I set off this week on what I thought would be a pretty easy task. I wanted to understand the Division II Regional rankings, and come up with an explanation for why the Emporia State women, ranked eighth nationally, were only ranked fourth in the South Central Region.
After watching Emporia State blow out two of the best teams in its conference the past week — Missouri Southern and Pittsburg State — it was hard for me to fathom that there are three teams better in the region, and I was not alone.
“They’re the No. 1 team in the region, period,” Pitt State coach Lane Lord said. “They can score. They play good defense. The best thing they do though is they hit big shots, and anytime you start to make a run, they get a hustle play or a loose ball and turn it into a 3-point play or a 3-point shot. They’ve got a great inside game, and Ida Edwards is arguably the best player in the league.”
Well, Lord is only in his second year in the MIAA, and this is my first year covering the league, so I thought maybe we had the regional rankings all wrong, and the Lady Hornets were right where they should be.
ESU coach Brandon Schneider has been at Emporia State for 13 years — 11 as head coach and two as an assistant — and he’s spent many more years around the region, growing up around the West Texas A&M program where his dad was the coach.
Maybe Schneider understood why his team’s ranking seemed low.
“I obviously don’t understand them; I don’t agree with them,” Schneider said. “So me trying to have any control and our team having any control over what six people do and think would just be a waste of our time.”
Since I had a little time to waste this week, I tried to figure out why Emporia State was only ranked fourth in the region; why the MIAA has only three teams in the top 10; and what Einsteinien formula they used to figure these rankings.
But first I took a history lesson.
I looked back over the last 12 years to see how the teams and conferences fared in the regional tournament. After all, the reason the regional rankings are so important is because they decide which five teams get an at-large bid into the regional. The South Central Region has three conferences — the MIAA, the Lone Star and the Heartland — and the conference tournament winner in each conference gets an automatic bid, and then the final regional ranking decides the seeds.
In the most recent regional rankings, the MIAA has three teams (Nos. 4, 6 and 7); the Lone Star has six teams (Nos. 1, 3, 5, 8, 9 and 10); and the Heartland has one team, ranked second.
That led me to believe that traditionally the Lone Star performed the best. I was mistaken.
In the last 12 years, an MIAA team has won the region seven times, the Lone Star has won four times and Drury, no longer in the region, won once. Out of the 22 teams to play in the regional championship game, 15 have been from the MIAA.
“It’s obvious to me that the MIAA has done a pretty good job in this region for a long time, and we’re not probably getting the respect that our conference deserves,” Schneider said.
Well, I thought, maybe it’s a new era, and maybe the national rankings are also just a reflection of the past and they don’t reflect the regional rankings in all the other regions as well.
Wrong again.
Out of the top 14 teams nationally, only three were not ranked first or second in their region: No. 8 ESU at four, No. 9 Washburn at six and No. 12 Tusculum at three in the Southeast region. The No. 15 and 16 teams, Quincy and Michigan Tech, are third and fourth in their region; however, the top two teams are ranked fourth and fifth nationally.
So what was the South Central Region looking at? I called committee chairman Sally Brooks to find out.
Brooks is the coach at Angelo State, ranked eighth in the region with a 14-9 record. Brooks told me the regional rankings were completely objective, whereas the National rankings are completely subjective.
“It’s not supposed to be subjective; it’s not supposed to be, ‘well, I think this team is better.’ I know why you’re asking that question, but it’s not supposed to be about what we think,” Brooks said. “It’s supposed to be about the numbers we’re looking at. Even if we saw other teams play, we’re not on the call saying this team is better based on somebody’s personal feelings on it.”
Brooks kept emphasizing objective, not subjective, and the fact that it’s all about the numbers. If that’s the case, I’m confused why there even is a committee.
Plug the numbers into a computer, see what it spits out and leave the human element out of it.
The criteria the committee is supposed to use includes overall record against D-2 teams, in-region record, strength of schedule, results versus ranked teams and significant wins and losses.
