AQ's, Pool B and Pool C? What does it all mean?

By Christan Shirk

On the threshhold of the men's and women's NCAA tournaments, terms like AQ's, Pool B, and Pool C are being used by those in-the-know and perhaps leaving new fans and the uninitiated a little lost and confused. For those in the former group, what follows may largely be unnecessary. For the latter group, this article will explain this terminology and walk you through the process by which NCAA tournament participants are determined.

All information about the determination of tournament participants is found in the 2021 Division III Soccer Pre-Championships Manual. Much of what follows highlights, summarizes, or quotes the manual. The tournament format, schedule, and bracketing of teams will not be covered here, but is covered in our introduction to the 2021 NCAA Division III Soccer Championships here.  

Most conferences receive a single automatic berth to the men's and women's tournaments which they may award in the manner they see fit, usually to their conference champions. The remainder of each tournament field is made up of at-large selections made by the Division III men's and women's soccer committees following a prescribed set of criteria. Read on to discover the size of the tournament fields, how many and which conferences receive automatic berths, and how many at-large berths are available and on what basis they are awarded.

Administration / Selection Committees

The NCAA championship tournaments are administrated by the ten-member NCAA Division III Men's and Women's Soccer Committees which are each composed of the chairs of their respective regional advisory committees. These committees make the at-large selections to complete the tournament field, assisted in the evaluation of teams by the Regional Advisory Committees. These are the same national and regional committees which release the pre-tournament weekly NCAA Regional Rankings. The members of these committees can be found on pages 9-13 of the Pre-Championships Manual.

Tournament Field Size

The maximum size of the single-elimination men's and women's tournament fields is established by the Division III Championships Committee which currently prescribes an approximate access ratio of 1:6.5 not to exceed 64 participants, as per Article 31.3.1.1 of the 2021-22 NCAA Division III Manual (pg. 219). The basis for the size of the tournament fields is the number of championship eligible teams the previous year, and the men's and women's committees have gained approval for the maximum 64-team tournament for both men and women in 2021 according to the Pre-Championships Manual (pgs. 17, 20). For the men, this is the second year (excluding the cancelled 2020 season) at the maximum 64-team field, while the women have been at the maximum since 2011. Our math for this year, as shown in the following table, suggests that the men's bracket could have been reduced to 63 teams due to the number of schools closing their doors or being absorbed by larger institutions. With the number of eligible teams dropping even further this year, it will be interesting to see how elastic the approximate access ratio is next fall—will 62.5 still round up to 64?

Types of Tournament Berths

Teams eligible for the championship tournament are divided into three pools: Pool A, Pool B, and Pool C, as per Section 2.3 of the D-III Soccer portion of the Pre-Championships Manual (pg. 20).

Pool A berths are automatic, based on pre-defined criteria set by each qualifying conference for how they will award their automatic berth. Often the berth is awarded to the conference champion, whether determined by regular season finish or by a post-season tournament. However, some conferences determine their champion by regular season finish and hold a post-season tournament to award the automatic berth. AQ is the common short-hand for automatic qualifiers or Pool A berths. (Note: our 2021 Conference Championship Central page indicates whether each tournament determines the conference champion, AQ berth, or both, and includes a table of AQ winners.)

For the first time since the automatic qualifier system was implemented in 1998, all men's and women's conferences receive an AQ. After a two-year waiting period, the recently formed Atlantic East Conference (AEC) gained men's and women's AQs for the 2020 season that was cancelled, making this year's automatic berths their first. Then, earlier this year, the last conference without an automatic berth, the small, geographically dispersed American Collegiate Athletic Association (ACAA), joined the shrinking Capital Athletic Conference (CAC) that had exhausted its two-year grace period for falling below the 7-team requirement for an AQ. Instead of two conferences without an automatic berth, the rebranded Coast-to-Coast Athletic Conference (C2C) retained the AQ while Pool B shrunk to its lowest levels ever comprising just three independent men's teams and two independent women's teams.

Berths given to teams from Pools B and C are at-large berths. The recipients are selected by the NCAA men's and women's committees following a set of selection criteria and principles discussed in more detail below.  

Allocation of Berths

Forty-three (43) men's conferences and forty-four (44) women's conferences have been granted automatic qualification (AQ) for the 2021 championship tournaments. All conferences with automatic berths are listed on page 21 of the Pre-Championships Manual and in the section below.

The number of at-large Pool B berths is determined by applying an access ratio up to but not to exceed that of Pool A teams. The Pool A access ratio is the total number of eligible teams in AQ conferences divided by the number of AQ conferences. When this ratio is applied to Pool B, the result is traditionally truncated (rounded down to the nearest whole number) to ensure that Pool B access ratio does not exceed that of Pool A. With just 3 men's and 2 women's teams in Pool B this year, there is no Pool B tournament berth and these teams are added to Pool C.

