Evaluating the Top 20 (DI-Men) - Early Rankings

USAU has released their first set of rankings (note - as time passes this link will update with new rankings). The early rankings are fun and exciting for teams but will of course change as the season progresses.

I have coached every single college season since the 2010 regional redraw and the adoption of the rankings system. I have a pretty good sense of the math and the trends we've seen in the past with these rankings. As such, I'm going to breakdown the top 20 ranked teams and how I think they will change (or not change) as the season progresses. This is NOT how I think they will finish at nationals, this is how I think is how the regular season will play out.

As always, this is my opinion. I'm happy to be proved wrong. I'm happy to be corrected when I have mis-information and I love a good debate.

My bid allocation predictions for the end of the regular season are at the bottom.

The Rankings

1) Pittsburgh (OV) - WILL HOLD - In my Warm Up numbers piece I wrote that I would be shocked to see anyone else at number one and here they are. I don't think they're head and shoulders above the next three teams, but I think they're a top four lock and I wouldn't expect them to end the season anywhere lower than 4th. I think they'll finish semis+ at Stanford.

2) North Carolina (AC) - WILL HOLD - They're pretty clearly the top team in their region. It's hard to see where they stack up within the top four, but I think this is a fair ranking that will hold up through the season. Centex will give a clearer sense if they're vying for the top spot.

3) Minnesota (NC) - WILL HOLD - Minnesota is the team I'm most confident in holding a top four spot. Their head-scratching finals loss to Pitt aside, they have thus far had a truly dominant season and I don't expect that to change. I wouldn't be surprised to see them sneak into the top spot by season's end, but a middling competitive field at Huck Finn for their final tournament may hurt their chances to win the math.

4) Colorado (SC) - LIKELY HOLD - It's Mamabird. They're good. They're always good. They have five guys with semis experience from club nationals. I think they stay top four throughout the season, but I can't take too much away from just President's Day results given the funky conditions and weird format. We'll know a lot more after Stanford.

5) UMass (NE) - LIKELY HOLD -  I honestly can't make a good judgment on Umass as I've haven't played or coached against them since 2008. They dominated the non-UNC competition at QCTU. If they did that without relying on their 1-3-3, then I'd say they're legitimate top 5. If their margins of victory were as such because of the nature of zone early in the season, I'd say they'll drop. This  is largely speculative, I haven't watched the film, so I'd say this is my least confident prediction; we'll see at Centex.

6) Georgia (SE) - LIKELY DROP - I think Georgia is a solid team, but I don't believe they're a top six team. Their wins against Wilmington and a solid NC State team were great, but I think they'll slide a bit back into may the 10-11 range by seasons end. I'm very curious to see how they match up with Washington and Carleton at Stanford. If they win both those games, I'm wrong about the drop.

7) Carleton (NC) - LIKELY RISE -  I think Carleton could end the season in the top five, perhaps supplanting Colorado or UMass. They quietly had one of the best Warm Up performances and I tend to buy into the "north central teams only getting better as the season progresses and the weather at home improves."

8) UNCW (AC) - LIKELY DROP - This seems like a case of a high-ceiling team that struggles to get out of their own way. I don't doubt the talent they can put on the field, I don't think anyone does, but I never feel surprised if they get upset. Their talent will certainly carry the AC to another bid, but I don't think they'll hold top 10. This might be an unfair narrative based largely on a reputation, but until they prove otherwise I'll stick with it.

9) STANFORD (SW) - WILL HOLD - I think Stanford will hold pat right around this ranking. They're solid, deep and unless something crazy happens to SLO and the Southwest's second bid, should return to nationals for the first time since 2011.

10) WASHINGTON (NW) - WILL HOLD - I think Washington could creep up and wouldn't be surprised to see them finish top 8 as El-Salaam gets healthier, but I think 10th best team in the country is a pretty good spot for them. I don't foresee them dropping significantly.

11) Caly Poly-SLO (SW) - WILL HOLD - I love my boys from SLO but I think they're going to hold firm right around 11 throughout the season. They certainly have the raw talent to win any game, but they need to figure out how to more consisently beat teams, like Mamabird, that won't let SLO's big play ability phase them. They will certainly have their opportunities to showcase their growth at Stanford and Easterns.

12) Northeastern (NE) - WILL DROP - Sorry Northeastern but this ranking is unfortunately the product of a bevy of early season wins against a weaker field.  As those teams settle more accurately into their final placements and the early season results begin to decay, I think is a pretty clear-cut drop.

13) Colorado State (SW) - NO OPINION - I have my thoughts certainly, but personal bias is too strong here to put out any public analysis.

