Thanks for the info. If they can't expand the field, maybe the number of leagues receiving automatic berths should reviewed. There are some very mediocre teams and leagues in the field that receive automatic berths.
Sandon...it is funny how you defend the selection. If you line up a tough schedule and lose most all of the matches you SHOULD GET REWARDED...for simply lining up a tough schedule? Playing in a tough league with all those losses...then why not send the whole Big Ten and include Wisconsin? It is obviously easier for the larger schools to line up such a schedule as these teams will go back and forth with each other...it is tough for the FDU's and Hartwicks to get some of 'these' schools to make the journey back to FDU or the wick... So UCONN (automatic qualifier) would have received an at-large bid even though, prior to their tourny, they lost or tied (one tie I believe) to EVERY ranked team on their schedule?
Yeah. Guidelines or rectal extraction? FWIW, 32 was the number before when the overall number of teams was still about 300. Since women's D1 soccer has 300 or so teams, does that mean they should have 72 teams in the tournament in lieu of 64?
I'd guess expansion to 64-team tourney not happening until # of D1 schools is close to 300. As of 2003, Men's D1 Soccer programs numbered 214. (I think a couple dropped in 2004?) Women's D1 (64-team tourney) totalled 297. Another comparison, Men's (and women's) D1 Basketball had 327 (and 325) programs last year. (64-team tourney)
agree completely I mean, it was known three days BEFORE the NCAA selections that Wake wasn't even in the ACC finals...
Totally They just need to focus on the first game and forget about the rest, even though it would require two trips to the Carolinas to get back to So Cal. Yeah.....like that's gonna happen.... F-ing UCLA will not be leaving So Cal again this season...WTF?!?!?
It's curious that Wake had the highest apparent schedule strength, and that the NCAA seems to be getting pretty full of itself lately over schedule strength as an overriding factor in the selection process. It does make selections more straightforward for the non-soccer types on the committee. Only the conference champions will get the automatic bids, and the at-large bids are all filled in accordance with the remaining teams that have the best schedule strength. Simple stuff. Note to Mid Majors; win the league or don't plan on getting in unless you've got the schedule strength. That's going to kill teams in big leagues like the A-10.
Hartwick played four teams that made the NCAA's and that includes the team from their conference that got the automatic bid. Their only quality win was over Old Dominion. They also tied Ohio State. That's it. They didn't get into the NCAAs last year for the same reason - strength of schedule. To their credit, they added ODU and OSU as well as St. John's (loss) and two teams that usually make the NCAAs but had off years this year, William & Mary (T) and Rutgers (W). But, the rest of their non-con schedule was loaded with Patriot League and Ivy League also rans and one each bottom-tier team from the Big East and A-10 in Syracuse and Fordham. Hartwick chose to play Lafayette and Bucknell (which they tied, BTW; had they won, perhaps they squeak in), Brown, Yale, Colgate and Cornell. Don't give me that bigger programs won't schedule them because if they're willing to go, they will. There were plenty of good teams in the NY/NE/PA area that would likely have been willing to play a quality team like Hartwick that are looking for good games. Hartiwck knows it plays in a weak conference where there's only one other team they gotta beat, FIU. Two years running, they didn't get it done. And, two years running, they didn't play a tough enough non-conference schedule. I feel for Hartwick. It's got a lot of soccer tradition and it fought like hell to avoid the drop to D-III. I want to see them make it, even though they gave the soccer world Mike Burns and Mooch Myernick. But, they gotta do their part and play a tougher schedule. That, or win their damn conference. Till they do one of those things, we're going to be going through this year after year. I think JMU has a much better beef. They had more wins than the Hawks and play in a tougher conference. They tied St. Francis, which doesn't help their case, but beat VCU, which is seeded, and UNC-WIlmington, which won 12 games, and their only losses were to twice Old Dominion (also seeded) and Hofstra, the conference champs. The CAA got three teams in to the tourney and two of them seeded so I don't think anyone would argue its a much tougher conference than Hartwick's. If we're looking at teams that got screwed, JMU should be ahead of Hartwick. But, JMU's non-con schedule was a joke. And that's on them. They chose to play a cake schedule and they paid the price when they didn't win either their conference's regular season or tournament championship. Tom Martin's a good coach and I assume you'll see him react to this by playing some tougher teams next year. But, I can't feel sorry for them. And, I totally understand why Michigan was chosen over both of them. The Wolverines non-con included UConn and Notre Dame and they had the good fortune (or mis fortune, depending on your perspective) of playing in a conference where they got to play lots of good teams. This year, it hurt them in the Ws and Ls but damn sure helped their strength of schedule rating. And, at the end of the day, that got rewarded. I think its good that the tournament selection committee rewards teams that play in tough conferences and play a tough non-con schedule. It encourages teams to play more tough teams and to pressure their conference members to get better and that's good for college soccer, which needs all the help it can get.
