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| UW-Platteville present a rarity: A two-loss team with two wins vs. regionally ranked opponents. UW-Platteville athletics photo |
By Pat Coleman
D3sports.com
Last year's bracketology show was pretty succesful and well-received, so we thought we'd do it again. Now, if only the Division III football world would have a little decency and not schedule night games on the final week of the season!
We went on the air Saturday night with the most structured bracketology we've ever done: a mock committee, full mock regional rankings and the voting process the committee uses.
- Our projected playoff bracket
- Bracketology show archive
- Selection Show, 6 p.m. ET
- Week 11 scoreboard
- Who's in the playoffs?
- Playoff picture roundup
- Week 11 national roundup
- NCAA strength of schedule rankings
- Latest D-III football news releases
It's a complicated process. It's a messy process, and it's not perfect. But if three heads are better than one, then having Frank Rossi and guest bracketologist Greg Thomas weigh in make this a more realistic process of bracketing.
First, we created mock final regional rankings. The committee needs to have these in order to get its work done and so do we. I won't run through all the numbers, but here was our result.
Step 1: New regional rankings
East: Wesley, Albright, Cortland, Framingham, Salisbury, St. Lawrence, Western New England, RPI, St. John Fisher, Delaware Valley.
North: Mount Union, Wheaton, Wabash, Albion, Franklin, Ohio Northern, Olivet, North Central, Lakeland, John Carroll
South: Johns Hopkins, Hardin-Simmons, Mary Hardin-Baylor, Thomas More, Washington & Lee, Guilford, Huntingdon, Texas Lutheran, East Texas Baptist, Hendrix.
West: St. Thomas, Linfield, UW-Oshkosh, UW-Whitewater, St. John's, UW-Platteville, Dubuque, Whitworth, Wartburg, St. Norbert.
I could spend pages just talking about these. Here's some of the highlights. The bottom of the East was made pretty messy over the past two weeks and St. John Fisher was deemed the best of the three-loss Empire 8 runners-up. And when it comes to Wesley vs. Albright for the No. 1 spot, well, it's really close, and Albright's common-opponent win vs. Salisbury might win out. The committee moved Ohio Northern ahead of Olivet last week and we elected to keep them there this time around. The bottom of the South regional ranking was interesting to figure out and ETBU stayed in the ranking despite the huge loss. Alternatives would include Muhlenberg. Whitworth's strength of schedule took a huge dive this week after playing winless Lewis and Clark.
Step 2: Pool B team
Hardin-Simmons. Next!
Everyone from then on is eligible for at-large (Pool C) bids, including members of the 25 automatic bid conferences.
Step 3: At-large teams (Pool C)
Two really easy ones for our committee (although I would have said three). Wesley and UW-Whitewater go in right away, without debate. St. John's should have too but the rest of the committee voted for Mary Hardin-Baylor. Then we put in St. John's as the fourth of six Pool C teams.
Here's where it gets interesting. The board looks like this:
East: RPI (8-2), .533 strength of schedule (SOS), 0-1 vs. regionally ranked opponents (RRO) with a loss to East No. 6 St. Lawrence (and one to Alfred)
South: Guilford (9-1), .493 SOS, 0-1 vs. RRO with a loss to South No. 5 W&L
North: Ohio Northern (8-2), .487 SOS, 1-1 vs. RRO with a loss to North No. 1 Mount Union and a win vs. North No. 10 John Carroll (plus a loss to Baldwin Wallace)
West: UW-Platteville (8-2), .530 SOS, 2-2 vs. RRO with losses to West No. 3 and No. 4 Oshkosh and Whitewater, and wins vs. West No. 7 Dubuque and North No. 10 North Central
Seeing a team with two wins vs. RRO at this stage of the decision is really unusual, and that and the SOS are the reason why our mock West committee put Platteville ahead of Whitworth in the first place. They are definitely the jewel of the 2-loss teams on the board right now and their SOS and RRO trump Guilford in a significant way. After some discussion, it's a unanimous vote to put UW-Platteville in the field.
Now the board looks like this:
East: RPI (8-2), .533 strength of schedule (SOS), 0-1 vs. regionally ranked opponents (RRO) with a loss to East No. 6 St. Lawrence (and one to Alfred)
South: Guilford (9-1), .493 SOS, 0-1 vs. RRO with a loss to South No. 5 W&L
North: Ohio Northern (8-2), .487 SOS, 1-1 vs. RRO with a loss to North No. 1 Mount Union and a win vs. North No. 10 John Carroll (plus a loss to Baldwin Wallace)
West: Whitworth (9-1), .492 SOS, 0-1 vs. RRO with a loss to West No. 2 Linfield
Now we have two teams with an extra loss, and two teams with one loss on a vanilla schedule. There's a lot of discussion here as we try to find some way to distinguish between Guilford and Whitworth. Heck, is the North better off with Olivet (9-1, .498, 0-1 RRO) on the board instead of ONU? We decided that it wasn't. Olivet lost at home by three touchdowns to its region's No. 4, so we'd made the right decision having ONU here.
Guilford and Whitworth look very similar but their losses are pretty opposite. Whitworth's loss is by six touchdowns to a No. 2 team in the region, while Guilford's was by three points at the region's No. 5. Whitworth's win vs. La Verne doesn't really help much because ULV is not ranked in the region. In the end we went around and around and just decided to put it to a vote, and we put Guilford in with the final spot.
Step 4: Bracketing
On to the bracketing.
The bracketing wasn't that much different than last week, primarily because we hit all 10 projected conference champions correctly. Here's a couple of things that changed (description below):
Albion passed Franklin in our regional ranking so I moved Albion to play at Thomas More and sent Franklin to play Wheaton. Wesley's SOS took a bit of a nosedive and I decided that was enough to consider Johns Hopkins clearly the higher seed, so I swapped opponents there: Norwich to JHU and Western New England to Wesley.
I would love to break up that Texas twosome, but I just can't do it without spending a lot of money. If Whitworth and Guilford both make the field, however, the committee could send Whitworth to Linfield, fly La Verne to Texas to play Hardin-Simmons and have Hendrix drive to UMHB, then match up the winners of the Texas teams in the second round instead of the first. But it's hard to find a projected field that has both Whitworth and Guilford. (Guilford is required because Guilford is within 500 miles, the bus-friendly distance, of Huntingdon.)
I also reconsidered where I was placing Platteville in the bracket. In the end, I don't think it's unfair to have the WIAC's 2 and 3 in the same bracket and "protect" the WIAC winner from them. Whitewater and Platteville are both at-large teams and haven't necessarily earned any right to be protected from each other -- in my opinion, it's more important to make sure St. John's and MIAC champ St. Thomas don't have to face each other before the quarterfinals.
Oh, and Guilford's reward for getting in? A trip to Alliance. I looked and actually didn't have any better options that didn't break the map. (I could send St. Lawrence to Mount Union but can't send Guilford to Cortland. I can't send Norwich or WNEU. I can send Salisbury to Alliance but can't send Guilford to Framingham.)
Welcome to the playoffs, Quakers. Last team in doesn't always get a trip to face the No. 1 team in the country, but sometimes it works out that way.