Official 2015 NCAA XC Regional Live Discussion Thread

Anybody have a list of all the ranked teams that didn't make it this year? Seemed like there were several.

We have just such a list on the homepage right now

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2015/11/which-unranked-teams-are-going-dancing-which-ranked-teams-are-staying-home/

Jonathan Gault wrote:

Official qualifiers are here.

http://www.ncaa.com/news/cross-country-men/article/2015-11-14/ncaa-cross-country-2015-mens-and-womens-division-i

They matched our projections exactly. Huge thanks to Bo Waggoner for his awesome program!

So does this confirm that San Francisco beating Gonzaga head-to-head in the Regional doesn't count for purposes of the nine-team head-to-head tiebreaker for the 23rd spot? Gonzaga was considered to be 1-0 rather than 1-1?

Here is the language in the rule:

Head-to-head competition between teams under consideration. If there is a tie among teams under consideration for total wins, the committee reviews head-to-head results.

a. In order to maintain seven competition opportunities, the head-to-head competitions must have taken place between the seventh weekend before the NCAA regional meet (i.e., Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 25-27, 2015) through the conclusion of NCAA Regional Cross Country Championships (scheduled for Nov. 13, 2015).

Would Letsrun or Bo Waggoner be willing to post the code for the program used to calculate the At Large teams? I'm interested in looking at how Bo coded it out and to test different scenarios.

still confused wrote:

Jonathan Gault wrote:

Official qualifiers are here.

http://www.ncaa.com/news/cross-country-men/article/2015-11-14/ncaa-cross-country-2015-mens-and-womens-division-i

They matched our projections exactly. Huge thanks to Bo Waggoner for his awesome program!

So does this confirm that San Francisco beating Gonzaga head-to-head in the Regional doesn't count for purposes of the nine-team head-to-head tiebreaker for the 23rd spot? Gonzaga was considered to be 1-0 rather than 1-1?

Here is the language in the rule:

Head-to-head competition between teams under consideration. If there is a tie among teams under consideration for total wins, the committee reviews head-to-head results.

a. In order to maintain seven competition opportunities, the head-to-head competitions must have taken place between the seventh weekend before the NCAA regional meet (i.e., Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 25-27, 2015) through the conclusion of NCAA Regional Cross Country Championships (scheduled for Nov. 13, 2015).

Initially, our program's code didn't account for the West Regional as a head-to-head matchup. But Bo rewrote the program to incorporate this and we got the same field of teams.

Here's why: instead of counting both of the meets (giving both Gonzaga and San Francisco a win and a loss), the program (ours, and I'm guessing, the NCAA's) considers two teams splitting their head-to-heads the same as the two schools not racing at all -- because it doesn't break the tie directly between those two schools. So it just says "no head-to-head tiebreaker" and moves along -- neither team is charged with a win or a loss.

Here's the line from the program: no head-to-head tiebreaker for san francisco and gonzaga (relevant meets: wcccs, west)

Hopefully that clarifies things.

Jonathan Gault wrote:

Here's why: instead of counting both of the meets (giving both Gonzaga and San Francisco a win and a loss), the program (ours, and I'm guessing, the NCAA's) considers two teams splitting their head-to-heads the same as the two schools not racing at all -- because it doesn't break the tie directly between those two schools. So it just says "no head-to-head tiebreaker" and moves along -- neither team is charged with a win or a loss.

Here's the line from the program: no head-to-head tiebreaker for san francisco and gonzaga (relevant meets: wcccs, west)

Hopefully that clarifies things.

Thank you for answering.

Now the next question. Were Princeton and Gonzaga the only two teams to emerge from the head-to-head and then Gonzaga beat Princeton in the common opponents tie-breaker? So, in essence, Princeton's 5-0 in head-to-head was considered the same as Gonzaga's 0-0? And Gonzaga's 0-0 was considered to be better than any team that had a head-to-head loss - - Gonzaga's 0-0 beat Michigan State's 4-1?

Or, did head-to-head settle nothing and it was a massive nine-team common opponents tie-breaker that decided it?

still confused wrote:

Thank you for answering.

Now the next question. Were Princeton and Gonzaga the only two teams to emerge from the head-to-head and then Gonzaga beat Princeton in the common opponents tie-breaker? So, in essence, Princeton's 5-0 in head-to-head was considered the same as Gonzaga's 0-0? And Gonzaga's 0-0 was considered to be better than any team that had a head-to-head loss - - Gonzaga's 0-0 beat Michigan State's 4-1?

Or, did head-to-head settle nothing and it was a massive nine-team common opponents tie-breaker that decided it?

First scenario. Princeton and Gonzaga were the only ones that emerged without a loss and Gonzaga won on common opponents. So yes, Gonzaga's 0-0 was considered better than MSU's 4-1.

