North Central and the NCAA Regional Rankings: Week 3 Edition

Happy Championship Week! Conference tournaments are underway across the D-III landscape, and with tournament fates hanging in the balance... let's take one final look at the regional rankings.

With the NCAA Tournament field getting revealed on Monday, this set of rankings is arguably the most important. Last week's introduced the results against regionally ranked opponents criteria, and any team ranked this week will, for the purpose of that metric, remain regionally ranked even if they don't appear in the final set.

With word in from the regional advisory committees, let's have a look.

2020 CCIW Men's Basketball Tournament Preview

The women's tournament preview is in the books. Let's move onto the men.

This is one I'm more able to write about, as I didn't get to see a ton of women's games this season (though I still tried to follow as best I could). For the men though, I saw every home game and chunks of many road games, and this is maybe the most excited I've been for a conference tournament in a long time.

Of course, there's a reason for that as we go into the second year with the six team format. As with the women, the top two teams get byes to the weekend, while the higher seeds host the play in games on Tuesday.

2020 CCIW Women's Basketball Tournament Preview

I'm trying to get these out a little earlier this year. For one thing, North Central is playing Tuesday, so I need to preview that. For another... the fact that this is now a six team tournament means I want to get with the program a little quicker.

This is actually the second year that the CCIW has used the expanded tournament; in prior years this was a four-team affair, but the six team group gives more teams a chance not only for an automatic bid, but also to bolster their resumes for at large selection into the NCAA Tournament.

So below I'm going to preview the entire CCIW Tournament field. I'm only putting the weekend site on here; the weekend part of the tournament hasn't changed in that the conference champion hosts the semifinals and finals, but the past couple years the Tuesday play-in games have had higher seeds host.

One More to Go: A CCIW Update

The regular season concludes tomorrow for the CCIW... which means we have to look at how the CCIW Tournament races are shaping up.

This is an annual feature for me where I look at all the different clinching scenarios. Earlier this week I had thought about trying to crunch numbers with two games to go for odds of each team getting certain tournament seeds. The math proved to be a little too much for me, but I will include the numbers here now that there's just one game to go and the math becomes much more simple.

As usual, a lot of the tournament spots have been claimed already, but seeding is all still well up for grabs. I consider it the advantage in Year Two of having a six team tournament instead of only four. Let's have a look.

Game Notes: (MBK) Carthage College @ North Central College (2/19/20)

Final Score
NCC 70, Carthage 69

Game Summary
After surrendering a basket on the opening possession, the Belt^TM-wielding Cardinals (20-4, 13-2) scored the next eight, including two threes in four seconds thanks to a dumb turnover. But the Red Men (15-9, 7-8) got right back into it and turned this into a back and forth affair. Carthage would lead by as many as five before taking a 35-33 advantage with a minute to go in the half, and carried that into intermission. After trading a couple baskets to open the second half, the Red Men began to assert control, scoring six straight to open up a 45-37 advantage and forcing a Cardinal timeout. North Central tried to cut into the deficit, but Carthage pushed it as high as 11, going up 55-44 with about nine and a half to play. An 8-0 Cardinal run made it a game again, but Carthage scored seven of the next nine to push the lead back to eight. Seemingly, the Red Men had an answer for every late Cardinal push, as they led by six with just 25 seconds to play. But a three pointer cut the deficit in half with 14 seconds to go, the Red Men split a pair of free throws with 11 ticks left, then committed a foul on another three with just 4.3 seconds left. The Cardinals hit all three to pull within one, intentionally fouled with 3.7 left, and Carthage missed the front end of the one-and-one, allowing the Cardinals to call timeout with three ticks left. Out of the timeout, a baseball pass across halfcourt was intercepted by two Carthage guys, but a travel with 1.6 left gave the Cardinals new life. They opted for a lob play... but drew a foul with 0.9 left, and hit both free throws to steal victory from the jaws of defeat, successfully defend The Belt^TM, and clinch the outright CCIW title.

