|
| Gustavus will be entering the NCAA Playoffs with a 0-0 record as they not only have their first MIAC baseball title but are going to the Regional Round for the first time. d3photography.com photo by Ryan Coleman |
Creating an Division III baseball NCAA Tournament bracket is pretty simple. Take the 41 conference bids and the top 23 ranked teams in the NCAA Power Index (NPI). Last year it was about the numbers, a lot of numbers but this year it is all about one.
All of this makes the job of picking the playoff teams easy. It is more involved in constructing a bracket for a field of 16 four-team double-elimination regionals.
As usual, these picks do not influence the NCAA Tournament selection committee's picks, nor does our Top 25 poll. No national Top 25 is ever considered in an NCAA selection process. We are first in the suggestion that performance on the diamond should prevail over anyone's opinion. We also agree that an oops in the conference tournament should not necessarily disqualify you from a playoff appearance.
Here are our projections.
- NCAA Selection Show broadcast at 12 p.m. ET, Monday, May 12
- Who's in automatically: 41 conference winners
- NCAA tournament FAQs
Last year the process started with projecting the regional rankings for each of the 10 regions. Then we determined from the ten top teams in each region, which one should earn an at-large bid and repeated this process for all available at-large bids. The process from yesteryear would end up with teams in several regions, blocking a team that could earn a playoff bid. These days are over and the best statisticians the NCAA has developed the NPI and presto - a single number determines your fate it you do not win your conference tournament.
For those teams that could not win their tournament and are on the bubble, they are hoping that the top ranked team in each conference wins the tournament title and conference bid. There will always be a team like Huntingdon, who was not in a position to get an at-large bid, wins the CCS tournament, pushing a highly ranked team into the at-large pool and effectively raising the cut line.
Using the NPI the cut line was 42. Here are the 23 at-large bids in order of ranking.
Salisbury; Kean; Rowan; UW-La Crosse; Centre; Belhaven; Emory; Randolph-Macon; Millsaps; UW, Oshkosh; Mount Union; Concordia (Texas); Maryville (Tenn.); Washington Univ.; Pomona-Pitzer; Ohio Northern; Chicago; Penn State-Harrisburg; Ramapo; TCNJ; McMurry; Oswego.
The last four out were: Redlands; Wittenberg; Wilkes; Coe.
With the NPI rankings, it is then trivial to seed the tournament. The top 16 teams are the top seed in every Regional, the second seed are the next 16 and so on. Determining who should play each other is also pretty simple. The top ranked team plays the 64th ranked team. They are paired in their regional with the 32nd ranked team who plays the 33rd ranked team. You follow this scheme and you have 16 regional rounds. Easy peasy.
At this time, we can leave the process and reconvene at a local sports bar but this is just when the work starts. Two criteria will guide us in this next phase. No regional should included two teams from the same conference. This means that if a regional set up has both Rowan and Ramapo, you will have to swap one of these teams with a similar ranked team. For example if Ramapo is a three seed, find another third team from a different regional you can swap with that does not included a NJAC team.
Our second criteria is to minimize the number of plane flights. It is far more expensive to fly a team than to put them on a bus. The NCAA gives us guidance here. If a team is more than 500 miles from the regional site, they fly, otherwise they are busing it. Don't think that the NCAA would not send a team 490 miles to a regional on a bus. A few years back, the Lynchburg, Virginia Regional was composed of Lynchburg and teams from Indiana, Alabama and Rhode Island. If we have a pairing like Johns Hopkins vs. Bethany Lutheran and UW-Whitewater playing Catholic, it makes sense to swap Bethany Lutheran with Catholic. Currently, we have nine flights in our projected regional matchups. If the NCAA puts up to two teams from the same conference in a four-team regional, we can easily reduce our required flights by a third, more in line what the NCAA has ponied up for in the past.
Our final chore is the select a host. We gave deference to the top seed but not all will be able to host. It all depends on a variety of factors like a qualified ball park and staffing to host.
Here's how we would pair them up from west to east:
Super Regional 1
Trinity (Texas) hosts a regional with Messiah*, Clarement-Mudd-Scripps* and East Texas Baptist.
La Verne hosts a regional with Whitworth, McMurry* and Rhodes*.
Super Regional 2
UW-Whitewater host a regional with Beloit, Buena Vista and Washington Univ.
UW-La Crosse hosts a regional with Bethany Lutheran, Gustavus and Chicago.
Super Regional 3
Denison hosts a regional with Marymount, Penn-State-Harrisburg and Catholic.
Case Western hosts a regional with MSOE, Randolph-Macon and Pomona Pitzer*
Super Regional 4
Lynchburg hosts a regional with Methodist, Maryville and Grove City.
Webster hosts a regional with Huntingdon, Millsaps and Manchester.
Super Regional 5
Kean hosts a regional with Penn State-Behrend, Emory* and RPI
Brockport hosts a regional with Middlebury, Mount Union and Rutgers-Camden.
Super Regional 6
Johns Hopkins hosts a regional with Farmingdale State, Ramapo and Ohio Northern.
Centre hosts a regional with Adrian, Belhaven and North Central.
Super Regional 7
Rowan hosts a regional with Johnson & Wales, Concordia (Texas)* and Baldwin Wallace.
Salisbury hosts a regional with Arcadia, UW-Oshkosh* and Keystone.
Super Regional 8
Endicott hosts a regional with Husson, Oswego and TCNJ
Salve Regina hosts a regional with MASCAC, Cortland and LEC.
* Teams which are flying in the first weekend.
Keep an eye on D3baseball.com for coverage of the bracket reveal on Monday.