Wins And Losses? Irrelevant When It Comes To NCAA Lacrosse
by Sean Keeley on May 4, 2010 2:39 PM EDT
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At least, that seems to be the case in Inside Lacrosse's latest bracketology. (Ed. Note - I'm not blaming IL for just using the system exists...hate the game...) Despite being on the verge of finishing the season 11-1, with their lone loss coming at the hands of the No. 1 team in the nation by a mere goal, Syracuse could very well end up at the No. 4 seed in the Tournament. Syracuse's crime? Not playing in the ACC Conference.
The Top 8 teams run in order of the RPI rankings, with Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and then Syracuse taking the four first-round byes. That doesn't make the difference between No. 2 and No. 4 sound like a lot but when you factor in that it could be the difference between playing the winner of #7 Princeton/#10 Army or #5 Duke/#12 Denver, you'd much rather want to play that first group (no offense, P-town).
Inside Lacrosse with a correction - "all eight seeds play home games in first round - so Cuse at 4 would host a first-round game, not a bye." I should pay attention more. So it's the difference between playing No. 5 Duke and No. 7 Princeton...still a big difference.
There's actually two issues holding back the Orange. One is that ACC RPI overload. Since all four teams are ranked in the top five and have played each other multiple times, it's practically impossible for any of them to come away from the season with an RPI out of the top ten.
The other issue though is the lack of Top Five victories for the Orange this season (zero). They lost to Virginia and Hopkins/Princeton are not their usual selves, lessening the impact of SU's schedule. Of course, Cornell and Princeton are No. 6 and No. 7 and Georgetown is No. 10 so it's not like they're a steep drop-off from the others. If you're just looking at "wins over top 20 teams," the Orange match 10-3 Maryland and have more than 11-2 North Carolina.
If Cornell is one spot higher in the polls, does that make Syracuse a better team and worthy of a No. 2 or 3 seed? I guess so.
The Glaude is more of an expert on the RPI itself and its inherent flaws. He lays the truthiness smackdown:
If the RPI is going to influence so many metrics in the NCAA selection criteria, shouldn't the RPI be less flawed? That's the real issue.
As long as college lacrosse continues to be a Wild West of made-up conferences and suspect ranking systems, this is how it'll go. And unfortunately, because of this RPI system, the sport will never truly grow because why should Syracuse schedule an up-and-coming program from the West when it needs to schedule Virginia to ensure its RPI status?
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If Hopkins wins on Saturday, I think the NCAA puts them in.
There is such malaise outside of the top six teams.
Here’s what I think should happen, though. Put Hopkins in and give them an unseeded position. Then ship them as far away as possible for a first-round game. If they win at that site, Hopkins’ inclusion in the field is validated.
RPI for lax is a joke
Basketball RPI is less flawed because there’s a larger sample size. But a 13-14 game season is not long enough to wring out the same sort of RPI issues that you see in the first half of basketball season.
Nova’s RPI dropped from 12 to 21 after a win.
Syracuse players have a lot of length.
If anything
Virginia should be the one’s that are angry. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to play Syracuse again in a game before the championship. SU didn’t have John Lade, and UVA only beat us by 1.
Give SU a 4 seed. It would all but guarantee them another title. Going through Stony Brook/Siena wouldn’t be tough at home. Duke was absolutely demolished by SU last year. At that point UVA would be in the semi’s and at worst that game is a 50/50 toss up.
The committee could justify SU anywhere from 2-4 although I think 3 or 4 is more likely. I wouldn’t count on Inside Lacrosse’s bracketology though. They aren’t the most accurate.
One of the biggest flaws in this process is the way that they rank wins from 1-5, 6-10, 11-20. This assigns a huge difference between 5 and 6 and between 10 and 11 when the actual difference between the two teams may be very slight.
But in the world of lacrosse
there really is a big difference between 5 & 6 and 10 & 11.
Go Orange(men)!
Making this bracket
is gonna be such a mess. Between all the mediocre teams and the logjam of Syracuse and the ACC schools towards the top, I do not envy who’s on the committee. Also remember that Princeton and Stony Brook host quarterfinal rounds, which at this point would mean that we might have an away game against one of them in the 2nd round. Lacrosse does it the opposite of basketball. Not that I’m worried about facing either one of them, I’m more worried about possibly going up against Duke or Cornell (I know we’ve beat them but they’ve been nailbiters recently) in the 2nd round more than anything else.
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