Coming Wednesday: the rankings that matter

By Christan Shirk

On Wednesday, October 23, the NCAA Division III men's and women's soccer committees will release the first of their four weekly regional rankings—the first three leading up to and the last one being the basis for the at-large tournament selections. These rankings are based on the same primary and secondary criteria that will be used for awarding at-large tournament berths. But before getting into that, a more general introduction to the rankings is in order for those new to D-III soccer or those still not clear on the distinction and significance of the different rankings that exist.

By this point in the season, even new fans should be aware of the United Soccer Coaches (USC) regional and national rankings and the D3soccer.com national Top 25, but some might be confused when hearing about the NCAA regional rankings and have questions such as: Are these yet another set of rankings? Why haven't I seen these rankings yet this season? Are they important? Do they matter? Adding to the potential confusion, the NCAA includes the USC national rankings on their website even though they are not rankings done by or for the NCAA. You may think or have heard others say that the USC and D3soccer.com rankings don't mean anything; it's the NCAA rankings that matter. And that is correct in that the USC and D3soccer.com rankings do not play any part in the process of selecting teams for the NCAA championship tournaments; the NCAA's own rankings do as will be explained below.

However, I think it’s unfair to say that the USC and D3soccer.com rankings don't mean anything. They are useful for acknowledging the most successful teams and for fans to discover what schools outside their conference and their region are having great seasons. If done well, they can also give fans a feel for the relative strength of the teams they have seen when put in the national context. That is, they can be educational and informative. But equally, they have entertainment value and can spark conversation and debate among fans. D-I basketball fans can banter and argue over the rankings while knowing they do not decide tournament berths, and there's no reason D-III soccer fans shouldn’t as well. Those who are dismissive of these rankings and chose to ignore them miss the point and miss the fun.

That said, it is the NCAA regional rankings that are a critical piece of the pre-tournament puzzle, so let’s first have a look at how they work and why they matter. Then, at the end of this column, I will share some comments and observations rooted in my experience of closely following and analyzing the regional rankings and at-large tournament selections for over a decade.

NCAA REGIONAL RANKINGS

The NCAA regional rankings are done by the same regional and national committees which will make the at-large selections for the men's and women's NCAA tournaments and the rankings are done by applying the same criteria which are used for making the at-large selections. The rankings are released following the fourth last, third last, and second last weeks prior to the tournament selections being made. Therefore, by design, these rankings are a direct foreshadowing of the at-large selections providing a certain level of transparency to the at-large selection process. It is for this reason that these rankings are so important and meaningful.

All information about the regional rankings is found in the Division III Soccer Pre-Championship Manual. Much of what follows highlights, summarizes, or quotes the manual.

Ranking Committees

The NCAA regional rankings are done by the eight-member NCAA Division III Men's and Women's Soccer Committees which are each composed of the chairs of their respective regional advisory committees. The Regional Advisory Committees assist the national committee in evaluating teams.  These are the same national and regional committees that will make the Pool B and Pool C at-large selections for the men's and women's NCAA tournaments. The members of these committees can be found on pages 9-13 of the Pre-Championship Manual.

Release Dates

As per the Pre-Championship Manual (pgs. 13-14 and 19-20), the rankings will be released on the following dates which correspond to the last three Wednesdays prior to the tournament selections being made and the Monday that the at-large selections and tournament fields are announced:

Like the USC and D3Soccer.com rankings, they are based on results through the Sunday prior to their release.

