NCAA Tournament Bracket Formation: Most Important Factors for #3 Seeds

Continuing with my reports on the most important factors in the Women's Soccer Committee's decision-making on NCAA Tournament at large selections and seeds, here is a table showing the most important factors in deciding that "yes," a team gets a #3 seed:

Factor	Yes 3 Seed
ARPI Rank and Conference Rank	8
Conference Rank and CO Rank	6
ARPI Rank	4
Conference ARPI and HTH Score	4
Conference Rank and HTH Score	4
ANCRPI Rank and CO Score	3
ANCRPI Rating and CO Score	3
ARPI Rating and Conference ARPI	3
Top 50 Results Rank and CO Rank	3
ANCRPI Rating and CO Rank	3
ARPI Rating and Top 50 Results Score	2
ARPI Rating and ANCRPI Rank	2
ARPI Rank and Conference ARPI	2
ANCRPI Rank and Top 50 Results Score	2
Conference ARPI and CO Rank	2

This table shows the 15 most important factors in determining which teams get #2 seeds.  Here, the Conference Rank/ARPI Rank paired factor is the powerful, followed by the Conference Rank/Common Opponents Rank paired factor.  What this suggests is that when the Committee gets to the #3 seeds, the conference a team is in has grown in importance.  Also, here Head to Head Results becomes an influential factor, paired with Conference ARPI and Conference Rank.

Also of note here, the factor patterns are less able to identify teams to receive #3 seeds than they are for #1 and #2 seeds.  This suggests that the Committee has a harder time identifying teams for #3 seeds and needs to do more "guessing" about which teams should receive #3s.  This is consistent with my analyses of the Committee's specific #3 seed decisions.

The following table shows the 25 most important factors in determining which teams do not get #3 seeds:

Factor	No 3 Seed
ARPI Rating and Top 50 Results Rank	423
ARPI Rank	416
ARPI Rank and Rating	404
ARPI	397
ARPI Rating and Top 60 CO Rank	389
ARPI Rating and Top 50 Results Score	382
ARPI Rank and ANCRPI Rank	377
ARPI Rank and Top 50 Results Rank	373
ARPI Rating and ANCRPI Rank	368
ARPI Rank and Conference Rank	353
ARPI Rank and Top 50 Results Score	344
ARPI Rating and ANCRPI Rating	316
ARPI Rating and Top 60 CO	311
ARPI Rating and Top 60 HTH	310
Conference Rank and CO Score	310
ANCRPI Rating and CO Score	306
Top 50 Results Score and CO Rank	297
HTH Score and Last 8 Games (Poor Results)	277
Conference ARPI and CO Score	275
ANCRPI Rating and HTH Score	273
Top 50 Results Score and Last 8 Games (Poor Results)	263
ANCRPI Rank and Top 50 Results Score	261
ANCRPI Rating and Last 8 Games (Poor Results)	261
ARPI Rank and Top 60 CO Rank	260
ARPI Rating and Last 8 Games (Poor Results)	260

Here, ARPI Rating paired with Top 50 Results Rank is the most powerful factor, with ARPI Rating paired with Top 60 Common Opponents Rank also being a powerful paired factor.  ARPI Rank alone as a primary factor is just next to the top of the list.  By itself, it excludes all teams ranked #20 or poorer from receiving #3 seeds.  Indeed, the ARPI clearly is the most important factor in determining #3 seeds, when paired with other factors.  I suspect that, in trying to distinguish among potential #3 and #4 seeds, the Committee has a hard time finding persuasive data one way or the other.  In that circumstance, perhaps it tends to default to the ARPI for purposes of eliminating teams from consideration.  I believe there's support for this possibility in the factors' being pretty good at identifying which teams will receive some seed, but not being so good at identifying which seed they will receive when it comes to the #3s and #4s.