Not everyone is sold on the MIAA power rating system, but the numbers are telling a different story.
At Thursday’s MIAA Tournament Management Committee, the founding father of the current system spent 10 minutes explaining the process which went into creating a formula used to seed tournament teams. MIAA assistant director for communications, media and tournaments Jim Clark said that simplicity, transparency and accuracy were important factors from the get-go.
From there, Clark displayed statistics from the most recent tournament seasons which showed that the system is working. In the fall season of 2022, higher seeds won games at least 78 percent of the time (football) and went as high as 88.17 (girls volleyball). Many of the top seeds were getting through into the latter stages of the tournament, which provided some top-notch competition.
In the recently concluded winter season, just like the fall, higher seeds achieved a success ratio of at least 78 percent (boys hockey) and ranged to 90.2 (girls basketball). Yet, it wasn’t completely chalk as the system does allow for upsets from time to time as evidenced by No. 32 Winchester bouncing top-seeded Catholic Memorial in the opening round of the boys tournament.
“Those things are going to happen,” Clark said. “Look at the NCAA tournament where No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson knocked off top-seeded Purdue.”
Clark wrapped it up by looking at possible steps to tinker with the formula. Among the areas he and the MIAA plan to assess moving forward are to examine the Margin Of Victory (MOV) caps, the possibility of adding extra emphasis to a win-loss component among other things.
There was some discussion over whether some of the capacity numbers used in the tournament were completely accurate. MIAA associate director Sherry Bryant expressed concern over that and suggested getting occupancy certificates to verify the actual attendance numbers.
“I think there were some issues in the Round of 8 for hockey,” said Scituate athletic director Scott Paine, who is the statewide hockey director. “If 1,000 is the occupancy number we are setting for GoFan, that’s not taking into consideration players, coaches, managers and media, which could add as many as 200.
“We might want to take a look at neutral sites going forward from the Round of 8. It was fine for the Round of 16 and 32, but there were issues in the Round of 8. Other than that, it was a great tournament on the boys and girls side and we really had a good day at the Garden.”
In other topics of discussion during the hour-long meeting, Monty Tech athletic director David Reid asked whether the MIAA would consider providing money to schools who had to travel to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket for tournament games.
“We played a tournament game there and we were on the bus all day,” Reid said. “Then if our game went into overtime, we might not have made the next ferry back.”
Along the same line, Wahconah athletic director Jared Shannon had some empathy for Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, who have dealt with the travel issue ever since they started competing.
“They are more likely to travel west, they’ve had to come out here multiple times,” Shannon said. “They played us and got hotel rooms in advance, which must have cost them thousands. We should be able to figure something out for those schools.”