Where to find the Rankings

The rankings are posted by the NCAA on their Division III men's and women's soccer webpages under "Rankings" where you must select the "Regional Rankings" option from the pull-down menu.  They are also conveniently available here on our site from the “Rankings” pull-down menu above or by clicking on the following links:

Men's Regional Rankings

Women's Regional Rankings

Size of the Rankings

The number of teams ranked differs from region to region and from men to women based on the number of eligible teams in each region. The top 16 percent of eligible teams (or a minimum of four) are ranked by the committees. As per the Pre-Championship Manual (pgs. 19-20), the number of teams to be ranked in 2019 is as follows:

Except for one more men's team being ranked in the Central Region, these are the same numbers as last year. The regional alignments, school sponsorship, and eligibility by region can be found in Appendices B and C (“Men's Sponsorship” and "Women's Sponsorship, respectively) of the Pre-Championship Manual (pgs. 30-46).

Ranking Criteria

The rankings are done by applying the same criteria which is used for making the at-large tournament selections. The at-large selection criteria are found in Section 2.4 of the Pre-Championship Manual (pg. 23). The criteria are divided between primary and secondary criteria, the latter only being considered if the former does not enable a distinction to be made between schools.

Regular season and conference postseason matches are considered.  See the sections that follow for an explanation/clarification of the results versus ranked teams and strength of schedule.

Results versus Ranked Teams

For the purposes of at-large selections, "ranked teams" are now (starting in 2017) those teams ranked in either the final rankings or the third weekly rankings. However, for the purposes of the weekly regional rankings, "ranked teams" only includes the teams ranked the previous week, not the previous two weeks. Obviously, for the first weekly regional rankings of the season, there is no previous ranking and thus there are no results versus ranked teams.

"Results versus ranked teams" criteria spelled out

Strength of Schedule

The Strength of Schedule (SOS) used by the Division III soccer committees is based on Opponents' Cumulative Winning Percentage (OWP) and Opponents' Opponents' Cumulative Winning Percentage (OOWP). For the third straight season, no home and away multipliers will be applied as was once done. An explanation with an example of these calculations is found in Appendix D (pg. 47) of the Pre-Championship Manual.

Regional Data Sheets

Along with the rankings, data sheets for each region are made available.  These data sheets, which include all teams in each region, provide some (but not all) of the data that was considered by the ranking committee.  The following data is listed: record and winning percentage against Division III opponents, results versus ranked Division III opponents, Division III SOS (primary criteria), and overall record and winning percentage. These sheets allow for a look at the numbers the committees had in front of them and, therefore, insight into why some teams are ranked and others not. The NCAA provides links to this data below the rankings. Direct links to the latest released data sheets are given below:

The data sheets can also be accessed by clicking the links on our regional rankings pages.

Published Final Rankings

As part of the at-large tournament selection process, the committees do final rankings that include the results from the final week prior to the tournament, usually the completion of conference tournaments. These final rankings are published following the announcement of the tournament fields and may answer many questions about why certain teams were at-large selections and others not.

FORESHADOWING THE AT-LARGE SELECTIONS:

SOME COMMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS

• As just mentioned above, we get to see the fourth and final rankings that are the basis for the committee's at-large selections. These final rankings take into account the final week of games (usually conference tournaments). However, they will only be released after the tournament field—and thus at-large berths—are announced.  Therefore, we will still only have the first three regional rankings in order to anticipate which teams will be selected.

• Because these rankings are done by the same committees that make the at-large selections, using the same criteria as for at-large selections, they (as intended) have in the past very accurately foreshadowed the eventual at-large selections. From 2003, the year of their inception through to 2013, there was only one year (2010) in which there was more than one real head-scratcher on the men's side with many years having none.  2014 was another year in which there were two or three very hard (impossible?) to predict selections, but predictability was restored in 2015. In 2016 there were two hard-to-predict—but not unreasonable—selections that made more sense once we saw the final rankings.  In 2017 there was just one completely unpredictable selection. Time will tell if 2018 was the exception that proves the rule or the start of a new trend, as there were an unprecedented number of teams that seemed legitimate contenders for the last handful of at-large selections. While that made it extremely hard to predict, there were no picks that seemed to come from out of left field.

