Central Regional Talk

[Brandon]

True, but your talking about a major city with 1/2 a million people, many of which are alumni of MIAA schools, with a large downtown venue, and not D2 member schools in the middle of nowhere. Your example of Drury in Springfield might be a great place to host a regional, even without Drury... its a great venue and a pretty large city, so that may work. Again, I don't know if having people in the stands is even something anyone would consider important. If there isn't any profit in it anyway, than it's probably not a factor.

KC metro is two million.

[Alfred33]

True, but your talking about a major city with 1/2 a million people, many of which are alumni of MIAA schools, with a large downtown venue, and not D2 member schools in the middle of nowhere. Your example of Drury in Springfield might be a great place to host a regional, even without Drury... its a great venue and a pretty large city, so that may work. Again, I don't know if having people in the stands is even something anyone would consider important. If there isn't any profit in it anyway, than it's probably not a factor.

[Brandon]

Do you go for football too?

[MisterWizard]

[MisterWizard]

The only problem I see with that would be the attendance would be abysmal without a host team or a dog in the fight. Division 1 draws no matter who is playing because it's March Madness and people are interested, but early round games in D2... I don't see it. Maybe there isn't that much value in that to anyone... I don't know. Outside of the host team's sessions, the attendance is hit or miss anyway, I guess.

[Purple Mav Man]

Interesting that winning a conference tournament isn't listed as a criteria to seed teams. Not having it in there, I guess makes sense for Northern to get a 4 seed. It would seem to me that maybe the criteria should be looked and re-assessed. The conference tournament emulates how the Regional is played - so it would seem to me you would reward a team for playing great for 3 out of 4 days at the end of the year like the regional and national tournament are going to be. But here I am just sitting behind a computer so my input matters a lot I'm sure.

[Moorhead123]

Except for the whole fact the majority of competition in the conference tournaments are nowhere near Regional worthy. Especially this year in the NSIC. Some years the conference tourney can help you, some years it doesnt. Had Northern played USF and/or UMD this year maybe they get the 2 seed, instead they played SMSU, Augie, Moorhead, and Mankato which got them the 4 seed.

[Moorhead123]

The neutral court thing seems like a no go from the start. My understanding is that all levels under D1 lose money for the NCAA. One of the income streams is to charge schools to host a regional. Just how much would a school be willing to pay if their team wasn't playing.

There will still be a top seed in each of the eight regions that would get to host (in my scenarios). May have a few teams that have to travel to a different region, but still seems better than missing out on regional all together.

[Randy]

The neutral court thing seems like a no go from the start. My understanding is that all levels under D1 lose money for the NCAA. One of the income streams is to charge schools to host a regional. Just how much would a school be willing to pay if their team wasn't playing.

[Augieholic]

Interesting that winning a conference tournament isn't listed as a criteria to seed teams. Not having it in there, I guess makes sense for Northern to get a 4 seed. It would seem to me that maybe the criteria should be looked and re-assessed. The conference tournament emulates how the Regional is played - so it would seem to me you would reward a team for playing great for 3 out of 4 days at the end of the year like the regional and national tournament are going to be. But here I am just sitting behind a computer so my input matters a lot I'm sure.

Except for the whole fact the majority of competition in the conference tournaments are nowhere near Regional worthy. Especially this year in the NSIC. Some years the conference tourney can help you, some years it doesnt. Had Northern played USF and/or UMD this year maybe they get the 2 seed, instead they played SMSU, Augie, Moorhead, and Mankato which got them the 4 seed.

[Brandon]

That's the rub. If I'm counting right there are 23 conferences - there's no way to divide that into eight regions evenly. Plus the SC region with just two conferences has two of the largest in it - there's no combination that's going to be much better.

I know some will make the argument against regionalization, which is valid, but I'm not convinced there's any collection of people that could put together a "best 64" that looks much better than the current model.

In football, I'm fairly convinced I could get the best 20. Number 21-28 could have errors, however.

[Moorhead123]

Interesting that winning a conference tournament isn't listed as a criteria to seed teams. Not having it in there, I guess makes sense for Northern to get a 4 seed. It would seem to me that maybe the criteria should be looked and re-assessed. The conference tournament emulates how the Regional is played - so it would seem to me you would reward a team for playing great for 3 out of 4 days at the end of the year like the regional and national tournament are going to be. But here I am just sitting behind a computer so my input matters a lot I'm sure.

Seems like d1 selection committee takes the respective conference tournaments into account when determining the field of 64??

[Moorhead123]

Not exactly the takeaway I was looking for. My point was that regionalization is pretty dumb if you are trying to get the best 64 teams in the country into the bracket, since many regions are stronger than others and may have up to 12 teams that should be considered top-64, while others may only have 4-5.

Clearly the current system goal is not to get the top 64 teams in the country in. No question umd is top 64 in the country, for example. My theory is that the larger the region the more likely you will leave some team deserving on the outside looking in, while the smaller regions probably get a team or two in that should not be in. This is not always the case, obviously.

[#WolvesNation]

I haven't bothered to read the selection criteria this year but I know in the past (and I doubt it's changed) winning a conference tournament is not listed. The wins and the opponents played matter but not the tournament championship. Head-to-head has always been listed as a tiebreaker but when the games were played was not. It doesn't matter if it's November or March.

The spreadsheet posted by schnautza shows that Northern has the better record, PI & regional record. The GAC school have the better OW%, OOW%, ranked record and RPI. My guess is the committee didn't think Northern had separated themselves from the GAC schools and used the tiebreaker.

Interesting that winning a conference tournament isn't listed as a criteria to seed teams. Not having it in there, I guess makes sense for Northern to get a 4 seed. It would seem to me that maybe the criteria should be looked and re-assessed. The conference tournament emulates how the Regional is played - so it would seem to me you would reward a team for playing great for 3 out of 4 days at the end of the year like the regional and national tournament are going to be. But here I am just sitting behind a computer so my input matters a lot I'm sure.

[Moorhead123]

So how do you fix it? Easy to make a statement without making a pitch to make it better.