So I tried to train myself to forget about my subjectivity and think like a committee member. To make sure we all don’t let our feelings get in the way, let’s look at two teams without giving away which school is which.
Team X is 18-4 overall against D-2 opponents, 18-4 in-region, in second place in its conference and 3-2 against the top 10 teams in the region.
Team Y is 18-3 overall against D-2 opponents, 18-3 in-region, in first place in its conference and 3-0 against the top 10 teams in the region.
Team X and Y share three common opponents: Pittsburg State, Texas A&M-Kingsville and Texas A&M International. Team X beat Pitt State at a neutral site in its state, also beat International at a neutral site, and lost to Kingsville at a neutral site. Team Y beat Pitt State twice (home and away), beat International in Texas on a neutral court, and lost at Kingsville.
Team X is Central Oklahoma, ranked third in the region, and team Y is Emporia State.
So maybe I’m missing something inside the numbers, or maybe subjectivity (say it ain’t so) is creeping its way into the rankings.
Emporia State associate athletic director Carmen Leeds was the chairman of the South Central Committee for women’s basketball from 2000 to 2004 and she is currently on the softball committee. Leeds said subjectivity does enter the equation, and sometimes they’re even asked to set their objectivity aside.
“I was told we were following the numbers too much is what I was told when we were on, and to make sure that we didn’t, and on my softball committee same thing,” she said. “The national rep would come back and ask why and you would say because of the numbers, and they would ask, what’s your other reasoning? So you have to kind of talk the numbers out and be able to explain it away from the numbers.”
Is this committee different?
Brooks would have you believe so, but committee member Maryann Mitts, the Missouri Southern coach, painted a different picture.
“Is there some subjectivity? I think as we get closer to the end there will be, but just like anything else, everybody can look at the columns and the numbers any way they choose,” Mitts said.
Mitts said the column that is hurting the MIAA is strength of schedule. Most MIAA schools did not play Lone Star schools in the nonconferece. Instead, the Lady Hornets scheduled four NAIA teams, but that was not because they wanted to avoid Lone Star and other D-2 teams.
When Schneider was assembling the field for the Candlewood Suites Classic last year, he could not get any D-2 schools to accept an offer. Emporia State has also struggled to find D-2 schools to agree to play a home-and-home series.
“We wanted to try to create a regional tournament, and we were able to do that back when my dad was coming to the tournament and Cameron was coming to the tournament,” Schneider said. “... It’s been increasingly difficult to get any Lone Star teams to come because they’ve got people that are on the committee within their conference telling them that as the chair of the committee, it’s dumb for you to play any MIAA schools, so it’s been really, really hard.”
So with no choice but to show its prowess in conference, the Lady Hornets have done just that. They are one of only two teams in the top 10 with a perfect record against the rest of the top 10. Saint Mary’s, ranked second in the region, is the other. But Saint Mary’s has only played one game against the top 10, a win against No. 5 Southeastern Oklahoma, ranked fifth.
Emporia State has three wins over top 10 teams. Its best win comes against the Lady Blues, who are ranked a spot below Southeastern but could also make a case to be ranked higher.
Washburn has wins against California (Pa.) and Indiana (Pa.), the top two ranked teams in the Atlantic Region, and a win against Drury, ranked fifth in the Midwest Region. The Lady Blues were not even ranked in the first regional rankings this season.
Looking at the numbers, it’s tough to explain how Saint Mary’s, 17-3 in region, is second when it plays in the Heartland, considered the weakest conference in the region.
West Texas A&M, ranked first, does make sense, because its record against the top 10 is 5-1, and its in-region record is 20-3.
As for the rest of the rankings that have the Lady Hornets at fourth, Washburn at six and only three MIAA teams in the top 10, I must side with Schneider and subjectively object.
admireed (anonymous) says...
The MIAA is 3-8 versus the Loan Star this season. End of story.
February 20, 2009 at 5:16 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )