Mitchell Gerend's fourth-quarter touchdown gave UW-Oshkosh a lead it would never relinquish, and it likely knocked some at-large hopeful out of the NCAA playoffs. Photo by Steve Frommell, d3photography.com

By Greg Thomas and Pat Coleman
D3sports.com

When you get to the end of the night on Selection Eve, all you are hoping for is a little clarity. We got it all day when Cortland lost, when Bethel lost, and when all five of the at-large teams we projected earlier this week came home with wins.

And then, the metaphorical grenade was launched into the middle of the process when UW-Whitewater could not hold onto the football, throwing five interceptions as UW-Oshkosh won 27-20 in the final game of the night, winning the 2019 WIAC automatic bid.

• The selection show streams online (we will have a link on D3football.com) at 5:30 p.m. ET Sunday.

That gave us our 27 automatic bids, but at a price. It shuffled around a top seed, changed a bunch of matchups and generally shook things up.

Here's how the process works for the at-large bids. The committee traditionally will sit down with a board that includes the top at-large team from each regional ranking, comparing the four teams head-to-head, then select one to put in the field. The committee considers the usual criteria: results vs. Division III teams, strength of schedule, results vs. regionally ranked teams, head-to-head results and results vs. common opponents. As we get closer to the end of the process, though, the committee can consider non-Division III games as well. And with just five spots and more than twice as many candidates, expect every piece of data possible to be used.

There is no Pool B bid this year, and no Pool B-eligible teams.

Here's how our mock at-large selection process went:

Wesley got through Week 11 without any drama and while the Wolverines slid one spot in our mock rankings to East No. 3, they still hold a 2-1 record vRRO (lost to East 1, beat East 4, beat East 9) and an SOS high enough to warrant being the first Pool C selection.

On this board, Redlands has the highest win percentage, the highest SOS, and are 1-1 vRROs. The lone loss coming to our top ranked team in the mighty West region. Redlands is a clear choice in the second round.

The WIAC co-champions are here and they are going straight into the field. The Warhawks have a monster SOS, just the one loss to W8 Oshkosh, and a vRRO win against La Crosse. There shouldn’t be much debate here as UW-Whitewater gets selected.

Wartburg replaces UW-Whitewater at the table and, it turns out, Wartburg presents every bit as well as the Warhawks did. Their vRRO win is against W9 Monmouth, the lone loss an overtime defeat to W5 Central. The SOS is a huge advantage for the Knights here as well and Wartburg will be our fourth choice.
UW-La Crosse comes to the board as the fourth at-large team from the West. We think the second loss is too much to overcome this year for any team, even one with a 31-3 win over the WIAC’s automatic qualifier. (Also, in the secondary criteria, UW-La Crosse has a loss to NAIA Dickinson State.) Similarly, while Ithaca has an SOS advantage over North Central and Susquehanna, the second loss to an unranked team is one blemish too many. So, it comes down to a pair of teams from 10-team leagues that present similar profiles due in large part to the essentially closed systems that 10-team leagues produce.

Susquehanna's lone loss is an overtime loss to S2 Muhlenberg. North Central’s lone loss is a 35-21 defeat to N2 (and a tournament No. 1 seed) Wheaton. Muhlenberg’s 10-0 record came against an SOS of .504, while Wheaton’s 10-0 record came against an SOS of .546. That’s a significant difference in our view, significant enough to give the fifth and final spot to North Central. That is stretching the criteria, but it illustrates how thin the differences between teams at this stage of the process really are.

North Central blocks John Carroll from ever getting to the board, and they are not considered, but John Carroll's resume is fairly similar to North Central and Susquehanna's.

Now to the bracketing. 

Click to enlarge:

Being given a second shot at this, with a full set of 32 teams, changes some things around. First off, as alluded to above, Wheaton is now our westernmost No. 1 seed. We feel their resume gives them a good shot at taking over the spot which UW-Whitewater fell out of, but note that Whitewater doesn't fall far -- the Warhawks are still a No. 2 seed, with St. John's the No. 3 in that bracket and Hope No. 4. Beating Aurora may well have gotten Hope a home game in the playoffs. 

We were still unable to reach the goal of giving Huntingdon to UMHB and Berry to Redands in the first round, but like the concept of Hanover making the trip down to Belton, Texas. We had been working with the automatic assumption that SUNY-Maritime would play Mount Union, but as we continued to massage the matchups, it became clear that we needed to bring a team from west of Mount Union to face the Purple Raiders in the first round, and Wabash (now unranked, and 7-3 overall after the Monon Bell loss to DePauw on Saturday) fits the bill.

The Berry-Huntingdon winner has to get in a plane regardless, and we send them to Salisbury. The committee could potentially save some money in the second round if Chapman and Redlands both advance, but in this projected bracket, UW-Oshkosh would have plenty to say about that. Remember that Redlands and Chapman should both be given first-round home games, and someone unexpected will be flying west.

Here's the set of regional rankings we worked with. This includes 10 ranked teams, plus two teams that missed the cut and are not considered regionally ranked. Also, please keep in mind that although we use a shorthand to refer to results against regionally ranked opponents (RRO) and only list numbers of wins and losses against them, the process is more in-depth than that. Bridgewater's 2-0 against RRO (Stevenson, ranked last week in the East, and Randolph-Macon, the South 7) is not the same as Wheaton's 2-0 (vs. the North 3 and the West 9).

Remember to keep an eye out for the official bracket announcement show. We'll have it for you at 5:30 p.m. ET.