Here's the full logic from the program:

Teams under consideration: weber state (1), brown (1), san francisco (1), gonzaga (1), william and mary (1), michigan state (1), princeton (1), villanova (1), minnesota (1), northern arizona (0), boston college (0), smu (0), baylor (0), north carolina (0), wisconsin (0), tulsa (0), alabama (0), florida state (0),

Others with points: oklahoma (2), kansas (2), air force (1), stephen f austin (1), coastal carolina (1), cornell (1), wyoming (1), rice (1), purdue (1), missouri (1), cal poly (1), yale (1), virginia tech (1), bradley (1), columbia (1), wichita state (1), colorado state (1), eastern michigan (1), eastern washington (1), california (1), eastern kentucky (1), florida (1), utah state (1), duke (1), connecticut (1), bowling green (1), new hampshire (1), clemson (1), james madison (1), west virginia (1),

weber state wins head-to-head tiebreaker over brown (relevant meets: prenats)

weber state wins head-to-head tiebreaker over san francisco (relevant meets: prenats, roy_griak)

no head-to-head tiebreaker for weber state and gonzaga (relevant meets: )

no head-to-head tiebreaker for weber state and william and mary (relevant meets: )

michigan state wins head-to-head tiebreaker over weber state (relevant meets: roy_griak)

no head-to-head tiebreaker for weber state and princeton (relevant meets: )

weber state wins head-to-head tiebreaker over villanova (relevant meets: prenats)

minnesota wins head-to-head tiebreaker over weber state (relevant meets: roy_griak)

san francisco wins head-to-head tiebreaker over brown (relevant meets: prenats)

no head-to-head tiebreaker for brown and gonzaga (relevant meets: )

no head-to-head tiebreaker for brown and william and mary (relevant meets: )

no head-to-head tiebreaker for brown and michigan state (relevant meets: )

princeton wins head-to-head tiebreaker over brown (relevant meets: heps)

villanova wins head-to-head tiebreaker over brown (relevant meets: prenats)

no head-to-head tiebreaker for brown and minnesota (relevant meets: )

no head-to-head tiebreaker for san francisco and gonzaga (relevant meets: wcccs, west)

no head-to-head tiebreaker for san francisco and william and mary (relevant meets: )

michigan state wins head-to-head tiebreaker over san francisco (relevant meets: roy_griak)

no head-to-head tiebreaker for san francisco and princeton (relevant meets: )

villanova wins head-to-head tiebreaker over san francisco (relevant meets: prenats)

minnesota wins head-to-head tiebreaker over san francisco (relevant meets: roy_griak)

no head-to-head tiebreaker for gonzaga and william and mary (relevant meets: )

no head-to-head tiebreaker for gonzaga and michigan state (relevant meets: )

no head-to-head tiebreaker for gonzaga and princeton (relevant meets: )

no head-to-head tiebreaker for gonzaga and villanova (relevant meets: )

no head-to-head tiebreaker for gonzaga and minnesota (relevant meets: )

michigan state wins head-to-head tiebreaker over william and mary (relevant meets: wisonsin_invite)

princeton wins head-to-head tiebreaker over william and mary (relevant meets: wisonsin_invite, princeton_interregional)

villanova wins head-to-head tiebreaker over william and mary (relevant meets: princeton_interregional)

minnesota wins head-to-head tiebreaker over william and mary (relevant meets: wisonsin_invite)

princeton wins head-to-head tiebreaker over michigan state (relevant meets: wisonsin_invite)

no head-to-head tiebreaker for michigan state and villanova (relevant meets: )

michigan state wins head-to-head tiebreaker over minnesota (relevant meets: big10s, wisonsin_invite, roy_griak)

princeton wins head-to-head tiebreaker over villanova (relevant meets: princeton_interregional, midatlantic)

princeton wins head-to-head tiebreaker over minnesota (relevant meets: wisonsin_invite)

no head-to-head tiebreaker for villanova and minnesota (relevant meets: )

gonzaga wins common opponents over princeton (common opponents: duke, duquesne, georgetown, northern arizona, washington, ucla, wake forest, iona, arizona state, washington state, navy, wisconsin, portland, iowa state, villanova, saint johns, baylor, cornell, smu, byu, air force, minnesota, north carolina, providence, arkansas, toledo, ohio state, indiana, san francisco, boise state, bucknell, brown, lamar, michigan state, columbia, penn, tulsa, monmouth, pittsburgh, loyola marymount, yale, virginia, oregon, vanderbilt, harvard, california, new mexico, dartmouth, la salle, notre dame, syracuse, william and mary, boston college, stanford, florida state, oregon state, eastern washington, virginia tech, west virginia, penn state, nc state)

23: san francisco is selected, gives no points (pushed in)

24: gonzaga is selected, has losses to (washington_invite) air force;

I'm curious as to which high finishing runners from regionals improved the most from high school.

