Team News - NCAA Playoff Possibilities

The regional rankings have been posted for a few weeks which has generated some questions about how they are determined. Anyone who’s interested can read the details of how the Division II Football playoffs work in the official 2018 Division II Football Pre-Championship Manual. For everyone else, here’s a high level overview.

For Division II football, the NCAA seeds seven teams from each of four regions in the country. The Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference is a member of Super Region 1, along with the Northeast 10, the Mountain East Conference, and the Great Midwest Athletic Conference. To dispel one myth, unlike soccer, basketball, baseball, softball and some other sports, no team receives automatic qualification for winning its conference for the football playoffs.

Each team is evaluated primarily based on its Division II record, weighted opponents winning percentage (its opponents’ winning percentage and its opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage), head-to-head record, and results versus common opponents. Other criteria considered include record on the road, record against teams with a record of .500 or better and record in non-conference, in-region games. So even though conference champions don’t get an automatic bid, conference champions typically grade highly in the qualification criteria.

If we evaluate the 46 teams from Super Region 1 and sort them based on winning percentage plus weighted OWP (far right column), we get the following list:

This list matches the NCAA's official regional rankings with two exceptions:
- Fairmont St is #10 instead of Shepherd, due to their head-to-head result which Fairmont St won.
- West Chester and New Haven are swapped for no known reason.

So it's not "disrespect" for the Golden Rams that they're third, but rather the fact that West Chester has faced teams with really bad records and, as a result, have the worst weighted OWP among any of the teams in the top ten.

Games this Weekend

#1 Notre Dame (10-0) at Seton Hill (1-9)
#2 LIU Post (9-0) vs #4 New Haven (8-0)
#3 West Chester (9-0) at #7 Slippery Rock (9-1)
#5 Hillsdale (9-1) at Indianapolis (8-1)
#6 Kutztown (8-1) at Edinboro (6-4)
#8 Tiffin (9-1) vs Findlay (7-3)
#9 Ohio Dominican (8-2) at Lake Erie (0-9)
#10 Fairmont St (8-2) at West Liberty (3-7)

A Golden Ram Win

A win on Saturday gives the Golden Rams the PSAC championship and assures them of a playoff spot, but likely keeps them at #3 in the region. Notre Dame will surely take a hit to their OWP, but they also have a 90% chance of defeating a hapless Seton Hill. They seem to be positioned to be no worse than second. In addition to a conference crown, the winner of the Northeast-10 championship will also get a significant boost in OWP. If it's LIU Post, they may become the top seed in the region. New Haven, which already has a better OWP than the Golden Rams, will likely rise to two if it captures the Northeast-10. So it's either 1. LIU Post, 2. Notre Dame, 3. West Chester; or 1. Notre Dame, 2. New Haven, 3. West Chester. That still means another game at John A. Farrell Stadium this season.

A Golden Ram Loss

It's worth noting that if Hillsdale, Kutztown, Slippery Rock and Tiffin all win on Saturday, there will be eight teams in the region with one or no losses, and one of them will not be going to the playoffs since only seven teams from the region are invited. So which team will be eliminated? Oftentimes, it's the one with the weakest schedule, which should concern Golden Rams fans. The only factor that might save West Chester in such a scenario is their head-to-head result against Kutztown which may be enough to overcome the OWP deficit that the Golden Rams have.

Conclusion

So it's real easy on Saturday. Root for a Golden Ram win. Otherwise, hope for a loss by Hillsdale, Kutztown, or Tiffin. Otherwise, it'll be a long, nervous wait until the NCAA's announcement on Sunday at 5:00pm.