(04-30-2018, 04:31 PM)2006alum Wrote: Thanks for all this, CoTree! Very helpful context for a team we've all loved following the past few post-seasons.
Am I mistaken, or does this website not provide a pretty good estimate of our likely ranking: http://collegetennisranks.com/rankings/current/d1w
Seems like if their projected ranking is right, we moved up one spot to 15th and UCLA down one to 14th, but not much movement overall. Seems silly since the top teams lost to more and far worse teams than we did, but you've been saying that all season..
What a delightful website that is! I had no idea it existed, but it seems to be taking the algorithm that the ITA uses (which is explained on the ITA website, so no reason why someone couldn't duplicate it) and inputting the most recent data. The one flaw is usually that we only know the top 50 teams in each set of public rankings, so while I could do the math to see what Stanford would gain from the most recent wins over ranked teams, I wouldn't know the data for the remaining teams. But this website seems to have a pretty good method of inferring that data. (The full ranking set each week is available to coaches, so perhaps the person behind the website has a connection to someone on a NCAA staff.)
Looks right, though. The more resources, the better, I say.
(04-30-2018, 04:56 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote: If the pairings were made strictly on rankings, the 15 seed would open vs. the 50 seed. That would pit Stanford vs. U.SC or C.al.
Does the tournament committee try to avoid conference matchups in the 1st two rounds? Or would they do that in the interest of minimizing travel? Looking back through Stanford's NCAA history, the most recent conference opponent I see in the Round of 64 or 32 was vs. Arizona in 2006.
I think some effort is made to avoid conference matchups in the regional pods. Last year, there were 7 Pac-12 teams, and even though it would have been more convenient to have one or more of those teams come to Stanford, some got shipped across the country instead. It would make sense either way, but it appears they usually go the "avoiding conference matchups" route rather than the "minimizing travel expense" route. (That said, if Pepperdine is a national seed, you can pretty much guarantee that a Pac-12 team will be in their pod, so there is some distance consideration there. And if Pepperdine isn't a national seed, you can pretty much guarantee they'll be at a California-based regional pod. I think they try and keep the automatic qualifiers from lesser conferences as close to home as possible, too, since those schools generally have lower athletic budgets.)
Once you have your top 16 national seeds, everyone else is broken down by tier, with a group of 17-32 seeds, 33-48 seeds, and 49-64 seeds. That said, if you're the #15 seed, you're unlikely to get the 32nd ranked team, as the committee still likes to get someone from the higher portion of that tier. If the seeds hold, though, and all make it to the Round of 16, it will look exactly like a NCAA basketball regional, as 1 plays 16, 8 plays 9, etc. So the play in the joints is limited to the first couple of rounds in the regional pods.
Last year, for example, Stanford was a 7 seed, played an automatic qualifier (Idaho) in the first round, then got #27 TCU in the second round, then #10 Michigan. Pretty close. The year before, Stanford was a 15 seed, and played #19 Texas A&M in the second round, then #2 Florida in the Round of 16. Before that, Stanford was the 14, and played #19 Pepperdine in the second round. (There's that distance consideration.) The year before, Stanford was the 11 and would have played #21 Tulsa in the second round, but #53 Long Beach State upset Tulsa.
Long story short (too late): it generally sticks
pretty close to the final rankings, but it's not exact, and the committee tries to both (1) avoid conference matchups in the opening pod, and (2) minimize travel expenses/distances for the smaller schools.
(04-30-2018, 05:05 PM)BostonCard Wrote: If I am reading it correctly, the red line represents the end of the at-large bids so USC and Cal (as well as Washington and Washington State) would not get a bid because of automatic qualifiers below them. The 50th team that would be included in the tournament (by virtue of winning their conference) is #89 Fresno State; the 51st "seed" team would be #94 McNassee state.
Assuming that is correct, and barring upsets, we would expect to see #18 Kansas in the second round, and, if we get by them, #2 Vanderbilt in the sweet sixteen. I'm sure Vandi would have rather played Pepperdine, Northwestern, UCLA, or Miami than us. If we "upset" Vandi, and other seeds hold, we'd get to play #7 Georgia, followed by #3 Duke in the semi-final and #1 North Carolina in the final. But a lot has to happen between now and then.
BC
This would be a bloodbath for the Pac-12. UW and Wazzu are the first two schools on the wrong side of the cutline, and USC and Cal also missing out at 50 and 51, respectively.
You'd have Stanford and UCLA as national seeds (and thus, regional 1 seeds, just like a baseball regional). Oregon would be the top 3 seed, and ASU would also be a 3. And that's it. 7 teams last year, 4 this year.
Wazzu has to be furious (21-7 not making it from a major conference?), but again, that non-conference schedule is
so, so bad. If they'd just beaten UW on the final day of the regular season, that's enough to get them in. If UW hadn't lost at home to Oregon, they're probably in. It's a long season, and a lot of things you can point to that would have been enough to get a team in, but ultimately, the fact that Cal and USC were down this year kind of dragged everyone down. Not only did Cal and USC not make it in themselves, but wins over them counted for less and losses to them counted against you more. If Cal isn't a train wreck this year, then not only are
they in, but UW and Wazzu are both in based on the strength of their wins over Cal.
And you might be interested to see that Arkansas looks to comfortably be in the field as the last 2 seed, and could match up against Oregon in the first round if they stick closely to rankings. For those of you in the Arkansas-didn't-deserve-to-make-it crowd, Oregon might have a chance to make sure their stay isn't a long one. But now that we know that UW is likely the first team out, and Wazzu the second team out, does that change anyone's opinions on the propriety of the six-match stunt Arkansas pulled? It doesn't for me--Arkansas still beat way better teams than either of them and played a far tougher schedule. And I don't think there is sweet, sweet TV money to be split among conference members for making the tournament--this is tennis, after all.
