NCAA Bracketology: What Should the Committee Do with Ohio State?

It’s a good thing there are another six weekends worth of games before the NCAA men’s lacrosse committee has to sort out its field on many levels. But one that is particularly interesting right now is just what it would do with Ohio State.

The Buckeyes have won nine in a row, pummeling Virginia, slipping past Notre Dame, picking off Denver in the Mile High City and now winning their Big Ten opener at Penn State.

But because the RPI weighs every game in roughly equal fashion (an opponent that winds up playing 15 games will have a slightly larger impact than one that plays 13), some manageable early season games mean just as much as Ohio State’s brand-name triumphs to date. Hence, a middle-of-the-pack strength of schedule and an RPI just outside the top 10.

There’s also the matter of the season-opening loss to Utah, which turned out to be a bellwether for neither team. Ohio State hasn’t lost since that Feb. 1 game, while the Utes have dropped seven in a row.

(And in yet the latest illustration of the RPI’s limitations — especially this early in the season — Utah jumped eight spots from 56th a week ago to 48th, with a 14-9 loss at Virginia on Saturday its lone result in that span.)

Ohio State still has at least five more games (and as many as seven) remaining against teams currently in the top 22 of the RPI, so its profile should look a little less enigmatic by the first weekend in May. But for now, slotting the Buckeyes appropriately requires a bit more art and a little less reliance on studying how past committees would have treated them. 

It’s what’s to be expected with both a half-completed picture and a limited metric.

The following is based on RPI data available on Monday, March 24.

AUTOMATIC QUALIFIERS  (10)

Cornell is one of three teams (along with Maryland and Princeton) to own a top-five victory, a top-10 RPI and a top-10 strength of schedule. Hard to keep the Big Red out of the top three at this point. … Time for Richmond to root for Georgetown and Virginia to have excellent league results. The Spiders would typically expect to get more value out of victories over those two teams than they would be right now. …

Ohio State’s strength of schedule (a metric that is the average RPI of a team’s top 10 opponents) is about to start getting a lot better now that it can cycle teams out. This week, the Buckeyes will replace Detroit (No. 64) with Rutgers (No. 22) in the calculation. … Not sure Army can afford another regular-season loss and still be in play for an at-large berth. The Black Knights get the Patriot League nod in this exercise by virtue of a slightly better RPI than Boston U. …

Even as the last undefeated team in Division I, Fairfield isn’t close to consideration for a seeded slot. The Stags’ best victory to date is against the No. 26 team in the RPI (Sacred Heart). … It already feels safe to conclude the America East (UMBC), Atlantic Sun (Jacksonville), Metro Atlantic (Manhattan) and Northeast (Long Island) will all be one-bid leagues. …

The same might be true of the Big East, where Georgetown is the highest-ranked team in the RPI entering league play (with Denver and Marquette right behind). The RPI ceiling for those teams is much higher than 30s, but the league owns only one top-20 victory (Denver’s defeat of Duke on Saturday) entering the final weekend of March.