There is a separate thread on this, but the other preseason game is Fort Hayes State ranked 24 in D2 by Massey and a quarter finalist in the D2 tournament.
As a preseason slate - this is actually harder than about half of the MD OOC and 5 of the Baylor OOC from this past year!
I do not pretend to know exactly how Massey puts together their Power Rating, but it carries through all three divisions of WCBB and is the same. Because of this, when you look at a team's opponents and get down to the bottom rung of them - the ranking in Massey for say MD has rankings that go beyond the 349 that is the total D1 programs so that ranking must include the D2 and D3 teams - Maryland played teams with Massey rankings of: 742, 547, 458, and 446 suggesting there were 400 teams in D2 and D3 better than MA Lowell which I don't find hard to believe. Baylor played teams rated 1059, 716, 629, and 532 - to put that in context Tx Southern which was their blow out first round opponent is rated 230, and Albany our 1st round opponent is rated 167. Withrop who they beat 140 to 32 has a rating of 1059 and ranks as #349 or 349 D1 schools. Their power ranking number is 0.00 which ties them with #246 D2 school Barry (power rankings actually can be negative) and #146 Clarkson in D3, and NAIA St. Mary NE #140 and I won't go into the other smaller college divisions but you get the idea.
Our two opponents this year in preseason have power ratings as follows:
Ashland 1.96, the same as D1 Drake and barely ahead of Georgia Tech at 1.95 - they would rank #37 if they were a D1 school
Fort Hayes State 1.08, the same as Dartmouth, Wayne St NE, and just behind College of Charleston with a value of 1.09 - they would rank 270 if they were a D1 school.
The top end of D2 and D3 schools are good basketball teams, well coached, with good athletes. The bottom of D1 schools are bad basketball teams, generally poorly coached with bad basketball players. They play in HS gyms with no fans and some of the schools are tiny - why they play D1 basketball is anyone's guess.
The top end of D1 is way better than any D2 or D3 team Uconn's power rating is 3.17, #10 UCLA is 2.45, but #25 Tennessee is down to 2.12 and #33 Temple is at 2.02, so the slide towards the top end of D2 is pretty precipitous.
The top end of D2 is #1 Ashland which would be just four spots behind Temple, but #10 C. Missouri has dropped to 1.22 which is the same as East Carolina at D1#195 and #25 Augustana SD is at 1.08 which is the same as Fort Hayes D1 #270 in range
The top end of D3 is Amherst at 1.61, (comp is Ball St at D1 103) and #10 has dropped to 0.86 (Presbyterian at D1 286)
The top of NAIA is OK City at 1.38 (Yale at 159) and #10 has dropped to 1.04 (Indiana St 242)
Now. I am sure that Massey's numbers across divisions are suspect based on completely different competition, just like making sense of D1 rankings is difficult because of wildly different competition. How does any system truly make sense of stats from a Baylor vs. Winthrop match-up with a 108 MOV? But the idea that a team is bad because the school has not chosen to pump crazy money into competing in D1 without actually looking at the team is equally crazy. The D3 team that won the championships the last two or three years had a transfer player from FSU or FL who had been on scholarship there.
Long, but I think pretty interesting!
