NCAA Lax Selections

Al DeFlorio · May 07, 2007, 07:06:34 PM

[quote ugarte]Not this fan. I've read all of the sober analysis and any system that takes an undefeated team, including a win over the system's best team, and places them at #4 is stupid.

It may be good for us; it may screw Duke even harder; it may have come from good intentions.

It remains stupid.[/quote]
Couldn't have said it better. One can only wonder at how "stupid" the NCAA must be not to recognize this.

KeithK · May 07, 2007, 07:25:32 PM

Any system that puts an undefeated team behind teams with losses is ill-conceived. I don't care what the SoS is. There's just no data to indicate that an undefeated team isn't the best team, only incomplete data saying that it might be.

But I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. When all is said and done Cornell needs to win 4 more games and they're pretty much all going to be against good teams. Wouldn't be any different if we were #1.

elcielo917 · May 07, 2007, 07:59:39 PM

i agree. it doesn't matter if we lucked out in that our actual draw isn't that bad. our being seeded 4th is still absurd. us being anything less than first is difficult to justify at best, especially losing the one seed to a team that we beat on their own field. the fact that we're behind a team with 4 losses and will meet duke in the semis when duke and cornell are clearly the best two teams in the country is a joke. the selection committee should be embarrassed.

bernie · May 07, 2007, 08:58:55 PM

does anyone know:

if we hypothetically added two losses to top 5 teams to our record, would our ranking improve or worsen? i.e. would the improvement in sos outweigh the extra losses?

min · May 07, 2007, 09:58:19 PM

[quote KeithK]Any system that puts an undefeated team behind teams with losses is ill-conceived. I don't care what the SoS is. There's just no data to indicate that an undefeated team isn't the best team, only incomplete data saying that it might be.
[/quote]

I agree. Coach Tambroni's calm comments notwithstanding, I think that placing an undefeated team a #4 is not only stupid or ill-conceived, but it also sets a bad and dangerous precedence for all future undefeated, Ivy League teams.

jtwcornell91 · May 08, 2007, 12:40:43 AM

[quote KeithK]Any system that puts an undefeated team behind teams with losses is ill-conceived. I don't care what the SoS is. There's just no data to indicate that an undefeated team isn't the best team, only incomplete data saying that it might be.[/quote]

Tell that to Boise State. :-/

Townie · May 08, 2007, 09:12:02 AM

[quote KeithK]Any system that puts an undefeated team behind teams with losses is ill-conceived. I don't care what the SoS is. There's just no data to indicate that an undefeated team isn't the best team, only incomplete data saying that it might be.[/quote]

I don't agree entirely with this. Being undefeated against lesser opponents doesn't merit a #1 national ranking. If Cornell were in a tougher league, we might see it that way.

However, I have trouble reconciling being ranked LOWER than Duke after defeating them away!? Isn't head-to-head the best measure of superiority?? Same applies to Hopkins, although that was a scrimmage.

Al DeFlorio · May 08, 2007, 10:06:56 AM

[quote Townie][quote KeithK]Any system that puts an undefeated team behind teams with losses is ill-conceived. I don't care what the SoS is. There's just no data to indicate that an undefeated team isn't the best team, only incomplete data saying that it might be.[/quote]

I don't agree entirely with this. Being undefeated against lesser opponents doesn't merit a #1 national ranking. If Cornell were in a tougher league, we might see it that way.

However, I have trouble reconciling being ranked LOWER than Duke after defeating them away!? Isn't head-to-head the best measure of superiority?? Same applies to Hopkins, although that was a scrimmage.[/quote]
First off, Hopkins outplayed us badly in this year's scrimmage. Last year was the reverse.

I wouldn't agree that an undefeated team should automatically be seeded #1 in the tournament. But I would say that an undefeated team deserves a shot at the tournament, unlike what the NCAA did to Bucknell a few years ago.

Keith's point that it's POSSIBLE that an undefeated team might be the best--because no one has yet been able to beat them--should at least be tested in the season-ending tournament. The fact that Bucknell didn't beat any of the top teams would result in skepticism that they were capable of beating the best and therefore given them a lower seed, but I would say they deserved the chance to see just what they could do against the best. Instead, some other team with an 8-5 or similar record and that had already shown by their five or six losses that they weren't really a threat to win it all (and, yes, I know about the 6-5 1988 Cornell team that got to the finals before losing) was given a berth instead because they played and lost to Hopkins or Virginia or Syracuse--something Bucknell could easily have done as well. Seems to me an undefeated team has at least earned for itself the right to have a shot at showing what they could do.

