The Fallacy Of Regional Rankings

 So, as a continuation as to what I had blogged about yesterday, I wanted to present to you the last Regional Rankings that came out yesterday shortly after the NCAA Tournament brackets were announced.  

1	Simpson	25-1	15-0
2	UW-Eau Claire	21-7	9-5
3	UW-Whitewater	23-4	12-2
4	UW-Oshkosh	19-6	7-4
5	Wartburg	21-5	13-3
6	Loras	19-8	12-4
7	Bethany Lutheran	19-8	13-1
8	Gustavus Adolphus	22-4	17-3
9	Northwestern (Minn.)	19-5	13-1

 

Oooookay, so, if you compare the latest release with what came out last week right before the various conference championship games, you'll notice that there's little change in the first seven spots; the only difference being UW-Eau Claire switching spots with UW-Whitewater as the former defeated the latter in the WIAC Championship Game.  Wartburg stayed solidly in the fifth spot despite losing to Simpson in the ARC Championship Game this last Saturday afternoon and Loras remained firmly entrenched in the sixth spot despite losing to said Wartburg team in the ARC semifinals last Thursday night.  So, despite the fact that the committee that puts this "thing" together and has an obvious bias for the WIAC and the ARC, I don't have that big of a problem - despite the bias - as to where these first six teams are.

Where I DO have a HUGE problem is with what comes after that.  Now, Bethany Lutheran, which was the overwhelming favorite to win the UMAC, got bounced on their home floor on Friday night by an unheralded UM-Morris team in one of the semifinal games of that conference.  If that wasn't enough, Northwestern; which seemed primed to slide on in as the obvious UMAC favorite, got absolutely destroyed at home by in-town rival North Central in the other semifinal game by thirty-one points.  Yes, you read that right.  Yet, the committee decided to conveniently disregard those utterly embarrassing and season-ending losses and reward them instead by keeping Bethany Lutheran entrenched in the seventh spot and merely sliding Northwestern down a notch from eighth to ninth.  Now, GAC; which absolutely hammered a very good Bethel team on Friday night in St. Peter and then finally put multiple years of frustration and heartache in the rearview mirror by taking down an excellent Augburg team on Sunday to win their very first MIAC Championship Game, had to fight, scratch and claw just to get back into the rankings at the eighth spot even with the MIAC AQ firmly and safely secured.  And Augsburg?  Oh well, gee.  I guess the committee found it fitting to severely punish the Auggies for fending off an incredibly gamey and athletic Hamline team on Friday night in the semis and then finally running out of gas against said GAC team on Sunday by dropping them completely out of the rankings and into oblivion.  

Look, first off, I get and fully understand the notion that not all regions are created equal nor does each region have the same amount of teams.  I get all that and understand that.  At the same time, doesn't some freaking common sense and knowledge about these involved teams EVER come into play?  I hope that MIAC coaches, ADs AND the MIAC office itself take a long, hard look at the above rankings because they need to.  This is just so bad and utterly embarrassing and a complete joke.  Here's the thing:  I can write and complain about all this until I'm blue in the face but the ONLY way this thing is going to get fixed is if the coaches, the ADs and the conference work together to fix this problem so that MIAC teams can get out there and play MORE non-conference games against other potentially regionally-ranked opponents so that they can strengthen their SOS and regional ranking.  I mean, if the committee itself is that biased against the MIAC to begin with, well, shame on them but just sticking your head in the sand and pretending there's nothing wrong is not going to fix this.

I don't know.....I'm just trying to lay this all out here and call it like it is.  Not long ago, a good friend of mine who knows a thing or two about MIAC women's hoops texted me and basically told me that the Regional Rankins are (expletive deleted).  And, after seeing this last release, I can really only concur with that notion.  Now, I've laid this all out here and I hope there's some coaches out there that really want to fix this problem for the good of the conference and I'd be more than happy to share some ideas with them.

The ball's in your court guys.