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INDIANAPOLIS – With league play set to begin on Thursday, the Great Lakes Valley Conference (GLVC) will continue to utilize the GLVC Point Rating System (PRS) to determine the top eight men’s and women’s teams that will advance to the 2019 GLVC Basketball Championship Tournaments.
At the request of its basketball coaches, the GLVC implemented the new qualifying procedure for the 2017-18 campaign as the league no longer had balanced eight-team East and West Divisions. In past years, the winner of the East and West Divisions secured the top two seeds in the 12-team tournament, which was made up of four teams from each division along with four wildcards.
The 2018 tournament field was reduced to eight teams, featuring no automatic qualifying bids for divisional champions, nor was there a number of tournament bids allocated for each of the three five-team divisions.
Now with 14 member institutions, the Conference is set to embark on an 18-game schedule without divisions, where each team will play a single round-robin slate with an additional five GLVC contests. The league schedule is based on seven pairs of travel partners (Bellarmine/Southern Indiana, Drury/Missouri S&T, Illinois Springfield/McKendree, Indianapolis/Lewis, Maryville/Missouri-St. Louis, Quincy/Truman State, Rockhurst/William Jewell). Each team plays every other team in a single round-robin (13 games), plus a second game against its travel partner (1 game), and the two pairs adjacent to its own pair (4 games) on the GLVC’s scheduling wheel, which is based on travel. Each team will have nine home games and nine away contests.
“Prior to last season, our coaches were looking for a formula that would place the best eight teams in our postseason tournament,” said GLVC Commissioner Jim Naumovich. “While the Point Rating System could be tough to follow at times, we believe the formula was fair for all and helped us achieve our goal in the end. We also found there to be much more attention drawn to the tournament bracket throughout the regular season from our schools and fans, as teams moved up or down or in and out of the field.”
The GLVC Point Rating System is designed to provide a team more points for a win on the road or at home against top competition based on conference winning percentage, while distributing fewer points for a win against weaker competition. Points are also distributed for losses, with more points awarded for a loss against stronger competition versus if the team lost at home or on the road to a struggling team.
The eight teams with the highest ratings at the end of the regular season will qualify for the postseason tournament. In the event of a tie, the league’s existing interdivision tiebreak criteria will be applied as outlined in Section 3.C.2.b of the GLVC Handbook.
In last year’s men’s basketball standings, four teams qualified from the East Division, three from the West, and one from the Central, while another team was seeded higher than a division winner based on its PRS rating. On the women’s side, three teams qualified from the East and West, with two entered from the Central, and a division runner-up was also seeded ahead of a division winner based on PRS.
The GLVC website will continue to display all 14 teams on the standings page and offer a link to updated PRS ratings following each Conference game. The PRS document will show the top-eight teams highlighted to indicate the tournament field should the season end at that time. In line with the GLVC’s transparent approach, it is important to remember that PRS ratings can fluctuate throughout the first half of the league slate, which is unlikely to happen as frequently when the number of Conference games played increase.
The 2019 GLVC Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championship Tournament returns to the Vadalabene Center on the campus of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, March 7-10, 2019.
Included below is the GLVC Point Rating System, followed by the amended tiebreak criteria from GLVC Handbook Section 3.C.2.b. Also included below is the final PRS document of the 2017-18 season.
GLVC POINT RATING SYSTEM
Points shall be awarded for each conference contest played:
7 points – win over a .750 or better team on the road
6.5 points – win over a .750 or better team at home
6 points – win over a .500 or better team on the road
5 points – win over a .500 or better team at home
4.5 points – win over a .250 or better team on the road
4 points – win over a .250 team or better at home
3.5 points – win over an under .250 team on the road
3 points – win over an under .250 team at home
2.5 points – loss at home or on the road to a .750 or better team
2 points – loss to a .500 or better team at home or on the road
1 point – loss to a .250 or better team at home or on the road
.5 points – loss to an under .250 team on the road
0 points – loss to an under .250 team at home
GLVC POINT RATING SYSTEM TIEBREAK – SECTION 3.C.2.b
- Head-to-head competition if the win is on the road.
- Head-to-head competition with all remaining institutions in order of their overall GLVC Point Rating System ranking played at the same site, considering only contests where the tied teams played the same opponent at home or played the same opponent on the road.
- Head-to-head competition if the win is at home.
- A coin flip by the Commissioner.
2017-18 POINT RATING SYSTEM BREAKDOWN (FINAL): Men |
Women