Posted by lwbraun on 12/4/2011 10:20:00 AM (view original):

Posted by rusticity on 12/4/2011 9:59:00 AM (view original):
ACC D1 has 4 in one region.
CAC D3 has 4,2,1,0 spread of it's 7 teams.
Freedom D3 has the 1 and 2 seed in the same region.

All projection report rankings have a predetermined seed and region.  You can look at that rank and figure out exactly where you will be in the bracket.  It appears nothing was changed for conference affiliation.

Posted by girt25 on 12/4/2011 10:46:00 AM (view original):

Posted by seble on 12/4/2011 9:45:00 AM (view original):
I'll take a closer look at the logic using the Naismith data.  The move away from just using RPI was intentional though.  It's a limited metric of how good a team really is, and can be very misleading.  To me there's a big difference between winning/losing by 20+ points vs. winning/losing by 3 or 4 points.  Maybe there's a little too much weight on opponent strength.

I'll also see what I can do about spreading out teams from the same conference, but that's not easy to do when some conferences have 7 or 8 teams in.

seble, I agree that RPI isn't by far a perfect metric, but I think the early returns are that there is significantly too much emphasis being put on who you play rather than how you actually do. A 7-20 Florida State team made the PIT, basically just as a result of getting beat up all season by their ACC brethren. That's not good and really can't happen.

Right now it seems that you've replaced one issue (over reliance on RPI) with another (over reliance on SOS, and perhaps other things, like "good" losses). And so far, the new issue seems worse than the old one -- at least that one was something that people could understand and jibed semi-reasonably with real life. But in real life, a 7-20 team would be thinking about firing their coach, not about the postseason. Ever.

As far as spreading conference teams out within a bracket, can be challenging, but no conference mates should ever be meeting up in the 2nd round. That never happened before, either.

+1 to everything on here.  DII NT seeding is a joke.  I immediatley saw the same thing cornfused did on the very 1st post and was hoping someone beat me here to it.

Posted by mduncanhogs on 12/4/2011 10:51:00 AM (view original):

Posted by girt25 on 12/4/2011 10:46:00 AM (view original):

Posted by seble on 12/4/2011 9:45:00 AM (view original):
I'll take a closer look at the logic using the Naismith data.  The move away from just using RPI was intentional though.  It's a limited metric of how good a team really is, and can be very misleading.  To me there's a big difference between winning/losing by 20+ points vs. winning/losing by 3 or 4 points.  Maybe there's a little too much weight on opponent strength.

I'll also see what I can do about spreading out teams from the same conference, but that's not easy to do when some conferences have 7 or 8 teams in.

seble, I agree that RPI isn't by far a perfect metric, but I think the early returns are that there is significantly too much emphasis being put on who you play rather than how you actually do. A 7-20 Florida State team made the PIT, basically just as a result of getting beat up all season by their ACC brethren. That's not good and really can't happen.

Right now it seems that you've replaced one issue (over reliance on RPI) with another (over reliance on SOS, and perhaps other things, like "good" losses). And so far, the new issue seems worse than the old one -- at least that one was something that people could understand and jibed semi-reasonably with real life. But in real life, a 7-20 team would be thinking about firing their coach, not about the postseason. Ever.

As far as spreading conference teams out within a bracket, can be challenging, but no conference mates should ever be meeting up in the 2nd round. That never happened before, either.

girt, my guess is that conference mates matching up early is an unintended consequence of putting more weight in the seeding logic on SOS and margin of victory/defeat.  Teams that are in conferences with a large number of human coaches are going to almost always have better SOS than ones in weaker conferences.  Therefore, they will now get more teams in.  Look at my conference, the Freedom, in Naismith.  We got 2 teams into the NT that would have been on the bubble and may not have made it under the old seeding logic (King's with an RPI of 66 and DeSales with an RPI of 67).  They are there because their SOS's were 34 and 10, respectively.  What is happening is clearly strong conferneces wind up with a lot of teams with high SOSs (they schedule well in non-confernece as a group and then beat up on each other in conference play) and that ends up bunching them up when seeding starts.

