FINALIZED 2017 Bracketology (11/26)

[trojansc]

The nitty gritty will come out probably tomorrow.

High Point beat Georgia, Radford(x2), and Navy. That's it for Top 100 victories. They even had a sub-100 loss to UNC Greensboro.

[ZenScout]

Nov 26, 2017 21:35:22 GMT -5 ilalum92 said:

So is Illinois the team traveling the farthest for the 1st round. Champaign to Washington is a long flight. Hawaii to Washington too.. both teams might be a little jet lagged so it evens out?

DC out to Provo is a pretty big one as well for American.

[redbeard2008]

LIU-Brooklyn to Seattle.

[usvballfan]

Does the committee actually watch the games? I don't think so. This is probably the worst I've seen in the past 10 years. It's all about money......oh no, my bad. Nebraska didn't get the nod. Not about money. About the weakest team in the national getting two top seeds. Joke

[brybast]

One good thing to come out of this bracket is that we can finally put to bed the myth that the seedings are influenced by geography.

The committee could have saved a bunch of flights if it had only seeded Utah or BYU but not both.
They could have also saved flights by not seeding UCLA, sending San Diego and Cal Poly to USC.

[trojansc]

Nov 26, 2017 23:04:10 GMT -5 brybast said:

One good thing to come out of this bracket is that we can finally put to bed the myth that the seedings are influenced by geography.

The committee could have saved a bunch of flights if it had only seeded Utah or BYU but not both.
They could have also saved flights by not seeding UCLA, sending San Diego and Cal Poly to USC.

I don't know, it seems to me like seeding Wichita State instead of Cal Poly might have had something to do with geography. Cal Poly beat Wichita State H2H on a neutral court. Both had a top-25 win, but CP had more top 50 wins....

[brybast]

Nov 26, 2017 23:16:08 GMT -5 trojansc said:

Nov 26, 2017 23:04:10 GMT -5 brybast said:

One good thing to come out of this bracket is that we can finally put to bed the myth that the seedings are influenced by geography.

The committee could have saved a bunch of flights if it had only seeded Utah or BYU but not both.
They could have also saved flights by not seeding UCLA, sending San Diego and Cal Poly to USC.

I don't know, it seems to me like seeding Wichita State instead of Cal Poly might have had something to do with geography. Cal Poly beat Wichita State H2H on a neutral court. Both had a top-25 win, but CP had more top 50 wins....

This committee was all about RPI. Wichita State 14 > Cal Poly 16

UCLA at 17 was the only team outside RPI top 16 to get a seed. And they are .0001 behind Cal Poly in Figstats

If geography were an overriding concern there's no way UCLA would've been seeded.

[kahusancali]

Nov 26, 2017 22:46:11 GMT -5 ZenScout said:

Nov 26, 2017 21:35:22 GMT -5 ilalum92 said:

So is Illinois the team traveling the farthest for the 1st round. Champaign to Washington is a long flight. Hawaii to Washington too.. both teams might be a little jet lagged so it evens out?

DC out to Provo is a pretty big one as well for American.

Looks like there's no nonstop flight from Champaign to Seattle. The team probably has to fly to ORD or DFW then nonstop flight to SeaTac.

[trojansc]

Here is what Dave Shondell wrote to Steve Aird on Twitter:

"Those who compete in this league understand the level of your team and the value of our league. Someday, the committee will have the confidence and expertise to look beyond a number based on a formula. I have walked in your shoes. You will get to that dance, very soon, very soon."



This was Steve Aird's original post:

"My beautiful 7 year old daughter MJ was in full tears. We were not good enough to make the tourney. And I got to teach her that the beauty is never in the result, but the journey. And for that...I am forever grateful. #TerpsRising"

[kahusancali]

Nov 26, 2017 21:35:22 GMT -5 ilalum92 said:

So is Illinois the team traveling the farthest for the 1st round. Champaign to Washington is a long flight. Hawaii to Washington too.. both teams might be a little jet lagged so it evens out?

Yep both teams are traveling 2k miles.
Per mapquest, Champaign to Seattle is 2,095 miles.
Honolulu to Seattle is 2,678 miles.

[usvballfan]

Whether it's right or wrong on the final rankings/seeds -- save your breathe and don't release the "mid-term" bracket/ranking. What a bunch of garage...I still don't understand the motive. Makes the committee look stupid.

[jaypak]

Nov 26, 2017 21:38:04 GMT -5 trojansc said:

Nov 26, 2017 21:36:17 GMT -5 notwvb said:

That's part of the problem here. Decision makers (committee) should STOP just looking at numbers and actually watch a match or two and use some common sense.   Also, CofC is always in the NCAA tourney and got waxed, swept in its conf tourney this year; one shiny win not enough with lame SOS - it deserved to watch it this year as well.  Want to grow the game?  Fresh faces in the tourney, when merited like MD and Iowa this year, would help.

North Texas, Iowa, and Maryland were all WAY more deserving than High Point, and slightly more deserving than LSU.

North Texas was totally hosed.  No problem with LSU.  As for the other three:

Winning % vs Top 100
High Point  .400
Iowa          .348
Maryland    .300

[trojansc]

Nov 26, 2017 23:51:51 GMT -5 jaypak said:

Nov 26, 2017 21:38:04 GMT -5 trojansc said:

North Texas, Iowa, and Maryland were all WAY more deserving than High Point, and slightly more deserving than LSU.

North Texas was totally hosed.  No problem with LSU.  As for the other three:

Winning % vs Top 100
High Point  .400
Iowa          .348
Maryland    .300

High Point Winning % vs. Top 50 = .000

It's really great that High Point went 4-2 vs. 51-100. High Point won four games in the top 100. All four were 51-100... But look at Maryland. Maryland won two games 1-25, and one game 26-50. That's three top 50 wins vs. 0 for High Point. Maryland also didn't lose to a team with an RPI of worse than 44. High Point lost to THREE teams with an RPI of 50 or worse, and 1 team with an RPI of 100 or worse.

[n00b]

Nov 26, 2017 23:29:30 GMT -5 trojansc said:

Here is what Dave Shondell wrote to Steve Aird on Twitter:

"Those who compete in this league understand the level of your team and the value of our league. Someday, the committee will have the confidence and expertise to look beyond a number based on a formula. I have walked in your shoes. You will get to that dance, very soon, very soon."



This was Steve Aird's original post:

"My beautiful 7 year old daughter MJ was in full tears. We were not good enough to make the tourney. And I got to teach her that the beauty is never in the result, but the journey. And for that...I am forever grateful. #TerpsRising"

Shodell is a piece of work. He was a cry baby when Purdue got left out a few years ago too. Maryland was a 50/50 proposition no matter how you looked at it. Straight RPI - not good enough. Straight Pablo - not good enough. Using all of the criteria - trojansc had the Terps as the last in and the committee had them as the first out.

Look beyond the formula to the eye test? Well, it really depends on what match you saw and that's the issue with the eye test. I watched them play once this year and I thought they looked terrible against Ohio State. Their setters were MISERABLE. Of course Shondell is pumping them up because he got beat by them. How about that match where TOLEDO took them 5? Probably didn't look so great. Or losing -11, -15, -16 to Nebraska? I think those scores are a reasonable goal for Stony Brook on Friday.

Maryland getting left out is not the issue with this committee. It's putting High Point in.

[badgerbreath]

Maryland and Iowa are without a doubt better than High Point. Haven't seen North Texas, so can't say about them, but picking High Point is just a mistake IMO.