The Bracket: Postmortem

by Matthew Webb

The selections are in and the bracket is set for the 2012 Men's Division III NCAA Tournament.  As is usually the case, its release featured a surprise or two or six for most observers and has now led way to numerous questions.

With that being the case, let's take a look at some of the questions being asked in the aftermath of the selections and see if we can make at least a bit of sense out of things.  As it turns out, it seems St. Thomas is a real linchpin in this regard.

Why was our Bracketology wrong?

For those who didn't see it, Josh Carey's Final Call was posted earlier this evening.  For what it's worth, had I written my own projection out it would have been identical to Josh's as things seemed fairly straightforward at the time.  Either way, one can read through it and see that we obviously did not end up with the same bracket that was ultimately unveiled, so the question then becomes why.

It's fairly straightforward, actually.  The inclusion of St. Thomas as a Pool C team changed the field from an 8-3 East-West split to 7-4, which drastically alters the potential resultant brackets.  From there, once the regional split deviated from that which our Bracketology settled on, nothing at all was going to line up.

One fun note is that had we gone with the Tommies instead of Hobart, we likely would have had the bracket perfect save for perhaps fanning on where MSOE and St. Thomas would play their first round games, but such is the delicate tightrope one must dance while trying to predict things that include so many unknown variables.  Ah well, there's always next year.

How did St. Thomas make the field?

Based on the February 28 Regional Rankings, it appeared that the Tommies' tournament hopes were in a world of hurt.  Pegged at fifth in the region it seemed they wouldn't even come up for Pool C discussion, especially since their were idle this weekend -- the same as a St. Scholastica team that was already ranked ahead of them. ...