Monday, March 26, 2018

The D1 Regionals and Nationals men's bid picture with one week left!

With one week left, the bid picture for both regionals and nationals is anything but finalized. There are quite a few teams that will be in action this weekend and there are some intriguing teams that are right on the bubble of earning nationals or regionals bids for their respective regionals and conferences.

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


RegionAuto-BidEarning TeamStrength BidsEarning TeamTotal
Atlantic Coast1UNC3Virginia Tech, UNCW, NCState4
Great Lakes1Illinois01
Metro East1Connecticut01
New England1Brown1Umass2
North Central1Carleton2Minnesota, Wisconsin3
Northwest1Oregon1Washington2
Ohio Valley1Pitt01
South Central1Colorado State1Colorado2
Southeast1Georgia1Florida2
Southwest1Stanford1Cal Poly SLO2
Total Bids20

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


ConferenceAuto-BidEarning TeamStrength BidsLast InTotal
Carolina1UNC7Appalachian State8
Colonial1Maryland2Delaware3
Virginia1V Tech4George Mason5
Total Bids16

Great Lakes (12 team regionals) 

Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 1188


ConferenceAuto-BidEarning TeamStrength BidsLast InTotal
East Plains1Notre Dame3Indiana4
Illinois1Illinois3Chicago4
Michigan1Michigan3Michigan B*4
Total Bids12


*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


ConferenceAuto-BidEarning TeamStrength BidLast InTotal
Hudson Valley1Connecticut2Yale3
Metro NY1Rutgers6Hofstra7
Western NY1Cornell5SUNY-Buffalo6
Total Bids16

*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

ConferenceAuto-BidEarning TeamStrength BidsLast InTotal
Lake Superior1Wisconsin4Wisc-Whitewater5
Northwoods1Carleton3Minnesota-Duluth4
West Plains1Iowa2Nebraska3
Total Bids12


Northwest (10 team regionals)

Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 1000.09


ConferenceAuto-BidEarning TeamStrength BidsLast InTotal
Big Sky1BYU3Montana State4
Cascadia1Oregon5Oregon State6
Total Bids10


Ohio Valley (16 team regionals)

Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 814.35


ConferenceAuto-BidEarning TeamStrength BidsLast InTotal
East Penn1Temple4Drexel5
Ohio 1Ohio State6Miami-Ohio7
West Penn1Pitt3Pitt-B4
Total Bids16


South Central (16 team regionals)

Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 1125.44


ConferenceAuto-BidEarning TeamStrength BidsLast InTotal
North Texas1Texas-Dallas3North Texas4
Ozarks1Kansas4Missouri State5
Rocky Mountain1Colorado State3Colorado-B4
South Texas1Texas A&M2Texas State3
Total Bids16


Southeast (16 team regionals)

Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 1106.72


ConferenceAuto-BidEarning TeamStrength BidsLast InTotal
Florida1Florida2Florida State3
Gulf Coast1LSU6Vanderbilt7
Southern App.1Georgia5Tennessee6
Total Bids16

Southwest (16 team regionals)

Current Strength Bid Ranking Value Cutoff: 1188.14


ConferenceAuto-BidEarning TeamStrength BidsLast InTotal
Desert1Nor. Arizona2Arizona State3
Norcal1Stanford6Nevada - Reno7
Socal1Cal Poly SLO5UCSD6
Total Bids16

4 comments:

  1. I have ME being a 12 team regional for D1. I see 29 DI+Dev teams. Do you see otherwise?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Honestly 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.

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    2. No problem! I was just looking over the roster log and was getting 12 myself. Wanted to know if you saw something I was missing!

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  2. On 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.

    Great 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.

    ReplyDelete