14) Wisconsin (NC) - WILL RISE - The Hodags sit next to Mamabird and Carleton as the most consistent college programs, in my opinion, of the past fifteen years. They had better results at Warm Up than their final placement would suggest and they get my benefit of the doubt as I've watched them succeed for 15+ seasons. I expect them pushing up towards the top 10 by season's end, securing three bids for the north central.  All three of the top teams in the NC tend to have the ability to beat each other at any given time. I wouldn't be shocked to see them win the region.

15) Oregon (NW) - WILL RISE - Oregon is too talented to stay here, it's as simple as that. Props to Santa Barbara for their win at President's day, but Oregon is a top 10 team and I think likely finish the season in the 7-9 range.

16) Michigan (GL) - WILL HOLD - I think Michigan will hold pretty close to this spot, maybe dropping down slightly. Depending on how quality V-Tech and NC State end up, those wins may at QCTU may end up being more and more valuable. However, the big losses to the UNC and UNCW suggest Michigan may not be pushing up into that top 10 status quite yet.

17) Carnegie Mellon (OV) - WILL DROP - Another case of great results at an early tournament against a weaker field of competition. This will correct itself as the season progresses and Carnegie will drop.

18) Northwestern (GL) - LIKELY DROP - I wrote about Northwestern at length in my Warm Up piece. They're right on the bid bubble, but I think they're going to slide down. I don't want to base a ton of analysis on a highlight video, but the hospital pass clinic they appeared to put on at Warm Up doesn't provide an argument that they're a team that just needs the opportunity to play against the big programs. Unfortunately, Midwest Throwdown isn't going to give them a chance to prove this wrong.They need to win that tournament reasonably convincingly to hold onto this bid.

19) Central Florida (SE) - LIKELY HOLD - I think the SE is going to get at least another bid from either UCF or FSU.  UCF has had a solid season thus far. I think their win against Carelton says more than their big loss to Wisconsin. I'd be a little leery of their high usage rates for some of their top players, but teams can have success doing this and they won't run into another tournament as grueling as Warm Up this season.

20) BYU (NW) - LIKELY RISE - I think BYU's Warm Up results are more telling about their quality than their middling Santa Barbara results. I don't know how they set their season goals and motivate the team, but I have a lot of respect for their program and dealing with the issues they face. That being said, I expect them to perform well at Centex and push up into the teens. This won't matter as far as bid allocations, but I do think they will climb.

BID PREDICTIONS (who will earn the bids, not necessarily qualify)
          
AC         2 bids up to 3 (Virginia or NC State rises)
GL         2 bids down to 1 (Norwestern or Michigan drops)
ME        1 bid stays at 1 (Auto)
NC         3 bids stay at 3 (Wisc/Carleton/Minn)
NE         2 bids down to 1 (Northeastern drops)
NW        2 bids stay at 2 (Wash/Oregon)
OV         2 bids down to 1 (Carnegie Mellon drops)
SC          2 bids stay at 2 (Colorado/Colorado State)
SE          2 bids up to 3 (Florida *edited* or FSU rises)
SW         2 bids stay at 2 (SLO/Stanford)

I'm pretty confident in these 19 bids staying as they are. There's a floater bid somewhere that could go to the AC, GL, SC or SE. I think how this bid shakes out will likely be the biggest intrigue of the rankings season. If my prediction holds true and BYU moves up from 20th there'll be another round of that controversy.

I'll re-examine this stuff routinely and see how my predictions are holding up.

Thanks for reading.

Warm Up: A Florida Affair - Follow Up: Pool Play Numbers

As per the reddit request I've run some of the numbers JUST for pool play. These are the final standings within the giant pool as per the USAU site. The SoS for pool is simply opponents win %.

Pool Play Numbers

	PP Wins	PP Losses	PP Win %	Opp Win	Opp Loss	Opp Win %	SoS Rank
Minnesota	6	1	0.857	32	18	0.640	1st
Florida	6	1	0.857	20	29	0.408	17th
BYU	6	2	0.750	27	29	0.482	12th
Pitt	6	1	0.857	26	23	0.531	8th
Northwestern	6	1	0.857	17	32	0.347	19th
Texas	5	2	0.714	19	31	0.380	18th
Central Florida	4	3	0.571	24	25	0.490	11th
Texas A&M	4	3	0.571	29	21	0.580	4th
Wisconsin	4	3	0.571	28	22	0.560	6th
Carleton	4	3	0.571	29	20	0.592	3rd
Florida State	3	4	0.429	26	24	0.520	10th
Auburn	3	4	0.429	22	28	0.440	15th
Cornell	3	4	0.429	21	28	0.429	16th
Villanova	2	5	0.286	27	23	0.540	7th
Arkansas	2	5	0.286	28	21	0.571	5th
Brown	1	6	0.143	26	23	0.531	9th
Arizona State	1	6	0.143	22	27	0.449	13th
South Florida	1	6	0.143	22	27	0.449	14th
South Carolina	0	7	0.000	30	20	0.600	2nd

First, it seems that Minnesota's weekend just keeps looking better and better. Their pool play schedule was by far the most challenging. Someone who was there, tell me what the heck happened in the finals?! 

