[NOTE: Typically, my posts provide facts and statistics and the conclusions they lead to, trying to keep my subjective views out of the picture. Today's post is more of an opinion piece, so please bear that in mind. Consider the facts I provide and draw your own conclusion.]
The NCAA made one big mistake in setting up the 2023 NCAA Tournament bracket. And no, it was not in deciding (debatably) not to give an at large position to RPI #27 South Alabama. It was in pairing UCLA and UC Irvine in a first round match.
The UCLA v UC Irvine pairing allows a great case study of problems in the NCAA-mandated bracket formation process.
First, some background:
UCLA, of the four #1 seeds, was in the overall #2 position. This means that the Women's Soccer Committee believed their performance over the course of the season had earned them the second-most favored position in the bracket. (Florida State was the overall #1.) If this were basketball, it would mean their first round opponent should be the next-to-poorest team in the 64-team field. So who, in fact, did they get as an opponent? UC Irvine. And who won the game? UC Irvine 1-0.
Of course, occasionally there are massive upsets in soccer. So, was this a massive upset? Was this the next to poorest team in the bracket beating the next to strongest team? If you don't know history and the problems with the RPI rankings, you might think so. I think otherwise.
Next, some history:
In the 12 years from 2010 through 2022 (excluding Covid-affected 2020), UC Irvine's Big West Conference had 14 teams in the NCAA Tournament (all unseeded). Of their first round games, 9 were against seeded and 5 against unseeded opponents, One was a home game and 13 were away. These Committee seeds and home team selections show the Committee believed the Big West had the weaker team in all but 1 of the first round games.
In fact, the Big West teams won 3 first round games. Interestingly the one expected win was a loss. The 3 wins all were games the Committee expected them to lose.
Who was involved in the games that did not end up as the Committee expected? UC Irvine, in all of them:
In 2010, UC Irvine defeated #4 seed Wake Forest @ Wake Forest.
In 2011, UC Irvine lost to unseeded San Diego @ UC Irvine.
In 2021, UC Irvine defeated #2 seed UCLA @ UCLA.
In 2022, UC Irvine defeated #4 seed Southern California @ Southern California.
And, if you add 2023 to this:
In 2023, UC Irvine defeated #1.2 seed UCLA @ UCLA.
In 2023, UC Irvine defeated #8 seed Gonzaga @ neutral site.
Let's look at the Big West conference:
In 2023, the RPI ranked the Big West as the #23 conference. So did the KP Index. Massey had them at #11. The Balanced RPI had them at #14.
So far as ranking conferences is concerned, the 3 position difference between the Balanced RPI and Massey is fairly large, although perhaps accounted for by Massey's rankings incorporating data from the prior three seasons whereas the Balanced RPI uses only the current year's data. The difference between the Balanced RPI and Massey however, on the one hand, and the RPI and KPI, on the other, is far outside the range of reasonability. It indicates a serious rating problem by either the Balanced RPI and Massey, on the one hand, or by the RPI and KPI, on the other. If you take into consideration the significant problem that the RPI and KPI have rating teams from a conference in relation to teams from other conferences and teams from a region in relation to teams in other regions, and particularly their discrimination against teams from the West region, all as discussed in my February 1, 2024 post, where the problem lies is clear. The RPI and KPI seriously and unacceptably underrated Big West teams. This shows up for UC Irvine with the RPI and KPI both rating them at #151 as compared to the Balanced RPI at #118 and Massey at #67.
Notwithstanding the problems with the RPI, the NCAA requires the Women's Soccer Committee to use it. This year, the NCAA allowed the Committee also to use the KPI as a supplement, but only if it could not make its decisions using only the RPI and the other primary factors the NCAA requires it to consider. Further, the NCAA forbids the Committee to use any other rating systems or polls. The NCAA also requires the Committee to consider only the current year's results. It is important to note, however, that these limitations on what the Committee can consider apply to at large selections. The limitations do not apply to seeding, although the Committee nevertheless may stick to them when seeding.
Further, Committee members serve three year terms and at least half of the members must be administrators (not coaches). So half the members may not know much about the national soccer landscape and the Committee as a whole has a structurally limited institutional memory.
And, add to this that once the Committee has seeded teams, the NCAA's travel cost saving program takes over and places teams in the bracket so as to minimize travel costs; and that UC Irvine is a little over 50 miles from UCLA.
