Rather than rush a Sunday night T100 update after driving 4 hours home from Cleveland in time to catch the last 5 minutes of the Bills game (Yes, I am a Western New Yorker!), I decided that since Monday is about as empty a “D3 Volleyball Day” there is, I will start bringing you the T100 twelve hours later. And for your patience, it will always come with “All the Fixings!” What are those? The Fixings are [1] Conferences+ – A slide which gives you the T100 metrics by order of the strength of every conference through the top 5 per, treating the Independents as one. It specifically shows the conference favorites projected to earn automatic bids, the five in line predicted by the T100 for the at-large bids, and the five who are forecasted to not make the cut on the wrong side of the bubble. All based on the real time T100 as of Sunday evening. I also offer “Bubblelicious” scores from last week. The match results between any two teams who are most likely to be on the bubble fighting for one of those five at-large positions. [2] A slide titled the T100 Forecasted NCAA Bracket – A visual showing the same 19 teams who would be in the tournament as indicated on the Conferences+, only with the probability for each to advance, given the bracket the T100 would produce as it is presently configured. [3] The last “Fixing” is a slide of the coming week’s matchups showing all competitors win probabilities for the match. This is called Matchup Projections. Keep in mind, if a team is playing more than one match per week, then all subsequent ones will have had a real time probability shift based on earlier performances. For example, the MP posted last week caught 83% favorites who won, but in real time that number rose to 87%, and if I were to measure it retrospectively after the match with the latest T100 rankings – That is cheating, of course, it would be slightly above 90%. Above every slide I will offer one or two highlighted takes that first grab my attention.
The biggest take-away on the T100 is the meteoric rise of Baldwin Wallace moving up roughly 10 spots each of the last two weeks from early 30’s to early 20’s and now settling in at 11th this week. They are now forecasted to be the odds-on favorite to come away with the MCVL title this year, and don’t be too shocked if either Mount Union, Wittenberg, or both, make their own charge on to the bubble by the end of the season.
I couldn’t help noticing the best team to not have at least a 1% probability to qualify for the NCAA Championship so far is Elmira at #40. It’s understandable having been 8th in the pre-season UVC Coaches Poll with the 7 others all ranked in the AVCA’s Top 20. However, this is still a team, though be it at their home gym, who has taken 6 of 8 sets from an NYU squad the last couple of years. The Violets a National Semi-Finalist who has spent a majority of that time in the AVCA Top 10. A couple thoughts come to mind -There have been far more uncommon events in the realm of this sport that have happened in recent history than they finding some way to punch their ticket, and those going to Elmira this year better not be thinking ahead to anything other than the task at hand! The Soaring Eagles are 4-0, recently having blanked Buff State, a team that took St. John Fisher to the brink last week, and had a ’24 victory over a ranked Santa Cruz team, also.
It isn’t possible to highlight the most likely 5 at-large bid candidates not forecasted to win their conference, followed by the act of highlighting the next 5 forecasted to be outside looking in, without taking pause to observe how thin the margins are for all 10 of these teams right now. It seems as though there may be more candidates making the argument for consideration than committees have had to reckon with in earlier years. Makes me think the tougher it gets for humans to have done that job well; it was a good thing to go to a more objective tool in their place this year to determine every bubble team’s tournament verdict. Later comes the task to determine if their protocols truly were less objective than the NPI‘s dials?
When I wrote my comments below earlier, I was operating under an assumption that Cal-Lu, even if they were the worthiest West regional host, probably wouldn’t get the chance. I have since learned it wouldn’t be out of the realm, particularly if the West were to be the region with 4 teams rather than 5, together with Santa Cruz also earning an at-large. Makes sense as the number of flights to be secured under that condition would be the same, either way. However, it seems highly unlikely given the strength of the Midwest upper echelon of teams, unless the NPI somehow doesn’t see what the rest of us do. And with the Banana Slugs having a “4 in the L column,” to begin the year, it seems less likely for two from the far West to present this scenario. Besides, it worked out OK for the Kingsman last season not playing any of their 4 matches at home, so no worries there, I imagine.
I have 133 matches on my schedule this week between two teams from the T100‘s list of 129. It has always been my contention that games played within a closed system best inform the rankings, so that is what I choose to utilize. The color codes demonstrate the density of forecasts in such a way that it is easy to understand why favorites win 85%+ of the time. In D1 MVB it is a little less than that, and in the highest level of international volleyball it is even less than that. When climbing the ladder of higher performance in any sport with similar scheduling patterns, you should expect more parity with every rung climbed. This is partly because the margin of error between winning and losing is reduced every step up. What was the margin of error for the Buffalo Bills to have been prepping for Super Bowl LIX right now?
So now you know the plan! Monday is the “T100 with All the Fixings,” and the day after that is “Tuesdays with MORE.” As far as Fridays go, who knows what curiosity may strike me in the days between?