But the coaches in their own region couldn't even select Michigan among their own Top 10 this week. Sorry, but they struggled mightily through the end of the season, and capped it off with a pounding by Northwestern. You can make the case that Michigan could trump Hartwick, but there isn't a case for letting Michigan in at the expense of Stanford (and giving them a host site to boot), sending Milwaukee all the way to San Francisco, when Milwaukee should be playing Akron and San Francisco should be playing Stanford. This was nothing more than the committee bowing to Big 10 clout.
Just because there was parity and close games in the Big Ten doesn't mean all those teams are good, just equal. The Final game certainly wasn't impressive.
First of all, most of you people have no idea what you are talking about. First round sites are not determined by the NCAA they are bid on by the participating schools. A school’s athletic department must put in a bid to host the game. The higher seeds do get preference but many athletic departments do not want to spend the money on hosting if they know they are not going to recoup their investment on a soccer game. Secondly, does it really matter where a team is seeded. Last season Coastal Carolina played a first round game against Davidson (W 3-0) then went to #4 seed UNC and beat them 3-0. They would have hosted Santa Clara but their AD was too cheap to bid on the match so they ultimately had to travel to Santa Clara, play on an absolutely horrible pitch and ultimately lost. And as far as mentioning BCS conferences, there is no such thing in college soccer. 26 of the 48 teams don’t even belong to anything close to a “BCS” type conference. The reason many of the bigger schools get into the tournament is because of their strength of schedule. Look at the ACC. Imagine playing UNC, UVA, Clemson, Wake, Duke, Maryland and then throw in Furman, CCU, UNCG, College of Charleston and other local soccer powers and you have a tough schedule. Why do you think these teams win the championship year after year? Take Clemson (who has been down for several years) out of the ACC and put them in the America East or the Atlantic Sun Conference and they would absolutely dominate. It is just a simple fact. Sure teams get left out every year that probably deserve to get in, but they need to look at their coaches and athletic department personnel to schedule better teams. Coastal Carolina (I know I used them before, but they are an easy example) after going 17-2 in the regular season last year and had the college player of the year didn’t even get a seed. So what do they do, they schedule Furman, Wake Forest, South Carolina, College of Charleston, UNCG and several other tough schools. Sure they didn’t win them all but they did run through their conference tournament and perhaps, those tough games prepared them for that. It is not that difficult to schedule better opponents. Many times athletic departments don’t have the budgets to send teams to tournaments or on big road trips. Complain to your AD, don’t complain to the selection committee. By the way, the selection committee is made up of coaches and the only NCAA members there are there to oversee. So perhaps they know a bit more than all of us. Expanding the tournament would just water down the competitiveness of the tournament. Seeded teams get a bye because they deserve them. They have won, played tough schedules, and are powerful teams. The bottom line: enjoy the games and continue to support college soccer
First thing's first: Dude, could you please break up your text into some paragraphs. That stuff was killing my brain. You bring up some good points and bring some good knowledge to the table about hosting/paying for games. I had no idea that it worked like that. On the part I snipped out. I don't see how adding 16 more teams would really water down the competitiveness of the tournament when really the bottom 16 of the 48 chosen would be on par nationwide with the possible 16 that weren't. Basically, in my opinion, each team should start anew and with all things being equal at the start of the tournament. Let the national champs be the team that can win 6 in a row, plain and simple. Not the team that only had to win 5 in a row, their first of the five being against a possibly beaten up squad. It's the way tournaments around the world in many sports are run. It shouldn't be any different here. Bye rounds should be reserved for tournaments where there isn't enough teams entering. Hell, maybe the thing to do is eliminate the 16 extra and start with 32 teams.
Actually tournaments around the world do not work like that. The Champions League, UEFa Cup, FA Cup, US Open Cup, Etc. all have bye rounds for the bigger clubs, generally clubs who have proven thay can win. The teams with byes in the first round have proven they can win and in turn don't have to play in the first round. I think it works. Win, play a strong schedule, and win and you can get a bye, simple as that.
Yes, thanks for the info on the bidding process. And those bids must be higher than I imagined because paying the freight to fly your players, coaches and staff (+ hotel and per diem) from coast to coast ain't cheap. Seems hosting would have been cheaper in the long run than hitting the road in this instance.
