Lax Bracketology

This story was linked over at laxpower: [www.insidelacrosse.com]

It raises an issue I hadn't considered. Cornell could be shipped south because of Navy. Presuming Cornell holds the 1 seed, they'd be in line to play #8. The story projects Maryland as 8 and Maryland's round one opponent being the Mids. They'd put Navy in line to play at home in the quarters leaving the Cornell/Siena winner to join the Navy/Maryland winner on the 20th in Annapolis.

I guess the moral of the story is that banking on being in the Princeton side of the bracket is premature. And as we learned last year, banking on the quarterfinals is premature as well.

For those who don't like clicking on links, here's how the field is projected considering predicted outcomes of remaining games (to get 'cuse in):
No. 1 Cornell vs. Siena (winner at Navy)
No. 8 Maryland vs. Navy (winner at Navy)

No. 5 Albany vs. Syracuse
No. 4 Virginia vs. Notre Dame

No. 3 Johns Hopkins vs. Towson (winner at Navy)
No. 6 Georgetown vs. Loyola (winner at Navy)

No. 7 North Carolina vs. Princeton
No. 2 Duke vs. Pennsylvania

Crazy as it may sound, I wouldn't necessarily bank on being seeded number 1. The committee has done some strange things in recent years--like sending us to Towson two years ago. They're pedantic enough to say something like: "Duke has five top ten wins; Virginia has four; Cornell only has two." Nothing those birds do would surprise me.

They can seed Cornell wherever, just keep us away from Syracuse, please. And being a third seed might not be so bad if we still end up hosting Siena in the first round and it somehow shields us from second or third-round games against Johns Hopkins, another team that presents big match-up problems for Cornell.

As I mentioned before, another team to fear is Navy because of their strong faceoff man, good middies, nice depth, and comfort playing Cornell's pace.

Of course, that bracket is one man's opinion. They could just as easily put UNC at #8 instead of Maryland with them still playing Princeton, and that would make it unnecessary to send us to Navy.

Still way too early and too much back-room politics left to even attempt a bracket.

Fred,

I don't have a laxpower account, but if I did I would point out the Hymie's calculator that you referenced does MSOS wrong - it seems to sort Wins in some unknown order, followed by losses in some unknown order, and then takes the first 10 games for MSOS. For an example, note that Duke's MSOS excludes the Cornell game.

Maybe you should point this out, since you suggested on Laxpower that someone should use it for their bracketology analysis.

Too bad you don't get half credit for the ranking of the team at season's end, and half for ranking as of the date you played them. It's almost as if Cornell's beating, say, an Army, ruined them for the rest of the season. No matter where they stand now, it looked as if, in Martch, before Cornell knew how good it was, we faced three straight top ten teams in Notre Dame, Army, and Duke.

Top ten teams that fell after we played them:
Notre Dame was No. 8 when we played the Irish and is now No. 11 in the USILA poll.
Army was No. 9/12 (depending on poll) when we played them and now is not even getting votes.
Princeton was No. 5 and now is No. 7.


On the other hand,
Duke was No. 5 and has climbed to No. 2 in the USILA poll.
Syracuse was No. 17/18 and now is 12.
I believe Penn was unranked (at least not top 20) and now is also-receiving-votes. Same for Yale.
Colgate is now 19.

(Note: The quick research was the rankings listed in the Cornell pre-game press release; the current ranking is the USILA as of 4/23.)

billhoward
Syracuse was No. 17/18 and now is 12.

And I suspect if coaches were to rank teams today in the order that they'd prefer not to have to play, Syracuse would be much higher than #12 on the list.

Al DeFlorio

billhoward
Syracuse was No. 17/18 and now is 12.

And I suspect if coaches were to rank teams today in the order that they'd prefer not to have to play, Syracuse would be much higher than #12 on the list.

I suspect that this was true all along. Dartmouth is also probably higher on that list than their actual ranking.

nshapiro
Fred,

I don't have a laxpower account, but if I did I would point out the Hymie's calculator that you referenced does MSOS wrong - it seems to sort Wins in some unknown order, followed by losses in some unknown order, and then takes the first 10 games for MSOS. For an example, note that Duke's MSOS excludes the Cornell game.

Maybe you should point this out, since you suggested on Laxpower that someone should use it for their bracketology analysis.

Hey Neil, I actually noticed this last night and PMed Hymie. It could just be a display but perhaps (i.e. it shows it wrong, but really does it right - I didn't verify all the calculations). I have yet to get a response, although I do figure he has a day job too.