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About the 2009 Division III
men's basketball tournament
Nov 2: Men in red hope to take next step
Oct 29: Petrel men look to take '10 by storm
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Our projected Field of 60
As is traditional, we have attempted to project the field of 60 based on the same criteria the NCAA national committee will be using on Sunday night. They give us 39 gimmes in the automatic bids and we have to figure out the 3 Pool B and 18 Pool C bids. (Pool B and C explained)
Primary
criteria Secondary criteria |
It took a little longer than expected, but we got through our selection process.
The idea is to emulate the NCAA's process, and that means starting at the regional level with new regional rankings. These are important because they determine the pecking order in which teams come up for consideration as Pool C teams. Then, the top at-large candidate from each region gets compared side by side, eight at a time. So the board always consists of eight teams, one from each region.
Our Pool B selections were as follows: Elms, Scranton, Maryville (Tenn.).
Our Pool C picks:
Puget Sound
UW-Whitewater
UW-Platteville
Ithaca
Elmhurst
Capital
WPI
Rhode Island College
St. Lawrence
Carnegie Mellon
Farmingdale State
Guilford
Brandeis
Salem State
St. Mary's (Md.)
Trinity (Texas)
Buena Vista
Amherst
It did seem like there were more upsets this year than usual. But it's hard to tell.
So we've got our 60 — how they shake down. Unless noted, the first- and second-round pods are set up with the No. 1 seed hosting 4, 5 and 8 and the No. 2 seed hosting 3, 6 and 7.
| BRACKET 1 1 Middlebury 2 Elms 3 WPI 4 Rhode Island College 5 Bridgewater State 6 University of New England 7 St. Joseph's (Maine) BYE Middlebury faces the 4-5 winner. Rest play at WPI since Elms can't host. |
BRACKET 2 1 Ithaca 2 St. Lawrence 3 Mass-Dartmouth 4 Brandeis 5 Amherst 6 Rochester Tech 7 Brockport State 8 NEAC winner We had 12 Northeast teams qualify. They're all over here. |
| BRACKET 3 1 Richard Stockton 2 Farmingdale State 3 Salem State 4 Brooklyn 5 St. Joseph's (L.I.) 6 NEWMAC winner 7 Husson 8 RPI Farmingdale goes from bubble to host team. Husson can drive there. |
BRACKET 4 1 John Carroll 2 DeSales 3 Widener 4 Wooster 5 Hope 6 Gettysburg 7 Wesley 8 Medaille We tried to balance the brackets as much as possible, mingling the MA and GL. |
| BRACKET 5 1 St. Mary's (Md.) 2 Capital 3 Carnegie Mellon 4 Gwynedd-Mercy 5 Scranton 6 Guilford 7 Averett 8 ODAC winner If F&M loses on Sunday, make Capital the 1 seed and adjust accordingly. |
BRACKET 6 1 UT-Dallas 2 UW-Whitewater 3 Centre * 4 Trinity (Texas) 5 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 6 Thomas More 7 Transylvania BYE Centre hosts for geography. Also a geographical bye here. |
| BRACKET 7 1 Wheaton (Ill.) 2 Washington U. 3 UW-Platteville 4 Lawrence 5 Buena Vista 6 Maryville (Tenn.) 7 Fontbonne BYE Bye handed out here on merit. Wheaton awaits Lawrence or BVU. |
BRACKET 8 1 St. Thomas 2 UW-Stevens Point 3 Elmhurst 4 Puget Sound 5 Whitworth 6 Cornell 7 Aurora BYE We couldn't avoid the NWC rematch without incurring two flights to UT-Dallas. |
The teams left on the table at the end of the process: Montclair State, Hamilton, Calvin, Franklin and Marshall, Augustana, Randolph-Macon and Bethel. F&M's upset loss in the Centennial today took them all the way out in our projection. They looked very similar to Amherst in the criteria, but while F&M's win against a regionally ranked opponent came against a team we ranked No. 8 in the region (McDaniel), Amherst's came against a team we ranked No. 1 in its region (Middlebury).
Here are the resumes for the teams in competition for the final Pool B slot:
Maryville (Tenn.) 16-6 (.727), .490 OWP, .476 OOWP, 1-3 vs. reg. rank. opps.
Chapman 17-3 (.850), .351 OWP, .496 OOWP, 1-1 vs. reg. rank. opps.
Susquehanna 16-7 (.696), .486 OWP, .489 OOWP, 1-3 vs. reg. rank. opps.
Chapman has a two-game lead in the regional winning percentage, but that's not enough to overcome a significant OWP deficiency. To help vizualize the difference: It's like Maryville played its 22 games against 17 .500 teams and five teams at .455 (to get to .490) and Chapman played 20 games against teams that were all 7-13.
We tried to give first-round hosting rights to as many teams as deserved it in the West and Midwest, which wasn't easy. We couldn't make the geography work to give UW-Whitewater a regional. There are enough Midwest/West teams that we could split up the three WIAC teams, however.
Amherst's spot as the last team in does assume account for a projected loss to Middlebury on Sunday. Buena Vista is in real trouble because they don't have a single game against a regionally ranked team. That's why they slid so far despite a 20-3 in-region record. Could Augustana be this year's Wheaton? They had the best strength of schedule of anyone on the table at the end.
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