Key Players

• Aiden Chang (NCC): 4-5 FG (3-4 3PT), 5-5 FT; 16 pts, 2 reb (1 off), 3 ast. As far as offense is concerned, Aiden is a complementary piece, but he really stepped up last night, especially late. He scored 14 of his 16 in the second half, and saved some heroics for the very end. He hit the three with 14 seconds left to make it a 68-65 game, then was fouled on the three attempt with 4.3 seconds left, calmly draining all three to make it a one point game and set up that ridiculous ending.
• Matt Cappelletti (NCC): 5-11 FG (1-4 3PT), 3-4 FT; 14 pts, 8 reb (2 off), 2 ast. It wasn't necessarily the greatest shooting night for Cap, who seemingly adjusted his shooting stroke for a much higher arcing shot. He was able to help keep the Cardinals in the game though with decent rebounding and hit some key baskets, but none bigger than on North Central's final possession. After his baseball pass was picked off and the Carthage travel gave them another chance, the Cardinals dialed up a lob to Cap, who caught it on the far elbow and tried to turn and go up with it... but was bumped, putting the Cardinals into the double bonus. Cap proceeded to calmly hit both free throws to turn a one point deficit into a one point lead, winning the game.
• Fillip Bulatovic (CAR): 7-12 FG (1-4 3PT), 0-2 FT; 15 pts, 5 reb, 1 ast, 1 stl. I found myself cursing Bulatovic as the game was winding down. Coming off the bench, he had seven in the first half, including his lone three, while all four of his field goals in the second half came at clutch moments in the final seven minutes. His last two especially seemed like daggers; he found himself open under the hoop and converted to push the Red Men lead to six on both. But at the end, he ended up wearing goat horns, committing the foul on Cappelletti (his fifth of the game) to put him at the line for the game-winning free throws.

Key Stats

• NCC: 14-17 FT (82.4%). North Central shot pretty well for the game (47.1% from the field, 34.8% from deep), but weren't on track at the line early, missing both of their first half attempts. But they were money in the second half. Connor Raridon went a perfect six-for-six, Aiden Chang hit all five of his, including the three crucial ones with 4.3 seconds left, and despite having the one miss earlier in the second half, Cap had ice in his veins as he hit the two that stole the game with 0.9 to play.
• CAR: 16 second chance points. The Red Men have a bunch of freaking giants; 6'11 centers Sean Johnson and Brad Perry combined for 11 rebounds in this one, including five on the offensive glass. Carthage had an 11-2 advantage in second chance points at the intermission, and as time was winding down I knew I was going to highlight this as a key stat. But for the game, Carthage only outrebounded the Cardinals by one (despite having 11 total offensive boards), and their 11 point advantage on second chance opportunities went to waste.

CCIW Scoreboard Watch

• IWU 94 (16-8, 10-5), @ NPU 92 (4-20, 2-13) (OT)
• @ ELM 62 (20-5, 11-5), CRL 59 (11-13, 4-11)
• Elmhurst clinches a home game in the CCIW Quarterfinals
• @ WHE 68 (15-9, 9-6), MIL 53 (4-20, 1-14)
• BYE- AUG (17-7, 11-4)
• WBK: @ IWU 90 (16-8, 10-5), NCC 63 (11-13, 7-8)
• Illinois Wesleyan clinches a home game in the CCIW Quarterfinals
• WBK: ELM 75 (10-15, 5-11), @ CAR 73 (11-13, 6-9)
• WBK: @ MIL 82 (16-8, 9-6), NPU 68 (17-7, 10-5)
• Millikin clinches a home game in the CCIW Quarterfinals
• WBK: WHE 71 (18-6, 11-4), @ CRL 54 (8-16, 3-12)
• Wheaton clinches hosting the CCIW Tournament
• WBK: Bye- AUG (12-12, 7-8)

Final Thoughts

I mentioned last year that North Central's win over then-#1 Augustana was the biggest win I've ever seen in person. I think that title is safe, but in terms of the drama... this one is probably going to be pretty high on the list. We called this The Miracle on Brainard Street in the immediate aftermath of the game last night, because, let's be honest: North Central had no business winning this game. Down six with 25 seconds to go, and down four with four seconds to go, your win expectancy has to be less than one percent. But the Cardinals got the breaks they needed and took advantage of them to steal a huge win. The only CCIW prize they were playing for was the outright title, which I'm glad we got to celebrate in front of a home crowd. Otherwise, it's trying to keep yourself in a good position in a chaotic Central Region to try and stay in solid position just in case you need a Pool C bid for the NCAA Tournament. I think the Cardinals are pretty safe, but pulling out this win gives you a little insurance.