I understand that. I think that the comparison to college soccer doesn't quite make it though, due to the sheer numbers of clubs that compete in those competitions. Also, in portions of some of those competitions there is some pool play or home and away aggregate scoring, etc. I understand your points and maybe we'll just have to disagree, which is fine. I don't think that a team should be rewarded for good regular season play by being given a bye. They should be rewarded on seed/draw alone. If you are gonna determine the national champ by playing one-offs, make them all play the same number of games.
Lafayette and Brown each won their conference last year and were in the NCAA tournament. Going into the start of the season, I don't think you can call them "also rans". Hartwick plays Syracuse, Cornell and Colgate every year. Even though these teams have not been strong, I think keeping traditional rivalries going outweighs the damage to the oh-so important strength of schedule.
Yeah. I don't buy into any of these "strength-of-schedule" arguments come tournament time. Just too much parity among players these days. To reinforce the point, just check out some D1 women's tournament results. 1. Big school Michigan ("good" schedule strength) downed convincingly by Detroit (Horizon League winner and "bad" schedule strength) in the 1st game. 2. Dayton (A-10 champion, country's longest winning streak, "bad" schedule strength) loses to big school Wisconsin in OT, basically on an own goal). 3. Patriot League Colgate ("bad" schedule strength) defeats Arizona ("good" schedule strength). 4. UCF ("bad and downright miserable" schedule strength) defeats Florida ("good" schedule strength). 5. William and Mary ("bad" schedule strength) defeats Virginia Tech ("good" schedule strength). 6. UAB ("bad" schedule strength) shuts out Wake Forest ("good" schedule strength). Granted there were also lopsided results the other way as well, between the highest and lowest seeds. By comparison, the women's game is all over the map relative to the men's game. So I'm not particularly sympathetic to arguments that a James Madison or a Hartwick can't be competitive entities in the tournament based upon their strengths of schedule.
The NCAA pays for 18 players and a staff of 3 coaches, a trainer, and the AD and SID of each school to travel to each site. They pay airfare, hotel, transportation to and from the game and practice facility and a per diem so it is much cheaper for many teams to just go on the road.
I agree with you that Stanford does have a tough schedule, especially tougher than a few of the teams in the tournament. I would like to know who picks and seeds these teams. Every year we question their ability to pick the right teams. Let me know if you or anybody else has information on how they seed the teams.
If you've been folowing the thread you'll see that it's almost entirely schedule strength/power conference accomodations, gerrymandered for "regional balance", taking into account travel costs and attendance.
re: Selection Committee NCAA Legislates a 10-member committee including six D1-A reps, four D1-AA or D1-AAA reps; One member from each of the eight Regions and two members selected at large. Fifty percent of members to be Administrators. What follows is the reigning 10-member NCAA Selection Committee for Men's D1 Soccer ... Division Region Title Name Institution Conference Term Expiration I-A GREAT LAKES REGION Asst Dir of Athletics Terry Lynn Gawlik University of Wisconsin, Madison Big Ten Conference SEP 2006 I-A MIDWEST REGION Assoc COM Noreen Morris Conference USA Conference USA SEP 2007 I-A FAR WEST REGION Assoc AD for Intercollegiate Sports Earl Koberlein Stanford University Pacific-10 Conference SEP 2007 I-A SOUTH REGION Head Men's Soccer Coach Jay Vidovich Wake Forest University Atlantic Coast Conference SEP 2007 I-A MIDWEST REGION Head Men's Soccer Coach T J McIntosh University of Tulsa Western Athletic Conference SEP 2005 I-A NEW ENGLAND REGION Head Men's Soccer Coach Chaka Daley Providence College Big East Conference SEP 2007 I-AA NEW YORK REGION Assoc AD Nick Reggio U.S. Military Academy The Patriot League SEP 2006 I-AA MIDDLE ATLANTIC REGION Head Men's Soccer Coach Brian Fuller University of Pennsylvania Ivy Group SEP 2006 I-AAA SOUTH ATLANTIC REGION Head Men's Soccer Coach Shaun Docking Coastal Carolina University Big South Conference SEP 2008 I-AAA MIDWEST REGION AD Kenneth E. Kavanagh Bradley University Missouri Valley Conference SEP 2008
In case anyone was wondering how or why Wake is the top seed and Tulsa squeaked in with just 10 wins!
Same (or worse) bad seeding decisions going on in Women's College as in Men's College. This was the quote from SCU head coach Jerry Smith following #4 SCU defeating #1 UNC Saturday in a Qtr-Final match: "We felt the seeding last year was inaccurate and to be 16th this year... I just don't get it at all. The NCAA says they use their own criteria and I say `blow up the criteria and get better criteria, because it's not working'. This should have been a final four game." Isn't this kind of seeding similar to (back to Men's) the likely 3rd round matchup of UNC-G v. UC-SB?