Disclaimer
Fair warning, I’m not an expert when it comes to the ranking process, and I’ve never been involved in one personally. But I’ve done enough homework to feel confident in my ability to project certain decisions based on the available data released by the NCAA. This article is a general well-informed guess as to how things might play out given the trends of this season and the general performances of D3VB teams up to this point. There is a lot of ball left to be played, and another round of rankings to be released, so the final picture isn’t set yet. Simply put, my thoughts don’t matter in the grand scheme of things so take them for what you will.
2nd Regional Rankings
The rankings released yesterday are the first ones to include a numerical order of teams within each Region. This is because the committee now has access to officially ranked teams (based on last week’s ranking) and can accurately assess every programs performance against regionally ranked opponents. For reference, the primary NCAA ranking criteria are as follows…
- D3 Win/Loss %
- Strength of Schedule
- Win/Loss versus Regionally Ranked teams
- Record versus Common Opponents
- Head-to-Head Result
Region 1
1. Wentworth
2. Springfield
3. Nichols
4. Lasell
5. Baruch
6. Emmanuel
7. Rivier
Region 2
1. St. John Fisher
2. Vassar
3. NYU
4. MIT
5. New Paltz
6. Hobart
7. Nazareth
Region 3
1. Stevens
2. Southern Virginia
3. Juniata
4. Misericordia
5. Marymount
6. Messiah
7. Stevenson
Region 4
1. Loras
2. Cal Lutheran
3. Carthage
4. UCSC
5. North Central
6. Dominican
7. Aurora
Possible Tournament Field
We can begin constructing a Tournament field with the information above and the playing trends we’ve seen throughout the season so far. Below you’ll find a list of the likely Pool A candidates, if the #1 seeds in Conferences win their Conference Tournaments (below reflects the #1 seeds as of 4/3, sorry if seeding has changed since then).
UVC: St. John Fisher
CVC: Southern Virginia
MAC: Stevens
GNAC: Wentworth
CCIW: Loras
NACC: Aurora/Dominican
Skyline: St. Joseph – Long Island
MCVL: Wittenberg
CUNYAC: Baruch
AMCC: St. Vincent
Given the field above, the teams below were the front runners for the remaining bids as of 4/3 (meaning only matches played up to April 3rd).
Pool B: Cal Lutheran
Pool B: Springfield
Pool B: Nichols
On the Bubble: UCSC
Pool C: Vassar
Pool C: Juniata
On the Bubble: Carthage
Vassar is putting some distance between themselves and Carthage, with their common opponent win over NYU alongside another Regionally Ranked win over New Paltz. A win over Springfield at the end of the season could theoretically lock their bid in regardless of any UVC upset in the quarterfinals (assuming all the number 1’s hold seed in conference).
Carthage’s win over Loras should ring some alarm bells for the Duhawks, as where I’m sitting I actually don’t think their bid is at all guaranteed. Their SOS comes back to bite them in this regard despite their win over Cal Lutheran. If Carthage wins the CCIW, Loras gets put into the Pool C’s with the remaining region II and region III teams, and that’s not a good place for the Duhawks to be given their resume this year.
A few people have asked me if Springfield should be worried about their losses to MIT and Eastern Nazarene; the answer is no. Springfield is in the tournament. Their seeding will be impacted, but the odds are like 99.9% they’ll be dancing in April.
The recent slide of NCC combined with Benedictine falling out of the regional rankings hurts UCSC’s Pool B chances. UCSC can’t afford to lose any regionally ranked wins when it comes down to the final decision later this month, and the committee will only consider teams regionally ranked if they were listed in the week 3 and 4 rankings (the first regional rankings will be meaningless). As it stands, UCSC is in a do or die situation with their match against Cal Lutheran. If they win, they might have a chance to sneak into the tournament, if they lose, Nichols gets the third Pool B.