Our projected Field of 55

This was a great season for us at D3baseball.com. Thanks to our partnership with PrestoSports and, well, a little help from another 150 SIDs, we collected all of the schedules and results for 2010 Division III baseball and got strength of schedule automatically calculated.

The 55 teams that will compete in the 2010 NCAA Division III Baseball Championship will be announced early Monday morning.

What this means is we can do our own NCAA playoff projections, in near-record time.

So what we did is emulate as much as possible the selection process used by the NCAA committee: pick the Pool B teams, then pick Pool C, comparing the top candidate from each of the eight regions side by side, simultaneously before selecting a team. Then the next team in that particular region's rankings gets "on the board" and the process continues.

What we get is 55 teams: 36 automatic bids, four from Pool B (not a member of those conferences) and 15 from Pool C (the rest of the teams on an at-large basis). We then slotted them into geographical areas, placed them in one of the eight regionals, and seeded them.

We dealt with the seven-team bracket for the first time in a few years. We tried to split teams up so no one regional had three teams from the same conference. Then we tried to add some competitive balance to the whole process.

And it went something like this.

Three Pool B teams were considered mortal locks: Chapman, St. Scholastica and St. John Fisher were the easy picks. After that, though, it got more difficult. In last week's regional rankings, the New York committee had Staten Island next on the list. We didn't see that as likely any longer, considering the one-and-out in the ECAC Metro region tournament. We debated Stevens, Ithaca and Staten Island for the top Pool B candidate in the region, eliminated Staten Island on its low strength of schedule, then chose Ithaca over Stevens because of Ithaca's 3-1 record against Stevens head-to-head. We looked at Bethany Lutheran from the Midwest and LaGrange and Huntingdon from the South before deciding that LaGrange should still be ahead of Huntingdon based on the last time we saw the Panthers in the regional rankings. In the end, we chose Ithaca, and surprisingly, it was rather easy. Ithaca's regional winning percentage is comparable to Bethany Lutheran's, its strength of schedule is much higher, and Ithaca is 4-4 against regionally ranked opponents while Bethany Lutheran is 2-5 and LaGrange is 2-7.

On to Pool C. For the sake of time, here's the list:
1 Cortland State
2 UW-Stevens Point
3 Marietta
4 Eastern Connecticut
5 Salisbury
6 Mississippi College
7 Alvernia
8 Washington and Jefferson
9 York
10 Rowan
11 Keene State
12 North Central (Ill.)
13 Plattsburgh State
14 John Carroll
15 Carthage

It got harder as we moved down the list, obviously. After Cortland State was the easy first pick, we didn't end up with another New York Region team until nearly the end in Plattsburgh State. The four final spots were nail-biters.

The playoff selection criteria are listed at the bottom of this file. It notes that "if the evaluation of the primary criteria does not result in a decision, the secondary criteria will be reviewed." When you get to the end of the Pool C discussion, you routinely end up without being able to make a decision. However, when you went to the secondary criteria on Carthage and, say, Millsaps, one new number popped. Carthage was 4-5 in in-region games against regionally ranked teams. However, the Red Men were also 2-2 in non-region games against regionally ranked opponents, including two wins against Kean. Millsaps was 4-4 in in-region games of that type and did not play an out-of-region game against a regionally ranked team.

The teams left on our board when Carthage was selected: Anderson, Concordia (Ill.), FDU-Florham, Millsaps, Rochester, Texas Lutheran and Westfield State. One note about Westfield State -- it stood out to us that in a region where it's apparently easy to get a high strength of schedule, Westfield's was only .517.

The projected regionals:
New England
1 Tufts
2 Wheaton (Mass.)
3 Western New England
4 Eastern Connecticut
5 Worcester State
6 Mass-Boston
7 St. Joseph's (Maine)
8 Castleton State

New York
1 Cortland State
2 St. John Fisher
3 York (Pa.)
4 Plattsburgh State
5 John Carroll
6 Ithaca
7 Brockport State
8 Skidmore
In other regions we were able to break up three teams from one conference. In the New York regional it was more difficult. Sending Brockport to the Mideast would be a 401-mile drive -- allowable but long. But if you were a stickler for the concept, you could swap Plattsburgh for Western New England or Brockport for Penn State-Behrend. Or, you could simply send Brockport to the Mideast with no replacement. York is here to keep us from having three CAC teams in the South Regional.