Also it looks like three of the six championship bracket teams had the three easiest pool play schedules. I can't fault the teams for winning the games in front of them, but it's interesting to note, given the atypical format. 

Warm Up: A Florida Affair (M) - By the Numbers

I ran my first "By the Numbers" piece after the Santa Barbara Invite. I believe final placement within a tournament isn't the most accurate indication of the quality of the team overall as upsets, awkward seeding etc, can lead to varying paths to tournament success. I was pretty happy, based on the results at President's Day, that a lot of the numbers analysis from my SBI piece seems to have held up. 

I was also excited to run the numbers for Warm Up because unlike SBI I'm doing this completely blind. I wasn't in attendance; I haven't seen any of these teams play this year with one or two exceptions. This analysis is simply the results. It's not about anecdotal "this person was hurt; this team had a bad game etc," it's simply numbers. 

I've tweaked a few things slightly since my previous piece to make the categories more accurate, but I'm always open to suggestions as I'm largely doing this by the seat of my pants. I have opted to include BYU's results this time around and placed them finishing overall 4th given what I think is a fair final projection for them had they played out Sunday; this makes everyone ranking different from the final placement on USAU. 

Here is the full schedule.

I pulled my numbers late Sunday night so the point differential has likely changed a bit as scores get tweaked for accuracy. 

The Final Standings/Rankings

	Final Placement	Strength of Schedule	Point Differential	+/-
Pitt	1st	4th	1st	+39
Minnesota	2nd	1st	2nd	+25
Northwestern	3rd	14th	6th	+16
BYU	4th	10th	4th	+18
Texas A&M	5th	2nd	11th	-5
Texas	6th	12th	8th	+5
Florida	7th	13th	7th	+13
Carleton	8th	3rd	3rd	+22
Wisconsin	9th	6th	5th	+17
Central Florida	10th	7th	12th	-5
Florida State	11th	5th	10th	-3
Auburn	12th	15th	9th	+1
Arkansas	13th	9th	16th	-16
Cornell	14th	16th	17th	-29
Villanova	15th	11th	14th	-15
Brown	16th	17th	13th	-5
South Carolina	17th	8th	19th	-36
Arizona State	18th	19th	15th	-15
South Florida	19th	18th	18th	-31

Strength of schedule = average opponent win/loss percentage + opponent average final placement

My Takeaways

Northwestern likely isn't as good as their 3rd place finish at a tournament of this caliber would suggest. They had a reasonable point differential but took advantage of an overall easy schedule and a quarter finals match-up against a Texas team that also rode a pretty easy schedule to their final placement. 

Their only losses were to 2nd place finisher Minnesota (twice), but that was by a combined 12 points, and they didn't run into Carleton or Wisconsin, both teams with extremely strong numbers other than final finish. 

Their two signature wins were against Texas in quarters and A&M in the 3rd place game, but Texas had that weak schedule as well and A&M was only in the bracket after replacing BYU. 

I was big on Northwestern two years ago at MLC when they overcame a tough draw in the format for some great results, but didn't get much love because their final placement wasn't spectacular. I'd love to see them continue to have success this year; but for this tournament their numbers unfortunately don't appear to hold up. 

The North Central is deep. Carleton and Wisconsin finished 8th and 9th (7th and 8th technically), but there's no reason to panic. They both had tough schedules and excellent point differential. Carleton even notched a win vs Minnesota. Between those two teams and Minnesota's strong weekend (which I'll get to below), I think that looks like, at the very least, a three bid region. 

Pitt and Minnesota were the best two teams in attendance. Their are no holes in their numbers. They had the top two point differentials and had the fourth and first hardest schedules respectively.

If you take away the loss the Minnesota, Pitt's numbers are actually pretty jaw-dropping. A max score versus Wisconsin and a max score versus Minnesota in the finals are going to be huge as the first round of USAU rankings come out. I'd be shocked to see anyone else at #1. 

Minnesota had some tighter games and the loss to Carleton, but also had, by far, the toughest schedule of any team. The average final placement of their opponents across the weekend was 5th and their average opponent win percentage was just under 70%. The only game on their schedule not consistent with the rest of their numbers was be the finals blow-out vs Pitt. 