Chris '03 · May 08, 2007, 10:34:23 AM

Adding losses to Albany, UVa, and Hop, Cornell's MSOS goes from 17th to 6th. RPI would stay #2. Of course, then Cornell would be a three loss team and probably get seeded 4th anyway...
You can play with it here: http://lacrosse.homelinux.net/rpi

ugarte · May 08, 2007, 10:50:57 AM

[quote Chris '03]Adding losses to Albany, UVa, and Hop, Cornell's MSOS goes from 17th to 6th. RPI would stay #2. Of course, then Cornell would be a three loss team and probably get seeded 4th anyway...
You can play with it here: http://lacrosse.homelinux.net/rpi[/quote]
Don't forget that you would also be giving Virginia and JHU wins over Cornell, so it would strengthen their profiles at least as much as the "good losses" would strengthen ours.

Rita · May 08, 2007, 10:51:53 AM

FYI, The past few nights ESPNU has been showing replays of Lax games featuring tournament bound teams. I'm catching them after 1 am. Here is the link to the programming guide. It also seems that some will be re-aired in the "normal" morning hours too.

Hillel Hoffmann · May 08, 2007, 10:52:43 AM

[quote Al DeFlorio]...and, yes, I know about the 6-5 1988 Cornell team that got to the finals before losing.[/quote]
Thank you, Al. I'm glad someone brought up that team before we opened up another bag of fresh and tasty Righteous Indignation Chips.

Going into the season, was there a veteran college lacrosse fan here who actually thought that the current tournament selection and seeding system wasn't stupid, unfair, redundant, inconsistently applied, lacking transparency and set up to reward independent and Atlantic Coast Conference teams? (Newcomers to following the game closely are forgiven for getting huffy.)

Free red "21" t-shirt to the first person who creates a new thread about the Towson game with at least one unit of analysis, scouting or some such.

Al DeFlorio · May 08, 2007, 11:12:26 AM

[quote Hillel Hoffmann]Going into the season, was there a veteran college lacrosse fan here who actually thought that the current tournament selection and seeding system wasn't stupid, unfair, redundant, inconsistently applied, lacking transparency and set up to reward independent and Atlantic Coast Conference teams? [/quote]
Maybe not here, but there sure are elsewhere.

The NCAA has made a number of changes to the hockey pairwise in response to people pointing out obvious issues with it. If no one does the same for lacrosse, there'll be no impetus for changing it--and it really does need to be changed.

Chris '03 · May 08, 2007, 11:18:21 AM

[quote ugarte][quote Chris '03]Adding losses to Albany, UVa, and Hop, Cornell's MSOS goes from 17th to 6th. RPI would stay #2. Of course, then Cornell would be a three loss team and probably get seeded 4th anyway...
You can play with it here: http://lacrosse.homelinux.net/rpi[/quote]
Don't forget that you would also be giving Virginia and JHU wins over Cornell, so it would strengthen their profiles at least as much as the "good losses" would strengthen ours.[/quote]

Right, but there are only so many top 5 teams. I guess the better case would be to add wins against teams ranked 6-15 or so that aren't going to leapfrog Cornell. Losing to Navy, GT, and Loyola would do the same but those three teams would jump ahead in QWF. But we don't know how QWF is really calculated I don't think.

Hillel Hoffmann · May 08, 2007, 11:41:38 AM

[quote Al DeFlorio][quote Hillel Hoffmann]Going into the season, was there a veteran college lacrosse fan here who actually thought that the current tournament selection and seeding system wasn't stupid, unfair, redundant, inconsistently applied, lacking transparency and set up to reward independent and Atlantic Coast Conference teams? [/quote]
Maybe not here, but there sure are elsewhere.

The NCAA has made a number of changes to the hockey pairwise in response to people pointing out obvious issues with it. If no one does the same for lacrosse, there'll be no impetus for changing it--and it really does need to be changed.[/quote]
Good points.

With our luck, they'll change the system after Princeton and Syracuse return to form and when Colgate, Dartmouth and Brown are noob powerhouses, just in time for Cornell to be punished for our ridiculously strong fixed schedule.