Absolutely on board with this. A bit of success can breed more success. I am as optimistic based on this year as I have ever been. I think a new D1 program in CA is more reason to be hopeful, even if they take years to get footing. If we can somehow get a couple more elite large schools in the mix everything can change, looking at you Texas. Also NCAA expansion/creativity can make more water polo programs desireable to more athletes. A few on the fence players may decide to skip sitting on the bench and go play at a team that has a chance at meaningful success.
100 percent. I donât think there needs to be more than 8 teams.
As for the conference tournament meaning more than the entire regular season, look no further than March Madness. Unless youâre in one of the power five conferences, you need to win your conference tournament to get a bid. Last year, UCI was 28-6 playing in the Big West and had a great regular season, but couldnât beat UCSD, who got the conferenceâs lone bid.
In a sport with over 350 teams and 31 conferences, only 5-6 conferences in a given year get more than one bid. Thatâs less than 20%.
As rbpolo mentioned, our sport has 30 D1 teams. Just over 23 percent of D1 teams are already making the NCAA tournament. Expanding to 12 would make that number too high. Allowing other conferences to get two bids doesnât make much sense when you look at how other NCAA sports are run.
Instead, the focus should be on how other schools can get more competitive and more regularly compete with the Big Four. That way, there are years where the at large bids go somewhere else. I know weâre a long way away from this and is likely unrealistic, but just my thoughts.
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Iâm late to this conversation but thought this information maybe helpful. Weâve started tracking Elo ratings for each conference and team. The data is sourced from The Fosh and 6-8 and applies only to games where a D1 team plays another D1 team.
Each team starts the season with an average of 2000 points. Think of those points like poker chips - they are transferred from the loser to the winner of each game. If you walked into the middle of a poker game, it would be safe to assume the person with the most chips is a more skilled player than the others. The math that drives Elo also provides future win probabilities. A team that has 100 points more than their opponent has roughly 65% chance of winning that game, a 200 point advantage is closer to 75% and so on.
For these charts, the number of points transferred is determined by the margin of victory for each game and the probability of Team A beating Team B.
As a number of people have observed, MPSF is quantitatively better. The four teams (as of 9/27) range from Stanford 2384 to UCLA 2543. WCC has three teams, Pacific, Pepperdine and SJSU hovering around 2100 as does Big West with LBU, UCI, UCSD. On the east coast, the NWPC only has Princeton with 2200 and MAWPC has Fordham 2300 points.
Letâs assume for a moment that these 12 teams finish the season with the current ratings. My questions for the group:
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Would the NCAA tournament be better/more exciting to watch if these teams formed the bracket?
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If so, whatâs the logical approach to getting the best teams playing each other at the end of the year?
Elo charts for the other conferences can be found here.
Neat stuff, Chris; thanks for it. But is there a reason the ELO scores start from the beginning of last year, rather than resetting every year (or including earlier years)? That seems a bit arbitrary, as well as often resulting in radical swings at the beginning of this year. (I understand that youâve got to start somewhere.)
Any chance you would post the link to the data that shows the goals scored and allowed? Would like to play around with that. No worries if you donât want to
Hi Sand, So far we only have two years of data. If you want to only see 2025 data, you can click the filter on the left hand side and select 2025 Only.
I canât link you to the raw data and this platform wonât let me share a .csv or .xlsx file. If youâre comfortable providing an email address, Iâd be happy to send an extract to you.
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Your top 10 looks good! ButâŚ..Stanford is not in a tier with Fordham and SJSU. They are in a tier with UCLA, CAL, and USC. Could they end up missing the tournament, yes. But they will split their games with Cal this year and I think they take one against USC or UCLA this weekend.
Edit: Just realized you have USC over CAL? any reason?
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Great episode guys!
It should be a great weekend of water polo.
I think that we may see an upset or two.
The usc/cal placements were juxtaposed. Cal is 2, usc is 3.
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Agreed. Until Fordham comes out west and shows they can go toe to toe with a Big Four team and get comfortable wins against the likes of LBSU and SJSU, they cannot be placed in the same tier as Stanford or any of the Big 4. They lost to UCLA by 7 in a game where UCLA couldâve won by double digits if some 50/50 calls went their way. After Fordhamâs result against Princeton, Iâm confident when I say I believe Fordham is currently closer to Princeton than they are to Stanford and the rest of the Big Four.
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Just one quibble but I donât think the bar should be beating LBSU and SJSU comfortably. I think the Beach is right there with anyone from a talent level and took Stanford to overtime just a couple weeks ago. Also, Brendan Gyapjas has the ability to close the store against anyone for SJSU. To me, a successful road trip for Fordham is just notching wins there.
I thought the WPW guys hit the nail on the head with Fordham. This whole season is going to come down to how quickly we can get our defense to a championship level. Especially our five-man.
I 100% agree with you. Particularly, during a tough road trip, the goal should be to win the game, whether itâs by 1 or 5 goals. All Iâm saying is that if they want to be in a tier with Stanford & the Big Four, they should maybe win at least one of those games comfortably.
Against LBSU, I expect that game to be a close very high scoring game that will come down to which team executes better at the end. Against SJSU, it will likely come down to how well the non Big 3 of Provenziani, Toth, and Silvestri do against Gyapjas. Fordham is definitely more talented than SJSU, but Gyapjas keeps them in and wins them games they have no business winning. Lastly, Fordham probably has a better chance against both Cal and USC than they do against Stanford. Not saying Stanford is better than Cal or USC, but matchup wise, thatâs not a good matchup for Fordham.
Stanford is definitely a nightmare matchup for Fordham. They have a better chance against Cal
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Cal 23 - Fordham 19 
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Interesting prediction given usc and ucla only managed 13 against cal. But I get your point. Fordham has proven they can score but the defense has yet to show up at an elite level
It was a bad joke I guess
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Prediction, the defense wonât come around much because they do not have e the same caliber of goalie as they did last year
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