Mid-Atlantic
1 Johns Hopkins
2 Kean
3 Keene State
4 Rowan
5 Keystone
6 Moravian
7 Farmingdale State
8 Manhattanville
Farmingdale is a New York Region team but is much closer to Kean than to Auburn, N.Y.

Mideast
1 Heidelberg
2 Marietta
3 Wooster
4 Washington and Jefferson
5 Adrian
6 Rose-Hulman
7 Penn State-Behrend
Third OAC team John Carroll was sent to New York.

South
1 Shenandoah
2 Salisbury
3 Mary Washington
4 Widener
5 Alvernia
6 Bridgewater (Va.)
This is where we ran into some mileage issues. Moravian was in this regional in an earlier draft, but is more than 500 miles from Methodist, so we swapped Alvernia in. There are not many teams in our field of 55 that can get to this regional in 500 miles or less, the NCAA's standard for avoiding the cost of a flight.

Central
1 Buena Vista
2 St. Thomas
3 North Central (Ill.)
4 Webster
5 Illinois Wesleyan
6 Aurora
Two CCIW teams here, but not a third, as Carthage goes to UW-Whitewater, a much shorter trip. St. Thomas comes into this regional for competitive balance. There was some sentiment to make the Tommies the No. 1 seed, but even though they would be deserving based on the numbers, the committee hasn't shown the willingness to give an out-of-region team a No. 1 seed.

Midwest
1 UW-Whitewater
2 St. Scholastica
3 UW-Stevens Point
4 Carthage
5 Thomas More
6 Ripon
This is where Thomas More ends up. The Saints are right outside of Cincinnati, pretty far to the west and easy to place here. Even though Ripon is in the Central Region and Aurora is in the Midwest according to the NCAA's breakdown, it's a closer trip to put them in these respective regionals and doesn't affect the competitive balance.

West
1 Chapman
2 Linfield
3 Pomona-Pitzer
4 Texas-Tyler
5 Mississippi College
6 Trinity (Texas)
Also known as the airplane bracket. This was the first regional we did and it was set in stone pretty early.

The criteria:

The primary criteria emphasize regional competition (all contests leading up to NCAA championships); all criteria listed will be evaluated (not listed in priority order).
• Win-loss percentage against regional opponents.
• Strength-of-schedule (only contests versus regional competition).
- Opponents' Average Winning Percentage (OWP).
- Opponents' Opponents' Average Winning Percentage (OOWP).
• In-region head-to-head competition.
• In-region results versus common regional opponents.
• In-region results versus regionally ranked teams.
• Ranked opponents are defined as those teams ranked at any time of the rankings/ selection process.
• Conference postseason contests are included.
• Contests versus provisional and reclassifying members in their third and fourth years shall count in the primary criteria. Provisional and reclassifying members shall remain ineligible for rankings and selection.

If the evaluation of the primary criteria does not result in a decision, the secondary criteria will be reviewed. All the criteria listed will be evaluated (not listed in priority order). The secondary criteria introduce results against out-of-region Division III and all other opponents including those contests versus opponents from other classifications (i.e., provisionals, NAIA, NCAA Divisions I and II).
• Out-of-region head-to-head competition.
• Overall Division III win-loss percentage.
• Results versus common non Division III opponents.
• Results versus all Division III ranked teams.
• Overall win-loss percentage.
• Results versus all common opponents.
• Overall DIII Strength of Schedule.
Additionally, input is provided by regional advisory committees for consideration by the men's baseball committee. In order to be considered for selection for Pools B or C, an institution must play at least 50 percent of its competition against Division III in-region opponents. Coaches' polls and/or any other outside polls or rankings are not used as a selection criterion by the men's baseball committee for selection purposes.