Projections for the NCAA Eastern Bracket

It's Sunday morning and still several hours until the NCAA announces its picks for the 2011 Division 3 Football tournament at 6 pm EST. We have been wrestling with the bracket and finally have our thoughts on who is in, and who is out in this year's tournament.

Pool A automatic bids

Hobart - Liberty League
Salisbury - Empire 8
Kean - New Jersey Athletic Conference
Delaware Valley - Middle Atlantic Conference
Norwich - East Coast Football Conference
Western New England - New England Football Conference


Pool C At Large Bids

Endicott - New England Football Conference

We do not believe a two-loss team from Eastern Region will be afforded a birth in the NCAA tournament. With the way Widener (8-2) and Monclair (8-2) lost on the final Saturday of the season, they likely made the decision easier for the committee.

We are projecting Endicott to get the only Pool C bid from the east. Our rationale is that the NCAA committee commonly quotes the highly flawed Strength of Schedule (SOS) metric, which Endicott happens to rank highly in. We won't go into the simple methodology used to create the SOS, nor compare it to the various computer functions which are available, and far more telling of a team's strength of schedule.

Suffice it so say, Endicott has a pretty record (9-1) and a high SOS. That will get them in over St John Fisher (8-2), who played much stronger competition, and who we believe would beat Endicott convincingly on a neutral field. Cortland (8-2) may be the best two loss team on the outside looking in. But we see no way they would get in before Montclair, since Montclair won head-to-head 34-33.

That is seven teams, which means we need one more team to fill the bracket. Unfortunately, we believe the East Region will once again be denied an opportunity to crown its own champion. Enter the North Region's Mount Union as the #1 seed...again.

Differences in Opinion

D3Football.com has released its projections. They are the same as ours in terms of who gets in from the east. However D3Football.com projects Salisbury to be placed in the south bracket, with Albion being imported from the north to the east.

This is a very realistic possibility, but we believe the east bracket will remain seven eastern regional teams, plus Mount Union.

Our Projected Seeding

1. Mount Union
2. Delaware Valley
3. Kean 
4. Salisbury
5. Hobart
6. Western New England
7. Endicott
8. Norwich

 We welcome your thoughts on the upcoming NCAA tournament selection show. We will be back with more after the selections are announced. See you this evening!

How Does Eastern Region Football Rank?

Eastern Region is looked upon as the weakest of the Division 3 football regions. No Eastern Region team has played for the NCAA championship this century. The last team to make it to Salem was Rowan University, which was pounded by Pacific Lutheran 42-13. The past few seasons, the NCAA has chosen to import Mount Union from the Northern Region to give the Eastern bracket a legitimate #1 seed.

Delaware Valley is undefeated through eight games in 2011, but its two toughest games are yet to be played. However, many believe that if Delaware Valley runs the table, they will be given the top spot in the East while Mount Union stays home in the North. Few believe Hobart would be afforded the #1 seed however, due to the perceived weakness of the Liberty League in 2011, and the short 8-game schedule played by the Statesmen.

Cross region games are rare due to the travel costs incurred. How much can we draw from a winless Husson team from Eastern Region losing 77-7 to a 7-1 Adrian team from Northern Region? Not much. But we do have one important data point: Kean 31-28 over Wesley, potentially the best team in Southern Region.

Let me get one thing straight. If Kean and Wesley played on a neutral field tomorrow, I would pick Wesley as the favorite. But that is just an opinion. The fact is, Kean beat Wesley in Union, New Jersey.

I don't think who won the game or where it was played is the most important thing to draw from this data point. Rather, I feel the most important point is that the two teams were pretty closely matched on both sides of the ball. Wesley is undefeated in Southern Region play, while Kean lost to TCNJ and may not even win the NJAC.

A common argument against Eastern Region is its (lack of) performance against Mount Union in the playoffs. Mount Union destroyed Eastern Region teams St Lawrence 49-0, Delaware Valley 31-3, and Alfred 37-7 last season. 

If we are going to judge Eastern Region teams by their playoff losses to Mount Union, then shouldn't we judge the Ohio Athletic Conference just as harshly? Mount Union has won 19 consecutive OAC championships. Nineteen consecutive! Who in Northern Region can say they have recently knocked Mount Union out of the playoffs? Indeed, Mount Union has won an astounding 85.2% of its NCAA playoff games.

Judging how strong Eastern Region is by its performance against Mount Union just isn't logical, when there aren't any Northern teams showing the ability to beat them either. What we need are some regional cross over games between teams like Wesley, North Central, Wittenberg, Cortland, and Lycoming so we can draw better conclusions. 

I for one would love to see Rowan play Heidelberg, or St John Fisher play Baldwin-Wallace. Wouldn't it have been much more interesting if Adrian had played Widener, instead of a winless team from the weakest conference in Eastern Region?

There are reasons why the East tends to see more parity than the other regions do, and I will touch on these in later blog posts. Recall that two decades ago, the East was considered rather beastly on the national scene with Ithaca winning multiple national championships.

In the meantime, I don't believe we can definitively say Eastern Region is the weakest of the four regions. We don't have many data points to utilize, and the most important data point we have in 2011 has Kean beating Wesley. Because cross over games are so rare among regions, computer power ratings aren't likely to help us either. Again, not enough data points.

Where do you think Eastern Region football ranks nationally outside of Whitewater and Mount Union?