May 6, 2007
Due to the large pool of strong candidates, the limited number of available bids, and use of the mandated criteria, picking the fields for the men's and women's tournament -- at least in the lower divisions -- is no easy task. There will always be teams in every division, both men's and women's Divisions II and III, good enough to compete at the highest level, but had to be left out.
The only bracket holding no surprises this year was women's D-2. We were able pinpoint the key games during the season and when those were completed, we knew the bracket. Is defending champion Adelphi worthy of a bid? Absolutely, but the Panthers' two losses happened to be against the two teams they were in direct competition with for the two North bids. Once Stonehill beat Adelphi in three overtimes on April 14, the issue was settled.
The other brackets were trickier, and yielded surprises and disappointments.
Heading into Sunday, we knew there was going to be a well-credentialed team squeezed out of the four-team Division II men's field. The team that eventually failed to find a seat, Bryant, must feel as though it was twice-scorned.
When it came down to selecting the North bid (and remember, there are no auto-qualifiers in D-2), Bryant went up against conference rival Le Moyne for the spot. Le Moyne beat the Bulldogs by a goal in Sunday's Northeast-10 title game, leveling the season series at 1-1 as Bryant won the regular-season tilt by a goal. Despite being the regular season champs of the NE-10, which is the North region, having the No. 1 ranking in the region heading into Sunday, and still holding a better regional record than the Dolphins, Bryant was deemed to be second to Le Moyne.
This threw the Bulldogs into the `wild card' mix, which determines the final team in the bracket by comparing the top remaining squads from all three regions. For this comparison, Bryant was stacked up against New York Tech. The Bears had an excellent record and are certainly a qualified team, but the East Coast Conference does not play a conference tournament. Had there been one, NYIT might have sustained another loss.
It would seem Bryant, and the Northeast-10, was penalized for holding a conference tournament. Without it, the Bulldogs would have certainly been given the North's bid, having the head-to-head advantage over Le Moyne in their pocket, in addition to the other qualifications. There are calls every year in every division to change the format of the selection process due to one team being snubbed, but in this case, it appears D-2 is not putting everyone on a level playing field. Either every conference needs to play a postseason tourney, or the results from those that do should be discarded.
"The South has one, the North has one, and the Central definitely should have one," said Pressler about conference tourneys. "We all should have one, or none of us. We want to keep up with the best in the sport we should either all have those or none of us have those."
(Check out Pressler's take on Bryant's snub.)
Moving on to the Division III men, the North region's ability to sweep all four of the at-large bids was unprecedented. Upsets in both the NESCAC and SUNYAC conference tournament sent a pair of teams -- Middlebury and Geneseo -- that would not have made the cut without the automatic qualifier. As a result, Wesleyan and Cortland were tossed into Pool C, eventually joined by Ithaca and Tufts.
The team out of the South with the largest complaint would seemingly be Lynchburg from the ODAC. Despite posting a 13-4 record in one of the premier conferences in the country and making a trip to the conference finals, the Hornets failed to receive an invite.
"It was very much a surprise to us," said Lynchburg head coach Steve Koudelka. "I knew we weren't a lock, but I thought we had a pretty strong résumé heading into the selections."
That résumé included six games against regional Top 8 opponents. While the Hornets were just 2-4 in those games, they did win all of the other games on their slate. That's all you can do, right?
"We took care of as much business as we could except for winning the conference championship," said Koudelka. "We made it there, and it looks like if we had won [Sunday], Roanoke wouldn't have made it. That's frustrating for our conference because it's a darn good conference."
The selection process puts an emphasis on in-region wins and an index calculating the relative strengths of each victory. There may be a way to massage those numbers to ensure a bid at the end of the year, but Koudelka is not about to alter his convictions to work the system.
"You can sit there and look at it mathematically to give yourself the best chance to make the tournament. Another approach, and the one we've always taken, is we're going to play the best teams we can possibly play," he said. "That's what our kids want to play and that's what we want to do as coaches.
"Might that have bitten us here in the end? Possibly. But by the same token, if we had gotten into the tournament it would have given us the best chance to succeed. Philosophically, as a coach you have to make that decision: do you want to play the numbers game or do you want to give your kids the best opportunity to play the best opponents out there."
It's likely that Lynchburg went up against Tufts, a third NESCAC team to qualify, and fell short due to a common opponent. The Jumbos traveled to Roanoke and beat the Maroons on March 20, 13-12, while the Hornets lost twice to their ODAC rival. A lot of importance is put on the in-region competition, but for the second year in a row an early-season intersectional game came into play.
Last year, Ithaca's loss to Washington & Lee proved costly for the Bombers as they were edged out by Washington College, which had beat W&L. Now Tufts gets the nod due to this secondary criterion. If anything comes out of the North's sweep, programs need to pay more attention to non-region scheduling because it is becoming a pivotal component of the selection process.
Koudelka is all class, and wasn't about to vent about the selections. He was just disappointed, which is understandable. He was forced to utter a familiar refrain for scorned teams.
"If we win another one, we're probably in," he said. "But we had the opportunity and that's the important thing."
On the flip side of Lynchburg's disappointment is the elation of the Roanoke College women's team, which was a surprising addition to Division III women's field. It even stunned the Maroons' coach.
"We were surprised," admitted Mary Schwartz. "We received a call from one of the assistants on the men's team and they were actually watching [the selection show], so they were the ones who broke the news to us. Then we started the phone chain."
Many of the calls were made to off-campus numbers. Roanoke had its graduation on Saturday and many of the players had departed, presumably for the summer.
"A lot of the kids who had made plans knew in their head that there was a chance they needed to come back," said Schwartz. "I think they thought more than I did that we were going to go, so they were ready. They kind of felt good about it, but I was looking at it more realistically as a coach."
Realistically, Roanoke's selection does appear to be a stretch due to the fact they likely edged out Colby, which finished as the runner-up in the high-powered NESCAC with a 12-5 mark and the 11th-best RPI in the country (according to LaxPower.com). The NESCAC, which sent three at-larges last year, only had Trinity tabbed from Pool C.
The Maroons finished 14-3, with two losses to ODAC champ W&L and a third to conference rival Randolph-Macon. Roanoke did defeat St. John Fisher early in the year, so the Maroons slate was strengthened when the Cardinals stunned Nazareth in the Empire 8 title game.
"You just never know," said Schwartz. "It's still kind of surreal, is this really happening?"
Such is life on Selection Sunday. The joy of some is tempered by the disbelief of others. It's easy to look at the selections and pick them apart on Monday, but the NCAA gives its committees guidelines to make the process easier. Sometimes the selections don't make sense to the naked eye, but they typically hold up under the light of hard numbers.
At least that's what we tell ourselves.
Contact Jac Coyne at jcoyne@uslacrosse.org.
