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| This particular celebration came much earlier this season, but Ohio Northern is no doubt celebrating tonight. Ohio Northern athletics photo |
The NCAA Division III football championship committee released the 2015 playoff bracket this afternoon. And the committee did take a two-loss team, but not the one that had two wins vs. regionally ranked opponents and a strength of schedule of greater than .500.
Nope. They took Ohio Northern.
How did this happen? Well, it undoubtedly goes back to how the West Region committee chose to order its teams in the secret regional rankings, and how that affected the at-large conversation. We talked about how important this is last night in our D3 bracketology show. In our mind, there is no way that the committee could look at these two teams at the same time and choose ONU:
Ohio Northern (8-2), .487 SOS, 1-1 vs. RRO with a loss to North No. 1 Mount Union and a win vs. North No. 10 John Carroll (plus a loss to Baldwin Wallace)
UW-Platteville (8-2), .530 SOS, 2-2 vs. RRO with losses to West No. 3 and No. 4 Oshkosh and Whitewater, and wins vs. West No. 7 Dubuque and North No. 10 North Central
Therefore, the only possible explanation is that they were not on the board at the same time. Clearly the West committee put Whitworth ahead of Platteville. And that meant that Whitworth got in, probably last in of the six at-large teams, and Platteville probably never even got to the table.
Elsewhere, Guilford was left at the table as well in the South. Guilford was our last team in, but frankly, it was a coin flip as to whether Guilford or Whitworth would get that last spot, because they presented nearly identical resumes.
South: Guilford (9-1), .493 SOS, 0-1 vs. RRO with a loss to South No. 5 W&L
West: Whitworth (9-1), .492 SOS, 0-1 vs. RRO with a loss to West No. 2 Linfield
As for who did get in and where they're playing, everyone who has been complaining about Mount Union and UW-Whitewater meeting in the Stagg Bowl every year can finally rest easy, as they are on the same side of the bracket. If both advance, they would meet in the national semifinals instead. Mount Union is in a bracket with six East Region teams, and the other three No. 1 seeds all go to West Region teams: St. Thomas, Linfield and UW-Oshkosh.
Also, the committee took some pains to keep the Northwest Conference and American Southwest Conference from having to play each other in the second round. Instead, the Huntingdon-Hendrix winner plays the HSU-UMHB winner, even though there's a 75 percent chance that would result in a team taking a flight. Linfield (presuming it beats Whitworth agan) will get to host the Salisbury-Cortland winner in the second round. Meanwhile, if Thomas More, W&L or Albion come out of the bottom half of the St. Thomas bracket, there will be a flight in the quarterfinals as well.