Huge shout out to Cody Mills, algorithm guru, who maintains his rankings site, where us lesser-math-inclined folks get to see more of the depth behind the numbers. *Cody appeared to have made some slight updates between me starting and finishing this entry so some of the exact power values may not be 100% consistent with what's on his site, but no major differences that I can see.
Please note that this entry doesn't take into account any potential voided games that may come through when USAU combs over roster consistency and whatnot.
I'm also assuming that the regionals sizes will be consistent with last year which may not be 100% accurate if the registered teams totals end up great or lesser than in the past.
Also a reminder that these are simply the bids earned for a region or conference, any team can secure a bid with a strong performance in the series.
Section one will be the nationals bid picture and section two will be the regionals bid picture. I won't delve into much depth on the regionals bids as I'm simply not as familiar with a lot of the teams within those conversations. I also assumed B-teams would be playing D1 conference championships which I know isn't always the case.
Nationals Bids
Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 1869.75
Playing For a Bid
NC State (1869.75) and Cal Poly SLO (1888.67) both currently have a bid earned for their respective regions and are both playing at Easterns. However, each team sits precariously close to some of the bubble teams. Luckily for them, those most within striking distance are inactive in the final weekend of the regular season. They are in the driver's seat for their bids. A solid Easterns performance and they will likely hold.
Emory (1826.76) is an intriguing team at 22nd and is playing at Huck Finn. They only have eight games thus far this season and a strong tournament performance could move them into the bid picture - that few games means a lot of their ranking is still to be determined. However, the competition level in St. Louis could hurt them as they need strong point diff to move up. and Huck Finn often comes with equalizing weather, making blowouts hard to come by.
Texas (1776.34) and Georgia Tech (1749.98) are both at Huck Finn as well but would require some significant margins of victory to move up enough to drive past NC State.
Inactive But In The Hunt
BYU (1867.95) and Texas A&M (1832.34) Neither team has a tournament left, but both are with range of a bid if either Slo or NC State has a poor Easterns performance. BYU sits less than 2 points behind NC State for the final strength bid. A&M would need quite a bit of help as it would require both NC State and Slo to have terrible weekends.
Prediction
I think SLO will hold their bid with a strong Easterns performance but NC State drops below BYU adding another healthy dose of debate surrounding the BYU bid and their decision to play Conferences (or not) and hold onto the bid for the Northwest (or not).
Regionals Bids
Atlantic Coast (16 team regionals)
Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 1092.35
Great Lakes (12 team regionals)
Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 1188
*Doesn't have 10 games and I'm not sure if they're active this final weekend. The bid would move to Ball State in the East Plains if they don't get their 10 games in.
Metro East (16 team regionals)*
Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: -17.91
*There are a lot of teams with only a few games and several tournaments still to play. This is the most volatile region as far as where the bids will land.
New England (16 team regionals)*
Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: -94.56
*The region is a mess - too much to sort through not knowing the geography better, sorry.
North Central (12 team regionals)
Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 959.58
Northwest (10 team regionals)
Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 1000.09
Ohio Valley (16 team regionals)
Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 814.35
South Central (16 team regionals)
Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 1125.44
Southeast (16 team regionals)
Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 1106.72
Southwest (16 team regionals)
Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 1188.14
I have ME being a 12 team regional for D1. I see 29 DI+Dev teams. Do you see otherwise?
ReplyDeleteHonestly didn't have the time delve into the specifics on size for each region so I went with last year's regionals size, which was 16.
DeleteNo problem! I was just looking over the roster log and was getting 12 myself. Wanted to know if you saw something I was missing!
DeleteOn the Great Lakes side, Michigan B was active this weekend at B-team Brodown (see https://play.usaultimate.org/teams/events/Eventteam/?TeamId=3xg3ezW9p%2bjlwFpwtRNzRssbiuotpSGw6JHuyTp9GMw%3d ) and has hit 10 games, so this is probably a case of the TD updating scores after Cody scraped data to run his algorthim.
ReplyDeleteGreat Lakes could get to 16 team regionals this year - last year was 29 registered teams for sectionals, and there are four teams that are strong maybes, as well as a couple Illinois schools that are within a hundred students of the D1/D3 cutoff. Here's hoping.