Quick thoughts on the bracket as we look ahead to the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament!
Hopefully everyone has recovered from the crazy day that is Selection Monday! It was a build-up of anticipation through conference tournament week and certainly on Sunday evening heading into Monday’s announcement. It was a lot of fun to be part of the WBB panel that attempted to correctly predict all 21 Pool C bids (as well as the Pool B bid!) on Hoopsville on Sunday night and it led into an attempt at bracketology that I posted Monday morning, which took us right up to the selection show itself.
First things first, I think this bracket was well-done and gives us some intriguing matchups we aren’t likely to see in the regular season, like Baldwin Wallace/Trinity (CT) and Vassar/Washington and Lee. That’s always a fun aspect of the D3 tournament! We truly have a national bracket, even with some of the mileage constraints that certainly came into play this year. This is honestly one of the best brackets I’ve seen, and it’s a credit to the entire national committee, and more specifically, Megan Wilson, last year’s committee chair, who led the bracketing this year. We’ve got a great tournament field set up, which should lead to some exceptional first weekend matchups.
We discussed some of these points on Monday’s show on Hoopsville, but I can go into a bit more detail on my thoughts here. And there is plenty to discuss, both from the actual selections to the bracket itself.
In our Pool C picks, we correctly had 20 of the 21 correct, only missing on Ohio Wesleyan. So close…for the second straight year. Unlike on the men’s side, where I think the frustration of having Stockton in over Illinois Wesleyan is legitimate, this is more understandable. It came down to OWU and Loras, and ultimately, we went Loras considering the Duhawks’ SOS and win percentage were the highest at the table amongst the four teams we were considering. Sure, the committee has made it clear that they don’t add up wins in primary criteria categories, but we still thought Loras’ .852 win percentage and .542 SOS would overcome the 1-3 record vs regionally-ranked opponents. But as it turned out, we didn’t foresee Denison being ranked in Region 7. As a result, OWU added two RRO wins, improving to 5-5 v/RROs while losing 13 points of SOS and 74 points of win percentage. But the committee this year was really digging into those results vs regionally-ranked opponents, looking for both quality and quantity. Loras didn’t have as much quantity as OWU, and while the quality aspect included three games against Wartburg, Loras went 0-3 in those contests. You have to win more than one RRO game, and the committee certainly demonstrated that. I don’t disagree with OWU as the pick there.
In terms of bracketing, I think the committee did a good job of really trying to put together pods where 2 or 3 regions were represented. It was tougher this year too, considering we seemed to have fewer mid-atlantic hosting resumes, especially with the NYU men and Catholic men both hosting in a year where the men’s tournament had hosting priority in the opening weekend.
With NYU and Catholic unable to host, the committee on the women’s side seemed to pivot to the No. 17 and No. 18 hosting resumes, rather than choosing to shift the hosting responsibilities to the No. 2 sites in both of those pods. That is how we ended up with DeSales and Washington & Lee both hosting, as those were two teams on the fringe of being No. 1 seeds who were shifted to being No. 2 seeds. I’d also add that adding a fifth midwest pod (at DePauw) as well as a Texas pod (at Hardin-Simmons) contributed to that as well, but in the end, with NYU and Catholic unable to host, it worked out well geographically to slide DeSales and W&L in.
There have certainly been mixed opinions, especially in the DeSales case, on the draw there. There really weren’t many options for the committee when it came to where NYU might move to, and DeSales made sense because of what I had referenced above. It gave DeSales the opportunity to host, and it allowed for NYU to travel within two hours of NYC. It does create a very tough potential second-round game, but with that said, DeSales would likely have gotten NYU in the third round anyways. At least in this case, DeSales gets NYU at home, which honestly might be better, considering the home-court advantage could help in trying to take down the top overall seed.
Millsaps flying to DeSales was the first big “WOW” of the selection show, as it was the second pick announced. I wasn’t not the only one who expected Millsaps to be on a bus to Texas rather than on a flight to DeSales for the first round. But the committee chose to use an extra flight and created a situation where Hardin-Simmons got to host the Texas pod. It was an interesting and uncommon move considering we’ve been so used to minimizing flights to a significant degree in past years. The decision to fly a team that could have taken a bus rather than put Mary Hardin-Baylor as the host of the Texas pod speaks to the fact that the committee is trying to honor seeding as best as possible and that was something committee chair Bethany Dannelly referenced in her interview with Dave McHugh on Hoopsville Monday night. I was shocked, though. I fully expected to see Millsaps playing in Texas, and I’m not a huge fan of the fact that after all of that, Mary Hardin-Baylor and Hardin-Simmons will have to play each other for a third straight Saturday if both advance to the second round. Nowhere else in the country does that happen. But that’s the nature of Region 10 and Texas in particular. There wasn’t a whole lot the committee could’ve done. But I would’ve loved to have seen a flight used to split those two up. You could’ve flown Occidental, Willamette or Puget Sound down to Texas, as Dave pointed out, with UMHB as the host. Trinity and Millsaps could still bus. And then HSU would have been the extra flight. All you have to do to make that happen is switch your flight from Millsaps to HSU. Occidental, Willamette, and Puget Sound were flying anyways. And from my position, and I’d love to hear comments on this, I think HSU is in a tougher spot now, even with hosting. I understand the value in hosting, but I also understand that potentially facing a team for a third straight weekend is very tough to do. And I should add, especially when you’ve won the previous two. Both teams know each other very well and that’s a tough spot to be in when you find yourself in a must-win tournament game. You’re now trying to win for a third straight time and do it at home, which only adds to the pressure. I’m not counting Trinity or Occidental out here. But I’m setting up a scenario that could’ve been avoided. Anyway, it’s not a huge deal, but would’ve liked to have seen that.
