The System and the Whims of the NCAA

The historic ride for the women's basketball team at North Central continued this weekend at Wheaton... but is there more to come?

I followed along with the action as much as I could this weekend, doing a bunch of stat watching of the Elmhurst win and then again in the third loss of the year to Wheaton. From what I saw though, the Cardinals gave the Thunder hell. Wheaton truly had to earn their automatic bid. They're also unbeaten at home, which has to count for something.

So with the Thunder getting the CCIW's automatic bid, the question now becomes: will North Central get one of the 20 at-large bids?

I've been looking historically for the past few weeks into at large probabilities, including in looking at the most recent regional rankings. The NCAA reranks everyone one more time this season, but the public doesn't get to see that set. In the last public one though, North Central ranked third in the Central region, behind now auto-bid earners Wheaton and Washington (Missouri). That's my starting point for checking into at-large bids.

The first point we need to find out is who all earned the auto-bids. I checked the final public regional rankings and crossed off all the teams who are already in just to eliminate some possibilities. By region, here are the rankings that have locked up their bids.

• Atlantic: 1 (Montclair St.), 2 (FDU-Florham), 3 (Cabrini), 6 (Baruch)
• Central: 1 (Wheaton), 2 (Washington (Mo)), 4 (St. Norbert), 5 (Wisconsin Lutheran), 8 (Spalding), either 7 (UW-Oshkosh) or 9 (UW-Superior)
• East: 1 (Geneseo St), 5 (St. John Fisher)
• Great Lakes: 1 (Thomas More), 2 (Calvin), 9 (Baldwin Wallace); 5 (Transylvania) plays for the HCAC title today
• Mid-Atlantic: 2 (Salisbury), 3 (Stevenson), 5 (Muhlenburg)
• Northeast: Either 1 (Tufts) or 3 (Bowdoin), 5 (University of New England), 12 (Castleton St); 10 (Eastern Connecticut) plays for the LEC title today
• South: 5 (Texas-Dallas); 6 (Trinity (TX)), 7 (Lynchburg) and 9 (Millsaps) play for their respective conference titles today
• West: 1 (George Fox), 2 (St. Thomas), 4 (Claremont- Mudd Scripps), 6 (Luther)

Looking at my notes now, the following regionally ranked schools all made their conference title games, and are thus in pretty good shape for an at-large bid:

• Atlantic: 4 (Richard Stockton), 5 (Eastern), 7 (Brooklyn)
• Central: 3 (North Central), 6 (Chicago)*, either 7 (UW-Oshkosh) or 9 (UW-Superior)
• East: 3 (Ithaca), 6 (Cortland St), 7 (St. Lawrence)
• Great Lakes: 6 (Hope), 8 (St. Vincent)
• Mid-Atlantic:1 (Scranton), 4 (McDaniel), 6 (Albright)
• Northeast:Either 1 (Tufts) or 3 (Bowdoin), 6 (Westfield St),
• South: 1 (Texas-Tyler), 3 (Maryville (TN))
• West: 3 (Puget Sound), 7 (Bethel)

*Chicago plays in the UAA, which does not do a postseason tournament, but they tied Washington (Mo) in conference record, losing the head-to-head tiebreaker.

Tentatively, if the regionally ranked teams all win (save one of the UW schools and one of the NESCAC schools because they play each other), the NCAA could fill in the field with all the regionally ranked runners-up because there are 20 of them. However, because strength of schedule also matters, I want to look at that and see of the regionally ranked teams, where North Central lies.

Because of tournament play, pretty much everyone who made the postseason got a bump in this metric. North Central is all the way up to 28th now, which puts the Cardinals in fantastic shape. Right now, five of those runner-up teams listed above (technically more, but again, auto bids need to be taken into account) will rank ahead of North Central in that metric. There are also a few other teams who are regionally ranked ahead of the Cardinals as well, but not so many that there's much of a danger. Even if we're just factoring in regional rankings, there are only a couple 1 seeds that were runners-up (with potential for one more), and a few higher-seeded teams got bumped off early.

Long story short, at this point, it would take all the regionally ranked teams playing for titles today (save the aforementioned exceptions) losing to throw the bubble into a little chaos, plus some weird crap going on behind closed doors to knock the Cardinals out of the picture. Even on the conference tournaments page over at D3hoops, they think North Central should be okay. That brings us, again, to location.

I'm still holding out hope that Merner will get to host the first and second rounds, but I really don't know how likely it is. Some of this will depend on that secret regional ranking; North Central could fall to fourth on that secret ballot behind St. Norbert, who won their conference. There's still a likelihood as well of Wheaton getting hosting privileges, and Washington also has a good chance.

I went back to last year's bracket and did some research into how they filled the field in terms of not matching up conferences as best as they could. Overall, they did everything they could to keep things separate, especially out east, where I found no evidence of any intra-conference matchups until the Sweet 16. Things weren't so easy further west; in the Midwest there was potential for a second round matchup between conference rivals in St. Thomas and Concordia-Moorhead (which was thwarted by Whitewater), but it was tougher out west, where one group of four teams was filled with three members of the Northwest Conference. Obviously due to geography, there wasn't much that could be done there, but it bodes reasonably well for the Cardinals in that it puts off a potential fourth matchup with the Thunder until later in the tournament.

Ultimately, I do doubt I get to go back to Merner for three more games. There's too much power in the Central, and while because of the above paragraph I doubt North Central gets grouped with Wheaton, you still have Washington and Great Lakes conference champions in Calvin (who has a good shot of not leaving their campus at all the next three weeks since they host the Final Four) and Thomas More in Minnesota. That's a lot of strength pulling on a great Cardinal team that fell just short yesterday.

All of this said... there might be enough teams elsewhere in the field to fill some of these other sites. Wisconsin will have three teams, Minnesota will end up with at least a couple, Iowa has one, Ohio will have some pull, and then there's Washington (Missouri)... at this point, I have a feeling that's where North Central will end up. They'd end up avoiding the Bears until Round 2 I think, but it then becomes a question of who else heads down there, which is tough. Luther would probably go, but I don't know who the fourth team would be... maybe Bethel if they make the tournament, or one of the Wisconsin conference champions.

Of course, this is all just speculation, though it's speculation based on last year's history and some geographical common sense. Tomorrow at 1:30pm Central time, the NCAA's website will air the 2015 Tournament Selection Show. We'll find out then what the fate of this team is. From there, COAS will then either have a grouping preview for those first two rounds, or (and this is an extreme what-if that probably won't happen) an angry diatribe on the evil NCAA screwing over a deserving team.