The Cardinals close out the regular season on Saturday at Wheaton, who will be trying to get a home game on Tuesday. I'll go over full clinching scenarios later today or tomorrow for both the men's and women's CCIW Tournaments, because there's still a lot up for grabs with one to go.

North Central and the NCAA Regional Rankings: Week 2 Edition

It's a Wednesday in February, which means it's time to take a look at the NCAA regional rankings once again!

This will be the second set of rankings for this season; last weeks rankings, plus a primer on how this all works, is here. The biggest difference between last week's rankings and this week's is that we finally bring in the results against regionally ranked opponents criterion. It's an extra data point, and a fairly critical one that can make a huge difference compared to where we were last week.

So now that the regional advisory committees have spoken, let's take a look at the Central region on both the men's and women's sides and see where North Central stacks up.

North Central and the NCAA Regional Rankings: Week 1 Edition

It's a little hard to pinpoint exactly what part of basketball season is my favorite. There's something to be said about the anticipation of a new season in November, but I think a good argument can be made for February. You have a lot of conference races heating up, and at the Division III level, the regional rankings start coming out.

I know I've touched on how these rankings work in years past, now that I fully understand them, but before I delve into them now that the first batch of the year is out, I want to go in depth on how they work so that we fully understand what we're looking at. Every February, the NCAA starts releasing these on a weekly basis on three consecutive Wednesdays leading up to Selection Monday. A fourth and final set gets released after the bracket is out.

First off, throw out the Top 25 poll, because it means nothing when it comes to these rankings. For all intents and purposes, throw out the conference standings as well. The committees that set up these rankings don't use them, so you may see a second place team from a conference top a leader in these. It's perfectly normal.

Instead, each of the country's eight regions as broken up by the NCAA has an advisory committee, with representatives from every conference. These eight committees each have a chair who sits on the national selection committee. Interestingly enough, right now the Central region men's committee, which includes North Central, is chaired by Wheaton head coach Mike Schauer. Basically, what this means is if Wheaton is in consideration for either regional rankings or national tournament selection, he cannot be part of the conversation for obvious reasons. Todd Raridon sits on the Central region advisory committee, so obviously he won't be part of the discussion when NCC gets talked about, but he will help craft what the Central region looks like.

So when the committees go to rank teams, they do it based on a set of criteria:

• Win percentage. This is a given. Officially though, it's win percentage against Division III teams. In the past North Central has played NAIA Robert Morris of Chicago, and that game doesn't count for this metric. Generally, getting to your conference tournament with a 17-8 record (a .680 win percentage) will at least get you in the conversation.
• Strength of schedule. It's good to win a ton of games, but just how good are you? At the D-III level, the NCAA takes your opponents' winning percentage and your opponents' opponents' winning percentage, factors in a multiplier for home and road games, then combines them (two-thirds OWP, one-third OOWP). This number will be rounded to three decimal places, and, except in cases of outliers, will range probably between about 0.480 and 0.620. The "Mendoza Line" for this would probably be around 0.530. Teams with a higher winning percentage can generally get away with a lower strength of schedule, while more losses to a higher strength of schedule can be forgiven.
• Head to head results/results versus common opponents. Officially, this is part of the criteria. Unofficially, it's hard to quantify this because of different conferences. A head to head victory over a team doesn't necessarily mean you will be ranked ahead of them if the other metrics favor the team you beat.
• Results versus regionally ranked opponents. This is the fun one, but one that doesn't apply for this week. Here, the committee takes the rankings from the previous week and current week, and factors your record against teams that are ranked into play. This means both wins and losses, but losses aren't a death knell. A team that went 1-3 against regionally ranked opponents may be ranked higher than one who went 0-1.

All of these factors get mixed together to come up with the rankings, the first set of which came out Wednesday afternoon. Let's take a look.