We do know the committee was denied another flight. Perhaps they wanted to host a pod in the Pacific Northwest and fly HSU up there at the No. 1 seed? That would have actually freed up two flights, so perhaps Occidental could’ve been the No. 4 seed at the Northwest pod, and you’d get UMHB, Trinity, Millsaps, and another No. 1 seed, possibly NYU or Catholic, in Belton. But the committee did seem set on HSU hosting, as the Cowgirls did have the best resume in Texas. It’s also possible, and this is my personal thought, that the approach could’ve been to take a team from the midwest and fly them to the east, balancing things out a bit. All of our strong No. 2 seeds were in the midwest, so maybe Gustavus Adolphus or Illinois Wesleyan could’ve gone to say, Smith, instead of having to play in a much tougher midwest pod. I have no inside information, but it was referenced in Bethany’s interview on Hoopsville Monday and it definitely got me thinking about what that additional flight’s purpose may have been as they were working to set up the bracket.
I’ve already written a bunch and haven’t even gotten into the bracket yet! I think one of the more interesting pods is the one hosted by Washington & Lee. We get a unique Region 3 vs Region 6 matchup here as Vassar comes south from Poughkeepsie, New York to Lexington, Virginia, traveling a distance of 471 miles. That’s a cool game right there, and then you throw in the fact that we could get W&L/Catholic in the Second Round and it completes the whole thing. We also have four regions represented; Region 3 (Vassar), Region 5 (Catholic), Region 6 (W&L), and Region 7 (PSU-Behrend).
Another interesting pod comes in the midwest, and this is certainly one of the tougher first weekend pods out there. Carroll (WI), the CCIW Tournament champion, hosts WashU, UW-Stout, and Puget Sound. That is an intriguing one. Because we have a strong CCIW team in Carroll, a sometimes inconsistent, but battle-tested WashU team, a WIAC team that surged over the final 3-4 weeks of the season, and the champions from the Northwest Conference, who are being flown in. There is no weak team in this pod, and we’ve got three different regions represented.
DePauw getting the opportunity to host definitely threw a wrench into my bracketology, and it makes sense why it happened. I applaud the committee for doing that, as it both gave some balance to the midwest (by adding a fifth midwest host) and created a situation where Transylvania and DePauw won’t have to play in a non-conference rematch in the second round. The case of the committee wanting to protect a top seed (Transy) here doesn’t seem to be as prevalent, considering Emory is the No. 2 seed in Transy’s pod. But nonetheless, DePauw hosting allows for Hope to play, Ripon, and Berea to play in this pod rather than going further west to a WIAC pod. There’s a good mix of teams here too, and it also is cool, considering Berea was penciled in my most of us to go to Transy. But as Bethany talked about, they didn’t necessarily just want to send teams to the places that were “easiest”. They wanted to create uniqueness within their bracket, and this is one example of that.
I really like the pod hosted by UW-Oshkosh, but it will be a gauntlet. Unlike in the east, where there’s some clear paths for No. 1 seeds to reach the second weekend, Oshkosh hosts Gustavus Adolphus, Trine, and Webster. Gustavus, out of the MIAC, was only fourth in Region 9, but is as good as almost any No. 1 seed out there. Trine found its way into the tournament by beating Hope in the MIAA Tournament, and has plenty of momentum right now. And then there’s Webster, whose 27-0 record is difficult to gauge considering the very low SOS. But we know Webster is good. There are no easy matchups here or overwhelming favorites. It will absolutely be exceptional basketball.
I also want to point on one more cool geographically-diverse pod. Smith was given a No. 1 seed, and hosts Shenandoah, Messiah, and Maine Maritime. So we’ve got Shenandoah heading north (which isn’t something you always here) from the ODAC (a distance of 446 miles) Northampton, Massachusetts, and Messiah coming 342 miles from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Maine Maritime makes the trip south and we have four different regions represented here as well.
Amongst first-round matchups, Millikin and Willamette certainly sticks out. That could be a really intriguing contest and is a matchup you’re not likely to see outside of the NCAA Tournament. I think Willamette does some things defensively that could really create challenges for Elyce Knudsen and Millikin’s high-powered offense. This will be on a neutral court, too, so I’m interested in how this one plays out. While Millikin probably enters as the favorite, Willamette has been facing high-level competition all year as well, and that prior experience should help the Bearcats contend in this one. I think it’s cool we’re getting to see this in the first round, and these west coast vs midwest matchups should not disappoint. I think Carroll and Puget Sound will be another very competitive contest. In both cases, it is a CCIW team facing a NWC team.
I’ll have more tournament preview pieces coming in the next couple days as we prep for the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. This is an awesome time of year and I can’t wait to see how it all plays out! The Road to Columbus officially starts now!