Breaking down the East teams with the best records, and what does it mean?

2021-’22 – D2 East Women’s Basketball – Info at break

By Stephen Zerdelian

Every season (last year aside), I try to check out the teams who are doing well at this point in the schedule, the holiday break, and see how they got there. This time around there is an enormous amount of disruption thanks to continuing pandemic issues. Many teams have had games postponed, cancelled, moved, added, or simply didn’t schedule a lot in the first place. That all skews the chart below and makes it a bit less predictive, but I’ll run with it anyway. Let’s check out the raw numbers…

Information thru December 20, 2021 – teams in region with .667 winning percentages or better:

This is the first time in four years that every team on the list faced a sub-.500 composite group of opponents, as well as in opponents records in victories (columns one and two). Naturally, the losses column (#3) is mostly comprised of setbacks to winning teams. These factors indicate that the teams with the best records in the region have faced poor schedules (which is not all their own fault, circumstances play a role here) and may not translate into lasting success this season. As for individual teams…

Pace has only played two teams with winning records (AIC and Caldwell) and lost to a Bridgeport team that is on a five-game slide since their contest…. Sciences has faced three teams with winning records, one of whom gave them their only loss… Jefferson seems to have a nice resume so far, having played four teams with winning marks and prevailing in three of those games. That one of their defeats was to a 3-7 West Chester team doesn’t help their cause but their overall body of work so far looks good… Southern New Hampshire has seen five winning teams thus far and have gone 4-1 against them, a sweet stat to pocket by this juncture. Their losses have been to a .500 team (Assumption) and a 7-4 outfit (Saint Leo), so their resume also looks solid… D’Youville is on the list despite their non-conference schedule containing five non-Division II opponents in their six games played (5-1 in those contests), while they have played three ECC games and are 2-1. Any non-Division II games wouldn’t count in their strength-of-schedule consideration, so their Division II record really is 3-1. Add it all up and the Saints have a schedule that does not translate to any at-large consideration and, like the rest of the ECC, they will have to win the league tournament to get into the NCAA field… Post’s schedule, as documented recently by Tim McCaffrey, is terrible. Officially the worst SOS in all of Division II, the Eagles have played only one team at .500 (Franklin Pierce) with the next best foe at .333. No chance for an at-large bid under those parameters, I’m afraid… Chestnut Hill has only played two +.500 teams and split with them (beating Holy Family and falling to Kutztown), so while their record is good, it’s a little thin on quality results… Le Moyne, with only six games played, hasn’t had much of a chance to buff up their resume. The only +.500 team they played was the 8^th-ranked WBCA team, Ashland, who blew them out. The Dolphins will need some quality wins to bolster their case… Southern Connecticut has faced four teams with winning records, going 3-1 against them, so while the Owls are 6-3, their resume is pretty sound. Losses to Georgian Court (3-7) and Dominican (6-6) hurt but SCSU has given itself a fighting chance with the best cumulative opponents record on this list.

There are three teams one win shy of being on this list, all at 5-3 - AIC, Bentley and Daemen. All three had games postponed this month (AIC and Bentley two each and Daemen one), so it is conceivable they could all have been listed as .667 or better. All have the capacity to surpass a number of the teams on this chart.

How predictive is this mid-season list? Here is how it broke down over the first three seasons of data collection:

2019-‘20 – 11 on list, 5 made NCAA’s (three teams were one game shy of the list, one of which made the NCAA’s).

2018-‘19 – 12 on list, 8 made NCAA’s.

2017-‘18 – 10 on list, 7 made NCAA’s (the other NCAA team was 7-5 at the break).

Is it a perfect predictor? Certainly not, particularly this season with so many vagaries and roadblocks. How many of these nine combines will make what we presume is the normal eight-team regional field? Who knows for sure, but I’ve found it instructive to check back at the end of the season each time before and see just how predictive it may be. Once we get to March, I’ll revisit and see how it turned out.