What to make of the Texas teams? It's hard to gauge Texas and Texas A&M's success by their numbers. A&M had a brutal schedule (second only to Minnesota) but only made bracket play after BYU dropped. Texas did well in pool play, but it was against weaker competition, then lost in quarters to Northwestern.

A&M just doesn't have consistent numbers. They beat the lower-end teams; got beat handily by the best teams at the tournament, but for whatever reason seem to have a solid Florida team's number and happened to draw them in quarters. 

Texas played well in some close games, with their most impressive win being vs Wisconsin, but then lost 15-10 to Northwestern in quarters, which would be their least consistent result relative to the rest of their weekend.

Based just on the numbers I'd say A&M looks like an inconsistent team with a high ceiling and Texas is likely a middle-of-the-pack solid squad. I have some non-numbers opinions on this, as I know both these teams pretty well, but I'm biting my tongue and sticking to just what the scores tell us. 

There's plenty more analysis to be done, but I'll leave some it up to other's imaginations Thanks for reading and feel free to check out the full numerical values below. 

The Full Numbers

	Finish	Wins	Losses	Win %	Opponents	Opponent Win	Opponent Loss	Opp Win %	Avg Opp Place	+/-
Pitt	1	8	1	0.889	A&M, Wisc, Carleton, USF, FSU, Minn, UCF, A&M, Minn	43.00	38.00	0.531	7.89	+39
Minnesota	2	7	2	0.778	Ark, BYU Carleton, UCF, NuT, Pitt, A&M, Nut, Pitt	57.00	25.00	0.695	5.33	+25
Northwestern	3	8	2	0.800	FSU, Ark, Corn, South C, USF, Minn, Nova, Tex, Minn, A&M	38.00	51.00	0.427	10.40	+16
BYU	4	6	2	0.750	Minn, A&M, Auburn, FSU, Nova, South C, Texas, Wisc	33.00	38.00	0.465	9.63	+18
Texas A&M	5	5	5	0.500	Nova, Pitt, BYU, Auburn, Florida, South C, Minn, Florida, Pitt, NuT	57.00	31.00	0.648	6.90	-5
Texas	6	5	3	0.625	South C, ASU, UCF, Wisc, BYU, Brown, Auburn, NuT	34.00	37.00	0.479	11.13	+5
Florida	7	6	2	0.750	Nova, Brown, Wisc, Ark, A&M, Cornell, Carleton, A&M	33.00	41.00	0.446	10.63	+13
Carleton	8	6	3	0.667	FSU, Minn, Pitt, Auburn, Brown, UCF, Forida, FSU, Wisc	44.00	33.00	0.571	8.78	+22
Wisconsin	9	5	4	0.556	ASU, Pitt, Brown, Florida, Texas, Cornell, BYU, UCF, Carleton	43.00	34.00	0.558	9.33	+17
Central Florida	10	4	4	0.500	South Carolina, Arkansas, Minn, Texas ASU, Carleton, Pitt, Wisco	38.00	33.00	0.535	9.25	-5
Florida State	11	3	5	0.375	NuT, Carleton, Ark, BYU, Pitt, South Florida, ASU, Carleton	41.00	31.00	0.569	9.25	-3
Auburn	12	5	4	0.556	BYU, Brown, Carleton, A&M, South C, Ark, Texas, Nova, Cornell	35.00	45.00	0.438	10.89	+1
Cornell	14	3	6	0.333	ASU, USF, NuT, Nova, Brown, Wisco, Florida, Ark, Auburn	36.00	45.00	0.444	12.44	-29
Arkansas	13	4	5	0.444	Minn, NuT, UCF, FSU, South C, Florida, Auburn, Cornell, Nova	39.00	40.00	0.494	10.11	-16
Villanova	15	2	7	0.222	A&M, Florida, Cornell, BYU, USF, ASU, NuT, Auburn, Ark	40.00	41.00	0.494	10.56	-15
Brown	16	3	6	0.333	Florida, Wisc, Auburn, Cornell, Carleton, Texas, USF, ASU, South C,	34.00	45.00	0.430	12.22	-5
South Carolina	17	1	8	0.111	UCF, Texas, NuT, Ark, BYU, Auburn, A&M, USF, Brown	41.00	39.00	0.513	9.78	-36
Arizona State	18	2	7	0.222	Cornell, Wisc, USF, Texas, UCF, Nova, FSU, Brown, USF	27.00	51.00	0.346	13.22	-15
South Florida	19	1	8	0.111	Cornell, ASU, Pitt, NuT, Nova, FSU, Brown, South C, ASU	32.00	49.00	0.395	12.56	-31