A Winning Schedule: Why MPSF Teams Dominate at Large Bid Selections
OVERNGHT Feature Written by Wes Kading
Every September, an MPSF team hosts the MPSF Invite. This tournament brings together some of the top teams to compete early in the season at a central location. This allows fans to come and watch their favorite team compete in 4 games across 3 days. On the surface, this seems like an amazing idea to provide teams from all over the country to compete against one another in a single weekend.
In reality, this tournament is designed to knock everyone not in the MPSF out of the at-large bid contention.
Before you jump out of your chair and close your window, hear me out.
On average, MPSF teams recruit the top echelon of domestic players in the country. (I’ve listed current and former team USA players, Jr, National, Cadet etc below by school). In order for schools not named USC, UCLA, Cal and Stanford to compete, coaches are forced to go out and recruit elite foreign talent as well. However, this does not preclude those MPSF teams from doing the same. Names like Nikolas Papanikolau, Albert Ponferrada, Max Casabella, Marcell Szesci, Frederico Carsalade, the Martire brothers, Andrej Grgurevic, Stefan Brankovic, Blake Edwards, Nikos Delagrammatikas, Marko Valecic, Botond Balogh, to name a few, come to mind. Some of the most dominant foreign players in the world coming to the United States supplement the overwhelmingly dominant recruitment of US born players at the major universities. And, while it does happen that a team like San Jose or Long Beach state are able to pick up an elite recruit like Robert Lopez Duart or Jacob Mercep, the development of the transfer portal has made their stay at those universities short lived as they move to MPSF programs which further deepens their bench, the rich get richer concept. This begs the question, how could other programs possibly compete? Believe it or not, the answer isn’t in building more depth.
The answer?
The cadence of games.
Depth comes into play when stamina is paramount and you are playing multiple games in a single day more so than any other time.
Simply put, if you have to play 2 games in a single day, and your second match is against an MPSF team, you aren’t going to win.
Over the last 4 years, 2021 to 2024, MPSF teams have won 59 of 68 second games of the day. In fact, since 2021, the ONLY NON-MPSF team to beat an MPSF team in their second game of the day was this season when Pepperdine beat Cal at the Triton Invite and even that took a sudden death scenario to pull out the win. The remaining 8 losses were to other MPSF teams, i.e. USC beating Stanford this year at the MPSF Invite in their second game of the day.
However, when playing 1 game in a day, you don't necessarily need to go 18 players deep into your bench. In fact, in the past 4 NCAA finals, no team has used more than 13 field players and in 2019 only 10 field players were used per team. This suggests that coaches rely on their top 9 the majority of the time and spell the remaining 4 for short bursts to keep their top line’s engines going hot.
If teams outside of the MPSF conference can avoid playing those MPSF teams in the latter part of a long, multigame, weekend, the outcome would be less predictable which then creates more parity. Long Beach, for example, knocked off Stanford in 2023 in their first game of the season, coming in rested and ready. Princeton took UCLA to the brink this year at the MPSF invite in their first game of the weekend then, expectedly, fell apart the next day losing to a Cal team, who had a number of injured players, a team they would beat later in the season. UCI and LBSU took down Cal this year in single game days. And, in 2022, Pacific beat USC on a Friday night, a single game weekend. Is it a regularity that these MPSF teams lose even in a single game regardless of when its played? Absolutely not. However, if you’re going to get them it won't be playing them in the latter part of a long weekend or a second game of the day. And, if you want to win the at-large bid, you may be better off avoiding the multi game days and longer weekend formats altogether.
In fact, the last time a non-MPSF team was awarded the at-large bid to the NCAA tournament was the 2019 UOP team. That Pacific team beat USC 2x, Cal 1x and UCSB 2x (UCSB was #1 at a time that season as they also beat Stanford at Stanford in a single game day) all in either single game days or their first game of the day, unsurprisingly. And, while Pacific lost to Stanford 2x in 2019 in the regular season, one of those was the second game of the day after they’d beat USC earlier that morning. See the trend here?
Unless the MPSF Invite changes its structure OR non MPSF teams mandate changes to the cadence of games, you will likely continue to see both at large bids being rewarded to the MPSF conference the majority of time.
USA Pipeline Players at MPSF Teams
Cal - Alex Oprea, Marci Szatmary, George Avakian, Jake Howerton, Will Kelly, Nik Mirkovic, Maddox Arlett
UCLA - Ryder Dodd, Chase Dodd, Wade Sherlock, Bode Brinkema, Peter Castilla, Garrett Griggs, Nico Tierny
Stanford - Dash McFarland, Chase McFarland, West Temkin, Will Schneider, Ethan Parish, Gavin West, Ryan Ohl, Soren Jensen, Max Zelikov
USC - Carson Kranz, Max Miller, Bernardo Herzer, Jack Martin, Luke Nelson, Evan Ausmus, Zach Bettino
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