Posted by dacj501 on 12/4/2011 12:25:00 PM (view original):
margin of victory is not a very good metric in this game. Teams that can go uptempo are likely to outscore inferior foes by a larger margin than teams with a couple less players who play slow down. Head to head the teams may be very similar, but now the uptempo team has an advantage...

Posted by alblack56 on 12/4/2011 12:32:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dacj501 on 12/4/2011 12:25:00 PM (view original):
margin of victory is not a very good metric in this game. Teams that can go uptempo are likely to outscore inferior foes by a larger margin than teams with a couple less players who play slow down. Head to head the teams may be very similar, but now the uptempo team has an advantage...

Excellent point! Some of my best coaching jobs came with inferior talent.  I won a lot of close games by slowing the tempo.  Margin of victory shouldn't even be a factor.

Posted by mduncanhogs on 12/4/2011 10:47:00 AM (view original):

Posted by lwbraun on 12/4/2011 10:20:00 AM (view original):

Posted by rusticity on 12/4/2011 9:59:00 AM (view original):
ACC D1 has 4 in one region.
CAC D3 has 4,2,1,0 spread of it's 7 teams.
Freedom D3 has the 1 and 2 seed in the same region.

All projection report rankings have a predetermined seed and region.  You can look at that rank and figure out exactly where you will be in the bracket.  It appears nothing was changed for conference affiliation.

There has GOT to be something in the seeding logic to keep teams from the same conference from matching up too early in the tourney and there should NEVER be a 1 and 2 seed in the same bracket from the same conference with the only exception being if one conference has all four 1 seeds and at least one 2 seed.  In real life the selection committee does their very best to spread teams from the same conference out as much as they reasonably can.

I understand this can get tough in HD when some conferences get 6-8 teams into the NT, but this happens in real life too and the committee spreads them out.

Agree!  Very simple:  If you have 6 teams in the NT, place the four best in different regions.  Then place the other 2 so they can't meet a conference foe before the Sweet 16 or, preferably, the  Elite Eight.  I don't know how to program this but I don't recall it being an issue before the update.

Disclaimer: I'm the #2 seed in Naismith DIII. My conference mate is the #1 seed.

Posted by alblack56 on 12/4/2011 12:36:00 PM (view original):

Posted by mduncanhogs on 12/4/2011 10:47:00 AM (view original):

Posted by lwbraun on 12/4/2011 10:20:00 AM (view original):

Posted by rusticity on 12/4/2011 9:59:00 AM (view original):
ACC D1 has 4 in one region.
CAC D3 has 4,2,1,0 spread of it's 7 teams.
Freedom D3 has the 1 and 2 seed in the same region.

All projection report rankings have a predetermined seed and region.  You can look at that rank and figure out exactly where you will be in the bracket.  It appears nothing was changed for conference affiliation.

There has GOT to be something in the seeding logic to keep teams from the same conference from matching up too early in the tourney and there should NEVER be a 1 and 2 seed in the same bracket from the same conference with the only exception being if one conference has all four 1 seeds and at least one 2 seed.  In real life the selection committee does their very best to spread teams from the same conference out as much as they reasonably can.

I understand this can get tough in HD when some conferences get 6-8 teams into the NT, but this happens in real life too and the committee spreads them out.

Agree!  Very simple:  If you have 6 teams in the NT, place the four best in different regions.  Then place the other 2 so they can't meet a conference foe before the Sweet 16 or, preferably, the  Elite Eight.  I don't know how to program this but I don't recall it being an issue before the update.

Disclaimer: I'm the #2 seed in Naismith DIII. My conference mate is the #1 seed.

Posted by seble on 12/4/2011 9:45:00 AM (view original):
I'll take a closer look at the logic using the Naismith data.  The move away from just using RPI was intentional though.  It's a limited metric of how good a team really is, and can be very misleading.  To me there's a big difference between winning/losing by 20+ points vs. winning/losing by 3 or 4 points.  Maybe there's a little too much weight on opponent strength.

I'll also see what I can do about spreading out teams from the same conference, but that's not easy to do when some conferences have 7 or 8 teams in.