Welcome to a rare Midweek Musing!Well, just a few hours ago (last night, anyway), the NCAA National Committee released the official Regional Rankings for each of the eight regions. Here’s what they got right and wrong as it pertains to the East Region:
Kudos to Men’s Basketball Committee chair Ted Hotaling, who doubles as the New Haven head coach. His regional committee did an excellent job, and not just because the Musings nearly predicted every team in order!
1 Bridgeport
2 St. Thomas Aquinas
3 Jefferson
4 Le Moyne
5 Saint Anselm
6 Stonehill
7 Daemen
8 Dominican
9 Franklin Pierce
10 Adelphi
#2 and #3 are not worth fighting about at this time and here’s why - it’s unlikely Jefferson loses for the remainder of the regular season. STAC will travel to Bridgeport next week and if the Spartans win, they are #2 and if they lose they are #3. Pretty simple, in my mind. It should be noted that Dominican’s home loss to Bloomfield on Tuesday is not factored into these rankings, which only include games through Sunday!
And now to the women, where we have a mix of good and bad once again from the Women’s Regional Committee. Let’s look at the rankings:
1 Adelphi
2 Stonehill
3 University of the Sciences
4 Bentley
5 Daemen
6 St. Thomas Aquinas
7 Saint Anselm
8 Le Moyne
9 Pace
10 Molloy
The committee has the correct 10 teams above and has the right eight but it was inconsistent in its logic. Does SOS (strength of schedule) matter? Yes and no. It mattered when it came to Stonehill vs. Sciences.I don’t particularly have a problem with the Skyhawks on the two-line considering a neutral-site head-to-head affair favored the Skyhawks. But from #5 down, the committee goes off the rails. Last season, I had a member of the women’s committee contact me and say, “The columns don’t matter. It’s about getting the eight best teams in the tournament.” While I wholeheartedly agree, the seeding matters also.
Before I get into why the committee gets it wrong using its flawed logic, let me mention one thing that’s on my mind. Performance Indicator just measures wins. According to the PI, if you beat the worst team in the nation at home, you earn more points than you would by losing to the best team in the nation on the road and that metric favors teams who don’t play a good schedule. The women’s committee had a chance to tell teams that try to stockpile wins by playing a horrible non-conference schedule to play a better slate and they failed. Let’s tell the truth - the ECC is not even close to as competitive of a league as the NE10. You don’t get middle-of-the-pack ECC teams that are winning at the top teams in the league, and forget about the bottom of the league being competitive thanks in large part to an inequity when it comes to scholarship money and budgets. Daemen played one non-league contest against a regionally-ranked team and that was against an injury-riddled Stonehill team in the season-opener for both schools. The game was in Rochester, about an hour from Daemen’s campus. The Wildcats lost. That being said, even if you think Daemen deserves the #5 spot, how in the heck is STAC sixth? This is a team that had Bentley in the Toll Booth the day after the Falcons had played at Molloy and still couldn’t win despite being well-rested. It’s a team that lost at Southern Connecticut... an SCSU club that has won three games since December 15 (against STAC, Saint Michael’s and Saint Rose). Three Saints…. hmmmm. It’s a STAC team that should be in the field, but sixth just isn’t right. If anybody on that committee thinks two wins against Molloy and one each against Pace and Daemen equals winning at Stonehill and Le Moyne, as well as home against Adelphi needs a lobotomy. In that last sentence, I’m referring to Saint Anselm. There’s a reason certain teams from weaker leagues don’t play good schedules. They know that if they played up, they’d be exposed... and is there anyone that thinks Daemon or STAC could survive an NE10 slate? That’s the elephant in the room and I just said it. So beginning just last year, the committee was charged with putting the top teams in regardless of what the columns say. Do you think that STAC’s body of work is better that Le Moyne’s or St. Anselm's? We’ve been down this path before and invariably the team that hides from competition is ousted quickly in the NCAA's but let’s at least understand that this seeding isn’t what the region deserves.
ECC bottom five teams vs. NE10: 0-24
ECC bottom five against the CACC: 16-4
All the conferences are not equal and the teams you beat aren’t equal either. I can sit here and tell you that if you’re going to make Daemen #5, then why not #4? They beat out Bentley in five columns - overall winning %, in-region %, PI (what a joke), DII results vs .500 or better and record against common opponents. Why aren’t they fourth? Because the committee used some common sense and didn’t rely on false metrics. So if you’re telling me that the columns don’t matter, why do they matter to a point? If you can’t make any sense out of this, neither can I.
I’ll be back Monday for my usual column. Until then, always do what’s right, not what’s easy! Happy Hooping, everyone!!