners to travel beyond the 500 miles? Invites go out and if the school doesn’t want to or can’t afford to go, you head down the ranking list until each spot is taken. Why exclude when you can include?
Let’s get a few things straight here. I am not endorsing NO AQ bids. I am endorsing TWO less AQ bids so 7 teams can get in through Pool C, and most of the top 20 can get in. If you read my historical Pool C article, that would be the case.
Secondly, I am not saying these AQ teams do not work as hard as top 20 teams. However, take a moment to realize that guys that play in the starting lineup for top 20 teams have gotten there because of 1 of 2 things. Either
1) they have so much more talent than the AQ players they simply breezed through and made it to a Top 20 roster, or
2) They worked harder than the AQ guys/dedicated more time of their life to tennis to get there.
The NCAA has made the decision that these bottom AQ teams should make the tournament, and that’s a travesty.
Thirdly, I went back into Drew’s history to validate your claims and because I feel passionately about this subject.
In 08-09 you lost to Vassar 8-1, NYU 5-1, and Stevens 6-3.
In 09-10, Drew lost to TCNJ 9-0 and Hopkins 5-0 in the NCAA tournament.
In 10-11, you lost to TCNJ 8-1, Stevens 8-1, Vassar 9-0.
In 11-12, you lost to Vassar 9-0 and Williams 5-0 in the tournament.
In 12-13, you lost to CNU 9-0, Salisbury 8-1, TCNJ 9-0, and ended up losing to Middlebury 5-0.
In 13-14, you lost to TCNJ 9-0 and NYU 8-1.
The fact that you state “competing against and sometimes beating” these teams is downright absurd.
The big question is….were there any matches that were “close” losses? I know that’s something we all want to know!
Did you check the 2001-2005 matches when Drew was ranked?
Do you mean when DIII was not nearly as deep and as talented as it was from 2008-2014? No, I did not. Because that data is irrelevant.
1) Awesome.
2) Your second paragraph basically says players should choose AQ teams if they want to go on the NCAA journey.
3) De-emphasized athletics or not, we’re talking about athletics. Again, I would want to go to Williams over Franciscan, but I still want to compete in the NCAAs and my lifes work has attributed to that. Just because I’m a 3 star that wants to go to Middlebury doesn’t mean I should choose to go to Franciscan so I can make a tournament.
4) DI Basketball and DIII Tennis are so far apart in terms of depth that isn’t even a reasonable comparison to make.
OVERALL – I’m glad everyone has made the Bracketology go so far off the intended purpose of the article, which is to discuss… the bracket. Instead, we are here in piss fights about things for the sake of arguing. I will take note of this in the next Bracketology and all future posts in terms of comments.
One thing to note that I am not sure everyone realizes (and I am pretty sure of this, but someone should verify)– D3 uses the same formula for determining who makes the tournament in all sports — but the size of tournament may vary depending upon how many teams play the sport. I think lacrosse has a much smaller tournament. Also, I don’t think other sports have the same type of talent concentrated in so few conferences; so tennis, right now, is an anomaly. Bottom line — the D3 poohbahs just want a consistent rule to determine who gets in. They don’t want to make exceptions for different sports. Things could get out of hand if they had to argue what the formula was for every sport every year. It might not be fair, but it is consistent.
I always like being the first one to make the case for the little guys in these articles. I don’t think Elmhurst, Earlham, or Otterbein will win their conferences. I think Carthage is probably the frontrunner in the CCIW. Earlham will be challenged by Rose Hulman in the HCAC. Capital has already beaten Otterbein in the OAC, but that conference is wide open with like 5 teams who could win it (John Carroll, Baldwin Wallace, and Ohio Northern being the other three).
None of those teams should change your destinations though, just my thoughts. Also, would TCNJ be a possible Pool B school?
Pool B is interesting this year with only 4 teams and I think Cruz/Whitewater are both safe. TCNJ could absolutely make a case for Pool B with wins against NYU and Rochester. Neither Babson nor MIT is nationally ranked. I’m not sure who else would be in competition for those spots.
I think TCNJ would have to beat either Skidmore (this weekend) or Stevens (end of the regular season) in order to get the spot ahead of MIT. Even though TCNJ has a win over NYU, their 5-4 loss to RPI will likely hurt them as well. MIT doesn’t really have any huge wins, but their only losses are to Bates and Babson. I do think TCNJ is a better team, but MIT has the regional ranking and (even though it shouldn’t matter) is the bigger name. Where is our Regional Writer when we need him?