Conference Carolinas Announces Divisions and KPI Partnership
GREENVILLE, S.C. – Conference Carolinas is excited to announce a unique three-division model and a partnership with Abakus, LLC to create a conference-only KPI in six sports to determine the seeding for the conference tournament in those sports.
The Conference Carolinas Directors of Athletics have approved the three-division concept for the sports of men’s and women’s soccer, women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s basketball and softball. Teams will be divided into the Northwest, Southwest and East divisions. Each division will have a champion crowned based on the divisional record, however, division finish will not have a direct correlation with tournament seeding.
"We are excited to officially unveil all of this publicly as we start the playing season in the 2023-24 academic year," Commissioner Chris Colvin said. "It has been a priority since the beginning of my time in our amazing league for us to continue to find ways to uniquely position ourselves regionally and nationally, while, at the same time, benefitting our membership as they look to fulfill their missions. This model helps us accomplish two key goals of the Board of Directors - to reduce travel and promote regional rivalries. The utilization of KPI with the partnership with Abakus, LLC through Faktor will also allow us to continue to lead the way in the area. We truly look forward to seeing how the division standings play out along with the eventual tournament seedings this season in the applicable sports. This is a historic time in the long and proud history of Conference Carolinas."
The East division will feature Barton, Chowan, Francis Marion, Mount Olive and UNC Pembroke. The Northwest division comprises Belmont Abbey, Converse, King and Lees-McRae while the Southwest division includes Emmanuel, Erskine, North Greenville, Southern Wesleyan and Young Harris. In 2024-25, Shorter will join the Southwest division and North Greenville will move to the Northwest division.
The seeding for the conference tournament in these six sports will be based on the KPI for each institution. KPI is a computer-generated metric used extensively by the NCAA to account for the relative strength of athletics teams using a sophisticated model that includes results (W-L-T), strength of opponents and location of contest as inputs. The Conference Carolinas KPI will be specifically computed using only conference results to create a computer-generated metric that takes strength of schedule of conference contests into consideration.
In the case of tiebreakers, should they exist, the conference will use the current tiebreaking procedure with the exception that the conference record will be the second tiebreaker after head-to-head in sports using KPI.
Because the KPI model utilizes conference-only results, the first KPI rankings will not be released until after several conference contests have been played in each sport. The first KPI for men’s and women’s soccer will be published on Monday, Oct. 2 with women’s volleyball to be published a week later on Monday, Oct. 9. The release dates for men’s and women’s basketball and softball will be determined at a later date.
In addition to generating KPI rankings for six sports, Conference Carolinas’ partnership with Abakus, LLC also includes schedule optimization for select future schedule creations. Abakus works with over 20 NCAA Division I conferences for scheduling. Conference Carolinas is the first Division II conference to partner with Abakus, LLC.
KPI rankings can be accessed starting on the dates above via the current standings page on each sport page at conferencecarolinas.com.