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| Berry clinched its playoff bid thanks to its opponents winning percentage, which is how the Southern Athletic Association broke the conference's three-way tie for first. Berry athletics photo by Nico Klementzos |
By Pat Coleman and Greg Thomas
D3sports.com
The process of creating a Division III bracket this year got easier, but it also got harder.
This mock bracket process always required mock regional rankings, and mock selection of at-large teams, but starting this year, there's a computer formula (NPI, the NCAA Power Index) to do it all. It takes all the drama out of knowing who is going to make the playoffs.
We have been promised that this is a feature. It's not a bug.
- The selection show streams online (we will have a link on D3football.com) at 5 p.m. ET Sunday.
- Final NPI numbers
So when we sat down to put these 40 teams in a bracket, we got to skip like five steps. We go straight to the 40 teams as they are here, ordered by their NPI and then listed with their overall seed. At-large teams are in bold.
| NPI | Team | Overall Seed |
| 1 | St. John's | 1 |
| 2 | Hardin-Simmons | 2 |
| 3 | Salisbury | 3 |
| 4 | Cortland | 4 |
| 5 | North Central | 5 |
| 6 | Mount Union | 6 |
| 7 | DePauw | 7 |
| 8 | Lake Forest | 8 |
| 9 | Hope | 9 |
| 10 | Springfield | 10 |
| 11 | Johns Hopkins | 11 |
| 12 | Wartburg | 12 |
| 13 | UW-Platteville | 13 |
| 14 | Mass-Dartmouth | 14 |
| 15 | Randolph Macon | 15 |
| 16 | Susquehanna | 16 |
| 17 | Carnegie Mellon | 17 |
| 18 | Linfield | 18 |
| 19 | Grove City | 19 |
| 20 | Hobart | 20 |
| 21 | Endicott | 21 |
| 22 | Aurora | 22 |
| 23 | Washington & Jefferson | 23 |
| 24 | Ursinus | 24 |
| 25 | Whitworth | 25 |
| 26 | Texas Lutheran | 26 |
| 27 | Berry | 27 |
| 28 | Bethel | 28 |
| 29 | King's | 29 |
| 30 | Coe | 30 |
| 32 | Centre | 31 |
| 33 | UW-La Crosse | 32 |
| 34 | Trinity | 33 |
| 35 | Mary Hardin-Baylor | 34 |
| 36 | John Carroll | 35 |
| 39 | Maryville | 36 |
| 54 | Pomona-Pitzer | 37 |
| 62 | Mt. St. Joseph | 38 |
| 81 | Northwestern (Minn.) | 39 |
| 167 | Alfred State | 40 |
There are 24 teams who get first-round byes. The top eight seeds go in as the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds in each bracket, and it's been believed that they will get matched up in the quarterfinals as 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc., regardless of geography.
In addition, eight bottom seeds play in first-round games. Division III coaches were told back over the summer that these would be treated more like 7A vs. 7B and 8A vs. 8B in each bracket, but to make them make more sense to the general fan, we are still seeding these teams as 7-8-9-10 and generally pairing 7 vs. 8 and 9 vs. 10 when geography allows.
So yes, geography is still an issue for most of this bracket, and we group our 40 teams into four groups of 10, or somewhat into eight groups of five, around the eight top seeds. So below, when you see that Whitworth has a first-round bye, and Ursinus does not, even though Ursinus is seeded 24 and Whitworth is seeded 25, that's because Ursinus was not in the top six in its grouping and Whitworth was.
It's entirely possible the committee will not do it this way. This is all brand-new. Nobody knows. This is our estimation based on the way things were done previously and interpreting how those things may be carried over into the new system.
In addition, we know one thing, that Texas Lutheran did not put in to host. Because of that, we have Centre hosting their first-round game.
Click to enlarge or tap to download if on mobile. This was updated to correctly reflect what the proper seeding would be for Susquehanna and Carnegie Mellon.
Some notes as you look at this. The top left bracket fully conforms to the 1-through-10 seeding, although this is a good time to remind people that our Top 25 poll, and the coaches' Top 25 poll, does not weigh in here at all. In the bottom left, ideally the MSJ/Maryville winner would go to Hardin-Simmons, but the NCAA might not allow the football committee to spend the money. On paper, the bracketing guidelines only say that a first-round rematch between conference opponents must be avoided, so even though Hardin-Simmons could potentially see a conference foe in its first game, that game would take place in the second round and would apparently not be covered. Also in this bracket, there are too many eastern type teams to give a geographically coherent third-round matchup for HSU, should HSU advance. But we put W&J against Randolph-Macon because of geography -- not only is W&J too far from Mass-Dartmouth, but W&J is within the desired 500 mile radius of DePauw, giving at least some chance for a bus trip to DePauw in the third round, should DePauw advance.
In the top left, ideally it would be King's and Centre with the winner playing at Cortland but that would require flights for both a King's-Centre game and an Ursinus-Texas Lutheran game. A more geographically coherent bracket might swap the King's-Ursinus and Centre-TLU games on this bracket, but if the committee wants to make sure to protect its top seeds -- which is the stated reason for the 7 vs. 8, 9 vs. 10 first round matchup scheme, then this is the best way to do it because it guarantees the 7 seed can't get to play Salisbury in the first round.
In the bottom right, we also have a full 1-through-10 seeding that makes sense. Somthing else that could happen would be for Maryville to play at Berry in the first round and Bethel to host Mount St. Joseph, but Bethel-DePauw is more than 500 miles so we passed on that.
Remember to keep an eye out for the official bracket announcement show. We'll have it for you at 5 p.m. ET.