The number of at-large Pool C berths is simply the number of remaining tournament spots after the Pool A and B berths have been filled. 

According to Section 2.3 of the D-III Soccer portion of the Pre-Championships Manual (pg. 20), the tournament berth allocations for 2021 break down as follows for the men's and women's championships (starting in 2012 the manual stopped showing the calculation of the number of Pool B berths, but our calculations as shown in the table confirm the given distribution). 

Automatic Qualifying (AQ) Conferences

As per Section 2.3 of the Division III portion of the Pre-Championships Manual (pg. 21), the following conferences have been granted automatic qualification (AQ) for the 2021 championship from Pool A.

Our 2021 Conference Championship Central page is tracking the conference tournament results and the awarding of AQ berths here.

At-Large Selection Guidelines

After all the automatic (Pool A) berths have been awarded by the conferences, the men's and women's committees will make their Pool B berth selections followed by their Pool C berth selections. Teams are selected for Pool B and C at-large berths on a national basis, using regional selection criteria (see section below). Beyond the selection criteria, note the following principles concerning at-large selections.

• To be considered during the at-large selection process (Pool B or C), a team must play at least 70 percent of its competition against Division III in-region opponents. (This criteria is easily met due to all the ways an opponent can be considered "in-region": within the same defined region, within a 500-mile driving radius, within the same membership geographical region, or within the same conference in an official conference match.)
• There will be no predetermined regional allocations for Pools B and C.
• There will be no maximum or minimum number of berths from one region.
• Institutions participating in conferences that meet the automatic-qualification requirements and are eligible to be selected to a championship via Pool A and/or Pool C, may not elect instead to be selected via Pool B as an independent institution.

At-Large Selection Criteria

The at-large tournament selection criteria are found in Section 2.4 of the Pre-Championships Manual (pg. 23). The criteria is 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.

"Ranked teams" are those opponents ranked in either the final NCAA regional rankings or the third weekly NCAA rankings. You can learn more about the NCAA regional rankings here or here. 

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) as shown below. For the fourth straight season (excluding the cancelled 2020 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. 50) of the Pre-Championship Manual.

At-Large Selection Timeline and Process

The process of making the at-large berth selections for the NCAA tournament starts with weekly NCAA regional rankings which you can learn more about here or here. These rankings are done following the fourth last, third last, second last and last week prior to the tournament selections being made. The first three of these weekly rankings are, by design, a direct foreshadowing of the at-large selections because they are (1) done by the same committee that makes the at-large tournament selections and (2) done by applying the at-large selection criteria. This provides a certain level of transparency to the at-large selection process and avoids major surprises when the at-large selections are announced.

Following the release of the third weekly regional rankings the process is as follows.

• Conference championships are completed by 6:00 p.m. ET, Sunday, November 7.
• The NCAA compiles the data corresponding to the at-large selection criteria (win-loss-tie percentage against Division III opponents, results versus ranked Division III teams, Division III Strength-of-schedule) and provides it to Regional Advisory Committees.
• The Regional Advisory Committees do their fourth regional rankings in the same manner as the previous three weeks. The results versus ranked Division III teams (RvR) criteria is based on who was ranked in the third regional rankings that were released on Wednesday, November 3.
• The national committee makes adjustments to the regional rankings as they see fit but does not publish them until after they have announced the tournament field (including the at-large berth selections).
• An updated RvR is developed based on opponents were ranked in either the third or the just completed fourth regional rankings. This is the RvR that the national committee will use when comparing teams across regions on a national basis.
• With no Pool B at-large berths available this year, the process jumps to Pool C at-large selections.
• Pool C teams (teams who were not awarded their conference's automatic berth and unselected Pool B teams) in the final regional rankings are identified.
• The highest ranked Pool C candidate from each region is placed "on the board", the ten teams discussed, and one team is selected. The next highest ranked Pool C candidate from the selected team's region is added to the board and the process repeats until all Pool C at-large berths have been awarded.

The at-large selections are added to the teams who were awarded their conference's automatic berth, completing the tournament field at which point the committee begins the process of grouping the teams and developing the tournament bracket with geographical proximity playing a major role. You can read more about that here. The tournament fields and brackets are announced mid-day Monday, November 8.

Published Final Regional Rankings

The fourth and final rankings, which take into account the completion of conference races and tournaments and serve as a basis for the at-large tournament selections, are published following the announcement of the tournament fields.  They will often answer many questions about why certain teams were at-large selections and others not.

Comments or feedback for the author? Email Christan Shirk.