Interesting Games this Weekend

Brown University shut out UCLA to tie 0-0 in double overtime. The Brown keeper made 12 saves to keep out the Bruins. I wonder if UCLA stays on top after that. North Carolina spanked SCU 5-0 and Jerry Smith was quoted as saying he "thought we had some good opportunities but we obviously were dissapointed at letting so many get by us." Yes. It sounded like an offensive battle with UNC being the team that could find the back of the net. I would guess this would move UNC past us as they beat up a ranked team and we beat SDSU only 3-0.

UNC Greensboro beating Santa Clara and Tieing Stanford has to qualify as "interesting" too.

The Florida State - South Carolina game puts a crimp in FSU's hopes of rising in the polls.

Here's to a rise in the polls for UP

That's a Pliny, BTW

Other interesting results:

USC 6, Clemson 2 (I consider this a very significant score in terms of where the strength is)

Duke 4, Ohio State 2 (Ohio State now is 6 games into the season without a win)

Gonzaga 0, Wyoming 1 (Ouch)

Long Beach State 3, Oregon 3 (This actually is a pretty good result for Oregon, as LBS has a good record against decent teams)

Oregon State 0, Northern Colorado 1 (Ouch. Altitude?)

Pepperdine 1, Washington State 0 (Pepperdine had a slow start but is starting to get things going?)

San Francisco 0, Hawaii 5 (Ouch)

Texas 0, Arizona State 0 (Offsets some of the ouches)

UC Santa Barbara 2, Tennessee 1 (Tennessee has had a poor start to the season, but still, "Wow")

Wake Forest 3, CS Fullerton 0 (Ouch)

If my count is right, the West Region this weekend won 20 games against the other regions, lost 11, and tied 6.

what matters is if these results help our gals host 1st an 2nd round games in the playoffs. yes, i am looking that far ahead an i would be very surprised if we aren't all.

The main things we want from other games:

1. We want teams on our schedule to beat the other teams they play (this will help our RPI), except as indicated in item 2.

2. For teams in contention for a high seed, we want them to lose their games with other teams.

3. Except as indicated in item 2, we generally want West Region teams to win their inter-regional games. (This will help the last element of our RPI. It's nowhere near as important as items 1 and 2.)

UPSF -

assuming we win the conference - Do we care who beats who in WCC play?

Purplegeezer wrote:Assuming we win the conference - Do we care who beats who in WCC play?

Based on how the RPI works, it might make a very slight difference who beats whom within the WCC. The way the Strength of Schedule elements work, rather than conglomerating opponents' wins, losses, and ties and then computing a winning percentage for opponents, the RPI computes each opponent's winning percentage (against other teams) and then takes an average of those opponents' winning percentages. Suppose one team has played a lot more games than the other. Then I think (I haven't really run numbers to tell) we want the team that has played less games to win. That will give a big jump in its winning percentage and will give the other team a lesser decrease in its winning percentage. If the team that has played less games loses, it will give that team a big loss in its winning percentage and the other team a lesser increase in its winning percentage. However, for an entire season's data, these differences will be very small.

For the other NCAA criteria: head-to-head results and results against common opponents as the other primary criteria with the RPI, and last eight games and results against other teams already selected for the bracket as the secondary criteria if the primary criteria don't result in a decision, I don't think it would make much difference. The only possibility I can see is that if you assume we have won all our WCC games, it is in our interest to have other WCC teams in the bracket if the Committee gets to the secondary criteria for seeding purposes. We wouldn't want a WCC team that might qualify for an at large selection to have missed the selection because it has lost to a lower down WCC team that doesn't qualify.

The only unknown in this is that the other thing that gets considered is the recommendation of the West Region's regional advisory committee to the NCAA DI Women's Soccer Committee. The regional advisory committees also are supposed to make their recommendations based on the above-described criteria, but I don't really know how much they stick to the criteria. I have the feeling the Women's Soccer Committee sticks to them. So, whether an intra-conference game might affect the regional advisory committee differently than what I've described is something I don't know.

Hawaii 5,-SF 0 -- time to schedule a Pilots road trip to the islands one of these years.

Sounds great to me, as long as geezer charters a plane for the lot of us

DaTruRochin wrote:Sounds great to me, as long as geezer charters a plane for the lot of us

No problem. If UP gets a date, I'll charter the flight. It's my understanding that a tour organizer gets a free flight an tour....