Out of all of this, we get a first round upset that takes the overall #2 seed out of the Tournament. An upset, yes. But in my opinion based on past history, not a "massive" upset. It thus is easily arguable that UCLA never should have been paired with UC Irvine in a first round game. UCLA had earned and deserved much better treatment from the NCAA. And to be clear, although perhaps the Committee could have stepped in and said, "No, this won't do," the primary fault is with the NCAA and its above-described structure for forming the NCAA Tournament bracket.
Let's look at this through a different lens:
According to the RPI, the Big West was the #23 conference. In the Big West, UC Irvine won the conference tournament, but in the conference regular season standings, it finished tied for 6th-7th place. As a comparison, the Atlantic 10 was the #22 conference. It likewise had a 6th-7th tie in the regular season between St. Joseph's and Rhode Island each with 4-9-6 overall records. Suppose that St. Joseph's had played #1.3 seed BYU in the first round and Rhode Island had played #1.4 seed Clemson. Upsets in those games would be unthinkable. Yet the #6-7 team in the Big West upsetting #1.2 UCLA, as I believe I have shown above, while surprising was not unthinkable.
And let's look through yet another lens:
According to the RPI, the Ivy League was the #2 conference. Brown finished #1 in the conference regular season and ended the season with a #8 RPI rank. Harvard finished #2 in the conference and won the conference tournament, ending with a #11 RPI rank. Columbia finished #4 in the conference and #20 in the RPI ranks. Yale finished #8 in the conference with a #98 RPI rank. In the NCAA Tournament, Brown received a #3 seed, Harvard a #4, and Columbia a #8.
I have selected these Ivy League teams because they are the only ones from the League (which is in the North) that played teams from the West during the regular season. Here are all of their results against teams from the West:
Brown (#8, #3 seed) won against RPI #232 UC San Diego, @ home, 2-0. UCSD is in the RPI #23 Big West and finished #5 in the conference standings.
Brown (#8, #3 seed) tied RPI #65 Portland, @ home, 0-0. Portland is in the RPI #8 West Coast conference and finished tied for #4-5 in the conference standings.
Harvard (#11, #4 seed) lost to RPI #93 Long Beach State, @ away, 2-3. Long Beach State is in the RPI #23 Big West and finished #4 in the conference standings.
Harvard (#11, #4 seed) tied RPI #40 Pepperdine, @ away, 1-1. Pepperdine is in the RPI #8 West Coast conference and finished tied for #2-3 in the conference standings.
Columbia (#20, #8 seed) lost to RPI #28 Santa Clara, @ away, 0-1. Santa Clara is in the RPI #8 West Coast conference and finished tied for #2-3 in the conference standings.
Columbia (#20, #8 seed) tied RPI #124 San Francisco, @ away, 0-0. San Francisco is in the #8 West Coast conference and finished #6 in the conference standings.
Yale (#98) lost to RPI #77 Washington, @ away, 1-2. Washington was in the #4 Pac 12 conference and finished #7 in the conference standings.
Yale (#98) won against RPI #168 Seattle, @ away, 4-0. Seattle is in the #20 WAC conference and finished #3 in the conference standings.
When you consider that Brown, Harvard, and Columbia all were seeded in the NCAA Tournament and put that together with their regular season results against teams from the West and the fact that UC Irvine won the Big West conference tournament, I think you have to ask, "How could all three of those teams have been seeded and UC Irvine not been seeded?"
In my opinion, the correct answer is, at least in part, that UC Irvine should have been seeded. (It also is possible the Ivy teams were over-seeded.) UCLA never should have had to play UC Irvine in the first round.
One can argue that the Committee could have or should have seen this and intervened to avoid it. In my opinion, however, the primary responsibility is with the NCAA and its bracket formation structure. The NCAA gave the Committee a faulty rating system that the NCAA already has rejected for basketball but forces other sports still to use. Its Committee membership rules limit Committee awareness of the broad Division I women's soccer landscape and also limit the Committee's institutional memory. The use of the travel cost limitation system -- rather than seeding the entire field -- can create inappropriate first round matchups. All of these came together in this case, with the result that the integrity of the bracket was seriously degraded.
I think the Committee needs to consider this particular case carefully and figure out what it needs to do to be sure something like it does not happen again. And, to the extent the Committee concludes that this was the result primarily of the structure the NCAA requires it to operate under, the Committee needs to demand changes to that structure.
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