#24 Penn State and #26 Michigan lost 4 of their last 8 games. #27 Penn and #25 Lehigh lost 5 of their last 8 games. With 10% Ante, you lose 10% of your Points when you lose. And, more than this, the winner collects your Points. The key to success in 10% Ante is, with an emphasis on the former, beating teams with lots of Points and not losing. For these four teams, they each beat teams with a legitimate amount of Points, but they simply lost too much.
#23 is Richmond, who received an Auto-Qualifier. We’re looking at Teams #22 and above. More specifically, the 15 teams below. The teams in yellow (below) are the teams that the NCAA selected. Obviously, 10% Ante disagrees with their choices.
Maryland and Yale are in. If you don’t understand why they should be included in the Tournament, you haven’t been paying attention this season…
…Notre Dame won the ACC and, along with Denver and Duke, are a notch above the rest. Lots of wins over teams with Points and few losses. They’re in…
…and this leaves 3 At Large spots left and 10 teams. The NCAA selected the three teams in yellow but let’s take a look.
In the first half of the season, Bucknell had a good season. And, in the second half (i.e. in the last 7 games), Bucknell won 6 of 7 games including wins over Loyola (+184), Army (+92), Yale (+294), and Lehigh (+106). The one loss was to Boston U in the Conference Finals. Not a great loss (-174), but also not a terrible loss, and certainly doesn’t erase the Points from their impressive late season wins that came directly before the loss. Bucknell should’ve been selected.
Working from the bottom up… #22 ranked Rutgers is #22 for a reason. Rutgers lost 4 of their last 6 games: Maryland x2, JHU, and OSU.
#21 Villanova and #16 OSU, respectively lost 4 and 5 out of their final 8 games. Villanova lost to Maryland, Denver, and Georgetown x2. OSU, after losing to Towson in Game Seven, in their last 8 games, OSU lost to Denver, Notre Dame, PSU, and Johns Hopkins x2. Villanova beat Yale in Game Two and Penn in Game Seven and then their wins over big Point teams became less obvious. OSU beat Maryland and Rutgers which helps enormously but didn’t help enough. Their multiple losses killed them. For both Villanova and OSU, too many losses and not enough wins against teams with a lot of Points doomed them to the #21 and #16 rankings.
Vermont did not have a lot of losses but, also, they did not have a lot of wins against teams with a lot of points. Their three best wins were against Sacred Heart, UMass-Lowell, and Stony Brook. They played Albany (x2) and UVA who have big Points, but UVM lost to them. This is why UVM was ranked #20
#17 Saint Josephs only had 4 losses and they had lots of wins including wins against UPenn (+164) and Robert Morris (+169) which netted them good Points but… In the last game of their season, St. Josephs lost to Robert Morris and lost 143 Points, Robert Morris gained 223 Points and moved ahead of St. Josephs putting Robert Morris at #14 and St. Josephs at #17.
From Game One through Game Eight, Princeton had five losses and one win against a team with a lot of Points, Rutgers. In their last five games, Princeton had five wins including a win against Cornell which netted them 303 Points. (I believe that this was the second-largest Point-get this season. Georgetown’s win over Denver was bigger.) But even with this end-of-season surge, even with Points being more plentiful at the end-of-the-season, Princeton couldn’t make up for their early season stumbles. Princeton finished the season ranked #18.
So we have Navy, Syracuse, and Virginia vying for the two remaining At Large spots.
Until just beyond mid-Season, Navy was respectably hovering around the 1,000 Point mark. Then they lost to Loyola (-103) and… In the last six games of the season, Navy beat Lehigh (+147), Holy Cross (+45), Colgate (+101), Army (+71), and Syracuse (+231 Points). (See above.) They lost their last game of the season to Lehigh (-153) but even with this loss, Navy held onto the #15 spot.
The last spot was between Virginia and Syracuse. Virginia (see above), early in the season, beat Loyola and Princeton. In the second half of Virginia’s season, UVA beat Richmond, Vermont, and Syracuse (+200 Points). Syracuse, early in the season, beat Army, UVA (+248 Points), Duke (+296 Points), and, in the second half of the season, SU beat Notre Dame (+250 Points). Then, in the last six games of Syracuse’s season, they won three games for relatively few Points and lost three games. UVA also lost three games for even more negative Points but… They also had some good Point-getting wins. Syracuse ended up being ranked #19 and the last At-Large spot went to #12 Virginia.
What was rightly Bucknell’s and Navy’s was wrongly given to Villanova and Syracuse. (That Syracuse not only received an At-Large spot but also received home field for their First Round Game is silly.) If the 10% Ante Rankings were used, the Tournament would’ve been this (below) and this would’ve been the brackets.
