As some of you may know, I'm currently recuperating at home after having had surgery back on 9-5 to have a rather bothersome bunion removed from my left foot. While there's arguably worse things to have surgery for, it's still been incredibly frustrating just getting around my place to do even the simple things. I'm hopeful that by early/mid-October, I'll be close to as good as new and doing the things that I enjoy once again without the use of crutches which will be nice - including covering the women's basketball scene.
As you can imagine, I've had ample time to fiddle around on my desktop at home and, in the process, came across an interesting article that was recently posted on the D3 Hoops site regarding the selection criteria for the NCAA DIII Women's Tournament that touches on the areas that I talked about late this last February and early March and it's a good read.
https://www.d3hoops.com/notables/2023/09/sos-low-key-selection-criterion
One item that's pointed our rather quickly in this article is how the selection and seeding process has shifted over the last few years; where it had seemed to rely more in winning percentage in years past but now has obviously shifted toward the direction of SOS (strength of schedule). Consider, some of the at-large teams from six or seven years ago had an SOS of .496-.498. This last season, we saw that the lowest SOS among the at-large teams was at .545 which is telling to say the least.
But what's interesting is that the author of this article - Scott Peterson - delves deeper into this by pointing out that it's the larger conferences (such as the MIAC) that tend to be more vulnerable as they play 22 regular season games which leaves room for only three non-conference games and makes it much more difficult to raise the overall SOS. When I look at the GAC schedule for this upcoming season, I really like like the tough, non-conference schedule where they'll open with UW-Stout at home in St. Peter on 11-15 and then a trip to Florida right before the holiday season has them facing a Rhode Island College team that finished 28-4 and made it to the Final 4 last season on 12-20 and then taking on perennial ARC powerhouse Simpson the next day on 12-21. So there's three games against quality opponents that does give them ample opportunity to strengthen that SOS. I look at some of the other teams that have their schedules out and right away I can't help but notice that they're not giving themselves enough opportunities to raise that SOS when that becomes a bigger item come mid/late-February. It's like, yeah, you MAY be able to get away with doing that IF (1) you don't have any "bad" losses during the season and (2) you get to your conference championship game. A classic example is what happened to Concordia this last season which saw them split their games against regionally-ranked opponents AND get to the MIAC Championship Game which should have been good enough to get them in. But those "bad" losses to Bethel, Augsburg and St. Kate's ultimately weighed them down in the end. Which is why I'll feel infinitely better about the following season when the MIAC finally breaks away from the idiotic 22-game regular season which will open up more opportunities on the non-conference front.
I hope to visit some practices later on this fall and give you full reports of what I'm seeing along with breaking out that trusty old crystal ball with my fearless predictions.
