We’ll see some great regular season matches this Saturday. Although no particular straight even pairs are seen, we have a handful of rating gaps that are not out of range for the lower rated team. Interestingly, Towson’s home court advantage boost may put them in range to upset JMU and MSU. Upsets here are not unreachable and will allow Towson to make advantageous gains in a number of systems, take a look at a full rundown after the jump!
Average Rating: 50.747
Average Rating Gap: 9.301
Average Predicted Exchange: 0.303
Average Exchange if Upset: 1.930
| Time | High Seed | Low Seed | Rating | Rating | Predicted Exchange | Exchange if Upset |
| 9:00 | MSU | VCU | 51.123 | 36.384 | 0.010 | 2.474* |
| 9:00 | JMU | Towson | 54.327 | 48.421 | 0.409 | 1.591 |
| 10:15 | UMD | VCU | 39.565 | 36.374 | 0.681 | 1.319 |
| 10:15 | GVSU | JMU | 60.298 | 54.737 | 0.444 | 1.556 |
| 11:30 | GVSU | UMD | 60.742 | 40.246 | 0.010 | 3.050* |
| 11:30 | MSU | Towson | 51.133 | 48.011 | 0.688 | 1.312 |
| 12:45 | JMU | MSU | 54.293 | 51.821 | 0.753 | 1.247 |
| 12:45 | Towson | UMD | 47.323 | 40.236 | 0.291 | 1.709 |
| 2:00 | JMU | VCU | 52.573 | 35.693 | 0.010 | 2.688* |
| 2:00 | GVSU | MSU | 60.752 | 51.068 | 0.032 | 1.968 |
| 3:15 | GVSU | Towson | 60.783 | 47.615 | 0.010 | 2.317* |
Asterisk!
To change it up, for the Upset exchanges I removed the max limit so we can see how big these would be without it. In past Gonzalez previews I’ve included another chart showing where each upset exchange would rank in statistical history. The max in the records is still going to be no more than 2 if those happen, this is to ensure that no one match sways the rankings unduly. Currently there are only four upsets that fall above that threshold, and the greatest above the limit is 2.125. We can see here that MVEC’s potential big upsets will fall well above the current largest upset exchange in history.
How could Towson change its stars?
A representative from Towson asked me how they could jump their current rank of 8th in the NCDA Algorithm. I’m sure they’re …worried? about playing a middle ground team at Nationals, although 2015 was good to them by swinging a technical upset in the first round. With the current standings as they are, and saying the Nationals tournament bracket was played tomorrow, they’d play PSU (#9) in the first round with a 0.384 exchange in favor of Towson.
In the Gonzalez ratings, Towson (45.421, #7) is 3.519 behind the next higher opponent, OSU (48.940, #6). Towson must beat all opponents to move up in Gonzalez, there are no other combinations where they could jump placings. The average rating exchange is about 1, so even winning a theoretical 3 points in three games won’t push them over that gap of 3.5.
Winning out would put Towson from 8th to 5th in Perrone, but if you beat just JMU/UMD, or beat JMU/UMD/MSU you’d jump 8th to 7th. Hard to boost past Kent because they have way more Perrone Points than you. 35 to 9.
In the Champ System, Towson has 9 Champ Points and ranks 12th. They need two wins to jump past BGSU (13 points and #10). Towson gains 4 points with those two wins, so ties in points but wins the W% tiebreaker. The above Gonzalez Exchanges predict Towson winning one match , which will allow Towson to jump from 12th to 11th. Winning 2 or 3 will only get Towson as high as 10th, and winning out would jump Towson to 8th in Champ Standings.
Taking the best case scenario, Towson winning out on the day, we can see they might achieve #6, #5, #8 in the respective systems. That would give them an NCDA Algorithm average of 6.33 which places them fighting for 6th or 7th against SVSU.