• A team that is not ranked in the third weekly rankings has extremely small odds of being awarded a Pool C berth. You can get your hopes up, but you are almost assured of being disappointed if history is any guide. Last year was the first time in twelve years that a men's team that was unranked in the third weekly rankings (those released the Wednesday before the selections) got selected for the NCAA tournament. The only other times in the 16-year history of the regional rankings this has occurred were way back in 2005 and 2006 when it happened once each year, and at least in one of those cases, the results of the final week significantly improved the unranked team's resume and clearly justified moving them above other teams in the rankings.

• There will most likely be over twice as many Pool C candidates in the rankings as available berths.  For example, last year there were 46 Pool C men's teams in the third rankings (the most ever) but only 19 Pool C berths available. In the five years before that, the ratio was 42/19, 41/19, 39/18, 38/18 and 44/19. So it isn't good enough to simply be ranked to make the NCAA tournament as most regions will have three to five ranked teams not selected. Even the strongest regions do not have all their ranked teams selected. A team typically needs to be in the top half of their regional rankings to be selected. Depending on how little separates teams, being in the top third of the third weekly rankings may not even make a team a safe bet for an at-large berth as results in the final week could see them fall in the final rankings and land on the bubble or outside of real contention for selection. 

• The selection committee means it when their manual says that there isn't a predetermined number of at-large berths for each region nor any maximum or minimum number of berths from each region. So following from the previous bullet item, there isn't even any guarantee that holding onto a high position (top third of the regional ranking) from the third weekly rankings to the final ranking will result in selection to the tournament. Case in point: Hope men's soccer team last season. They were ranked #3 in the men's Central regional rankings all three weeks as well as in the final rankings, but did not get selected despite being the highest ranked Pool C team in the region (i.e. no men's teams from the Central Region received a Pool C at-large berth last year).

• History indicates that the ranking of teams changes little in that last week (between the third weekly rankings and the at-large selections being made). That is, rarely does a lower ranked team in the third weekly rankings get selected ahead of a higher ranked team. That said, last year, for the second year in a row, there were three instances of this happening which exceeds the one or two occurrences that had typically been seen in previous years. The results during the final week, changes in the rankings, and the resultant changes in teams' primary selection criteria data made all three cases reasonable even if two of them were a little surprising due to very little precedent for such climbs in the final rankings.¹ So, yes, there will be some movement from the third rankings to the final rankings which inform the at-large selections, but, unless last year becomes a trend (and it may), movement of more than a spot or two will be the exception. And that makes sense because the final week only represents about 10% of the total schedule. Additionally, there is no evidence that conference tournament results carry any extra weight because they are the most recent results nor because they may be considered "big" games, which is consistent with the established selection criteria. So do not expect big jumps or falls due to the final week's results, nor any more than one to three flip-flops in the relative position of Pool C candidates.

• The 2013 change in the definition of a ranked opponent from "once ranked, always ranked" to "ranked at the time of selection" increased the potential for more movement from week to week than previously, but another definition change prior to the 2017 season to "as established by the final ranking and the ranking preceding the final ranking" is a middle ground that would be expected to reduce the fluctuations from the third weekly rankings to the final rankings and thus increase predictability. That last year was one of the toughest to predict the at-large selections was not really a reflection of the ranking and selection process, but rather of a much bigger at-large selection "bubble" than usual. 

• Comparison of the regional data sheets with the rankings (and the eventual at-large selections) has shown over the past decade that the committee highly values strength of schedule. The other criteria that can be deduced to be very important is results against ranked teams, and especially wins over ranked opponents. Losses to ranked teams don't seem to be penalized so much as wins are rewarded. In other words, the committee wants teams to play challenging schedules and doesn't mind if a team drops some of their toughest games as long as they demonstrate in other games that they also can win against top opposition.  So if you do not understand why one team isn't ranked and another team is, or why one team is ranked higher than another, it may be related to SOS and results against ranked teams.

Comments or feedback for the author?  Email Christan Shirk.