Quality Win Index

I figure I should get to this BEFORE the season starts but our good ‘ol friend “Ned” from New England has generated a preseason gauge on the quality of everyone’s schedule in DIII. Readers from last year may remember that Ned created the Quality Win Index (QWI) which assigns points for each win a team gets based on the Pablo Ranking of the opposition. It’s another way to look at Strength Of Schedule (SOS) but it focuses on the quality of the opponents as opposed to the win/loss record. Why is that important? Well, I’ve shown in the past that larger regions have a better chance at playing teams with better records, which in the end allows them to have better SOS numbers than smaller regions. We know that the NCAA Selection Committee looks at the SOS selection criterion as a uniformed number when crossing regions so anything that shows that might not be the case is a good thing in my mind.

So, Ned tried something new this off-season by taking the Pablo Rankings from the end of the year and seeing what each DIII team could get if they won all of their matches. Basically he is attempting to see what the potential maximum QWI score would be for each team. This in turns means that he is basically gauging the quality of everyone’s schedule. When I do my schedule analysis write-ups I rely more on what I know (or think I know) than a formula. Ned now gives us that viewpoint.

If you follow my Podcasts then you know I looked at Ned’s work on a national scale but for the website we’ll focus just on the West Region. With that said, I know I’ve got some Berry readers out there:

Berry College (Pablo Ranked 22) has 18 quality matches with 6 coming in conference for a total Potential QWI score of 63.75. This ranks 20^th nationally.

And I’ve got some Marymount readers:

Marymount University (Pablo Ranked 64) has 6 quality matches with 0 coming in conference for a total Potential QWI score of 21.75. This ranks 169^th nationally.

Just from those two examples you can see how a strong (deep) conference can help you in QWI. I should also point out that Ned has incorporated bonus points for away wins and for this exercise has included bonus points for wins outside of conference and outside of region. This is an attempt to reward the teams that are trying to play quality teams regardless of where they are located. The exact formula is:

QWI = Opponent Value + (Opponent Value * Away Factor) + (Opponent Value * Region Factor)

Where Opponent Value is 0 – 4 points based on your Pablo Ranking and Away Factor is 0.5 points for an away win and Region Factor is 0.25 points for a non-conference win and 0.5 points for an out-of-region win. Whew! I bet you didn’t think you’d be dealing with match when you started reading this!

As it turns out, Illinois Wesleyan has the highest potential QWI score of 92.75 and 77 teams have the lowest potential QWI score of 0. Now, let’s look at the West Region and note that I have removed Whitman from the list because they made a last minute change to their schedule that would greatly impact these numbers.

Here are the West Region schools with a QWI of 50 or higher:

school	Pablo	quality matches	non conf quality matches	conf quality matches	total Potential QWI
Trinity University (TX)	8	15	11	4	72.25
Southwestern	48	15	11	4	63.50
Mary Hardin-Baylor	26	15	10	5	62.25
CMS	20	16	8	8	60.25
Cal Lutheran	45	15	7	8	60.25
Hardin-Simmons	136	14	7	7	55.50
La Verne	47	15	7	8	55.25
Austin	169	14	8	6	54.50
George Fox	93	15	5	10	54.00
Linfield	208	17	5	12	53.50
Puget Sound	85	16	5	11	53.50
Pacific Lutheran	14	18	7	11	52.75
Pomona-Pitzer Colleges	132	14	4	10	52.50
Willamette	133	16	4	12	52.25
Whittier	70	13	5	8	52.25
Whitworth	37	16	6	10	51.75

That’s a good representation of our 4 West Region conferences. One thing that jumps out at me instantly is that Pablo basically believes that the SCIAC and the NWC are our deepest conferences. The ASC follows these two and then the SCAC brings up the rear. You can gleam this by looking at the conference quality matches column and see which schools from which conferences have the highest numbers. Two SCAC schools, however, lead the list and that’s because of their out-of-conference schedules they have put together. (Note – the school with the most quality non-conference matches was actually UC Santa Cruz with 12 who finished with a QWI of 49.5.)

Some quick notes about the Pablo rankings and if you look closely you’ll see some rankings that are strange. UMHB was 26^th last year but they made it to the regional final losing to the eventual national champion. CMS was highly ranked in the AVCA and actually beat Trinity away but still finished 12 spots lower than the Tigers. I’m not a huge fan of the Pablo rankings but I understand that something has to be used to gauge quality and Pablo is an easy source. I think the biggest sin a ranking system can have is not having the national champion as first, which Pablo didn’t (Calvin, Wittenberg and then Emory were its first three teams).

Here I have the rest of the West Region teams listed in order:

school	Pablo	quality matches	non conf quality matches	conf quality matches	total Potential QWI
UC Santa Cruz	202	12	12	0	49.50
Texas Lutheran	176	13	7	6	48.50
Texas-Dallas	12	11	8	3	47.75
Dallas	164	11	5	6	44.00
Chapman	44	12	4	8	44.00
Centenary	196	11	5	6	42.75
Occidental	172	12	2	10	41.25
Redlands	138	12	2	10	40.50
Colorado College	10	11	7	4	39.50
Cal tech	297	10	0	10	37.50
Lewis and Clark	88	11	1	10	36.00
Concordia Texas	72	9	4	5	35.75
Schreiner	308	10	4	6	35.00
East Texas Baptist	110	8	3	5	33.75
LeTourneau	218	8	3	5	31.75
Pacific University	40	11	1	10	31.00
Johnson & Wales-CO	279	7	1	6	30.50
Belhaven	238	7	2	5	26.00
Howard Payne	256	8	1	7	23.50
Sul Ross State	251	7	0	7	21.50
Louisiana College	290	5	0	5	17.00
McMurry	68	5	0	5	16.50
Mills	408	1	1	0	5.25

It’s not surprising to see some of the teams trying to rebuild at the bottom of this list. It makes sense and if you read my article on scheduling then you know that there is a pecking order teams have to go through before you can really schedule quality teams. It is a bit surprising to see a team like McMurry here and to a lesser extent Pacific. Pacific decided to hold a tournament in Hawaii and the teams willing to go with them basically hampered their QWI score. I don’t really understand McMurry especially when you compare them to what Hardin-Simmons was able to do. (These schools are only 4 miles away from each other.)

I wanted to get this information out today because in two days we get our first glimpse at the real quality of the DIII schools based on their performances and not a ranking system that is based on a number of players that have since graduated. Still, I think QWI does give us another insight into how schools schedule and which schools really try to play quality opponents. It also should be a guide into which schools should have good SOS numbers and which schools will struggle with that criterion. In the end, that’s what’s important to the selection committee.

Ned will be updating his numbers throughout the season and I’ll share them when he shares them with me. The main thing I like with QWI is comparing the scores to the Ranked Win selection criterion and seeing how certain schools with “good” Ranked Wins look when you factor in the QWI. This will all happen when the regional rankings come out in October.

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