Barraza, #1 south central from Houston, ran 1:57/4:13/9:05

In the West, from washington state, #2 and 3 were John Whelan 4:22/9:15

Michael Williams, 2:04/4:15/9:08

(Levora #32 was 4:16/9:32)

#4 Travis Neuman of Oregon, 3:57 1500/8:36 3k

Any that by far trump these?

jjjjjj wrote:

I'm curious as to which high finishing runners from regionals improved the most from high school.

Barraza, #1 south central from Houston, ran 1:57/4:13/9:05

In the West, from washington state, #2 and 3 were John Whelan 4:22/9:15

Michael Williams, 2:04/4:15/9:08

(Levora #32 was 4:16/9:32)

#4 Travis Neuman of Oregon, 3:57 1500/8:36 3k

Any that by far trump these?

Shelby Mills Gonzaga #7 West - 12th grade: 2:31/5:30/11:59 XC 19:24

Jonathan Gault wrote:

First scenario. Princeton and Gonzaga were the only ones that emerged without a loss and Gonzaga won on common opponents. So yes, Gonzaga's 0-0 was considered better than MSU's 4-1.

Thank you again.

I'm probably not the first to observe that the rules as written (or at least published for the public) are incredibly vague and that there has to have been a lot of interpretation over time that is now considered to be precedent.

Hi "Great Program" and "still confused" -- Bo here.

The rules are definitely vague and I think we got a bit lucky this year. The code initially had a bug, as someone pointed out (thanks!) -- it only looked at head-to-head before regionals instead of through regionals. But updating it gave us the same list.

Here's the link to the code:

https://bitbucket.org/bowaggoner/ncaa-xc-qualifiers/src

jjjjjj wrote:

I'm curious as to which high finishing runners from regionals improved the most from high school.

Barraza, #1 south central from Houston, ran 1:57/4:13/9:05

In the West, from washington state, #2 and 3 were John Whelan 4:22/9:15

Michael Williams, 2:04/4:15/9:08

(Levora #32 was 4:16/9:32)

#4 Travis Neuman of Oregon, 3:57 1500/8:36 3k

Any that by far trump these?

Thomas Curtain; Southeast Champ

Va Tech

2:04/ 4:22/ 9:12

Bo points out the language for the tiebreakers, "If teams under consideration are tied in total wins against the teams already in the championships, the committee will not select the team with a head-to-head loss over the team with the head-to-head win. This is important when there are more than two teams tied with total wins against the teams already in the championships. "

so essentially he reads it as having the ability to eliminate teams. If you have a head to head loss vs another team for consideration you are out at that level. However, one head to head win and one head to head loss washes out.

So Princeton and Gonzaga were the only teams that weren't tossed out by the head to head criteria.

The reason it considers an 0-0 better than a 4-1 is that the rules say essentially "when multiple teams are tied in points, if team 1 loses a head-to-head tiebreaker to team 2, then you cannot select team 1." This includes cases where 3 or more teams are tied.

So MSU's 4-1 included a loss to Princeton. That means we are not allowed to select MSU ahead of Princeton. Repeatedly applying this logic narrowed it down to Princeton and Gonzaga. Since there's no head-to-head tiebreaker for Princeton and Gonzaga, it moves to common opponents.

Is this how the committee also does it? I don't know for sure....

Oh yep Rojo posted the exact language of the rules.

jjjjjj wrote:

I'm curious as to which high finishing runners from regionals improved the most from high school.

The Ivies had some guys in this category. All of the individual qualifiers out of the Northeast were Heps guys. In high school, none of them were even blips on the radar of schools that make NCAAs all the time.

Ben Rainero - 4:13 1,600 officially in HS, but he did sit out a year before starting college, so he basically took a redshirt year (which really only puts him on a level playing field with the non-Ivy guys)

Kevin Dooney - 8:32 3k in Ireland (probably about a 9:09 3,200); he did run 30:23 for 10k and represented Ireland at the World Jr. level, so he was ready for college competition right off the bat, but he wasn't a first tier recruit just going by times yet still ended up an All-American last year and gets another chance this year

Tait Rutherford - Hard to tell how good a 9:35 in Colorado is, maybe a sub-9:10 at low altitude if we're really generous, but he wasn't a blue chipper by any standard

Brian Eimstad - 4:00 1,500 and 8:38 3k (worth about 4:18 1,600 and 9:15 3,200), a guy who would be a 3rd tier recruit at one of the XC powerhouses

A video that gives me absolutely no nostalgia for running xc.

And they had a false start!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2uamfvHDww

Thanks!

how bout a kid that went from 44th in nxn regional to 28th in ncaa d1 regional in two years?