
Originally Posted by
boatcapt
Playing strong teams to open the season is all well and good, provided you win. You don't win, and you have additional losses you wouldn't have had. Let's look at the last couple of years since people are saying that the NCAA has been trying to "educate" WLU on the virtue of SOS. Let's assume WLU played similarly "strong" opponents to start the season and finished the same 1-1.
2018 - WLU's record goes 25-4 vice Virginia States 24-4. Would the boost in SOS have been enough to overcome the extra in region loss to the point were they would have jumped Va State? Debatable.
2017 - WLU would have finished 27-4 vs host Fairmont at 29-2. Would that extra strength been enough to jump Fairmont? Clearly NO. Buuuutttt...a legit case can be made that the 4th loss would have caused them to fall from #3 seed to #6 behind 3 loss IUP and 3 loss Kutztown.
2016 - The "new" WLU with the enhanced SOS finishes the season 26-4. Is that "extra" strength enough for them to vault 3 loss WJU? Pretty clearly no. Buuuuttttt again...A 4 loss WLU team now falls into a debate with a 4 loss Fairmont team that finished seeded behind WLU at #3.
So really the only year you can say with A possible degree of certainty that the boost in SOS might have been enough to overcome the additional loss and resulted in a regional host nod would have been last year. In fact in 2017 and 2016 the extra loss would have had a VERY real chance of resulting in a LOWER seeding.
There is one thing you CAN glean from the seeding over the last three years. In 2016 and 2017 the seeding was based on the # of losses a team had...from top to bottom, teams with fewer losses were seeded ahead of teams with more losses. In 2018 the only team not seeded based on their # of losses was WLU. Over the last three years, except for WLU last year, the NCAA has been remarkably consistent in what they have been trying to teach the rest of SR1...losses have consequences.
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