Princeton clinched the Ivy League title and an NCAA birth yesterday. Is anyone else in? What are the thoughts about everyone else? Shoe-ins? Bubbles?
Fantasy Tournament Bracket From the way too much time on my hands department: Here is a "fantasy" bracket for the tournament. It is based on current records, poll status, and geographic location (minimizing travel as the NCAA would like to do as much as possible). It also assumes that all of the regular season conference champions will win their tournaments (which won't happen). Just something to get us thinking ahead to next Monday when the real experts (cough, cough) release their official pairings. The pairings are listed in an order such as if you drew bracket lines, you would have the tournament. Numbers before teams indicate tournament seeding (1-16): Southeast Region @ Chapel Hill, NC #1 North Carolina (16-0-1) vs. Mississippi St. (9-8-3) SMU (13-3-3) vs. Middle Tennessee St. (12-4-0) @ Gainesville, FL Boston College (14-5-0) vs. Alabama-Birmingham (12-5-1) UNC-Asheville (10-5-2) vs. #16 Florida (13-3-3) @Auburn, AL #9 Auburn (14-2-2) vs. Samford (9-6-1) Colorado (13-4-2) vs. Wake Forest (12-5-1) @Knoxville, TN Florida Atlantic (11-2-0) vs. West Virginia (14-5-0) Northwestern (10-7-2) vs. #8 Tennessee (13-3-2) West Region @Portland, OR #5 Portland (16-3-0) vs. Arizona State (8-8-1) Dayton (18-1-0) vs. California (10-4-3) @Tuscon, AZ Stanford (12-4-2) vs. Loyola Marymount (10-6-3) UC-Santa Barbara (12-5-2) vs. #12 Arizona (14-4-0) @Los Angeles, CA #13 UCLA (12-6-0) vs. Nebraska (12-7-0) San Diego (10-7-2) vs. Oral Roberts (13-5-0) @ Santa Clara, CA UNLV (12-3-2) vs. Washington (12-4-1) Portland State (8-7-3) vs. #4 Santa Clara (13-4-2) East Region @ University Park, PA #3 Penn State (16-1-1) vs. Farleigh Dickinson (8-8-3) UNC-Greensboro (13-4-1) vs. Louisville (11-4-3) @ Durham, NC Villanova (13-5-1) vs. Hosftra (12-5-1) Colgate (11-6-1) vs. #14 Duke (12-6-0) @ Princeton, NJ #11 Princeton (14-2-0) vs. Michigan (10-7-2) Florida State (12-5-1) vs. Binghamton (12-5-1) @ Charlottesville, VA Loyola, MD (14-3-0) vs. Yale (11-4-0) Detroit (10-7-1) vs. #6Virginia (14-2-1) Midwest Region @ Lawrence, KS #7 Kansas (16-3-0) vs. Gonzaga (11-8-0) Wisconsin (15-4-1) vs. Steven F. Austin St. (11-4-3) @ College Station, TX Texas (11-5-2) vs. St. Louis (13-5-1) Marquette (11-7-1) vs. #10 Texas A&M (14-5-0) @ Columbus, OH #15 Ohio State (13-3-3) vs. Connecticut (15-6-0) Illinois (12-4-2) vs. Utah (11-5-2) @ South Bend, IN Kent State (11-3-0) vs. Drake (12-4-3) Wisconsin-Milwaukee (10-7-2) vs. #2 Notre Dame (18-0-1)
Re: Fantasy Tournament Bracket Now that the first round of many Conference tournaments have concluded, what changes do we see? Any teams that lost still have a chance at an At-Large? Who needs to get the Automatic to go?
Re: Fantasy Tournament Bracket I hope you have some more time on your hands ussoccr. I loved your Fantasy bracket and would like to see you (or someone else) revise it. By the way, when will the tournament PTBs give us the real thing? Anybody know? I guess tomorrow.
The brackets are announced today, between 4 and 5pm ET on ESPNews. I'm sure the NCAA site will have the bracket up shortly after it's announced, if you can't watch the announcement on tv.
Campbell is in as a conference champion. UAB is in after defeating St. Louis U. 2-1 on Saturday in the C-USA final. BTW, Kansas will not host. Their facilities are inadequate as discussed in the 'Kansas' thread. This is why Missouri hosted last year.
A couple more conference champions: Ohio Valley - Eastern Illinois (defeated Samford 3-2) Missouri Valley - Creighton (defeated Drake 3-1)
Re: Fantasy Tournament Bracket So where's Maryland? With victories over Duke and UCLA (and a tie against UVA) and 2 of their losses to UNC, both in overtime?
Dayton, Colgate and Binghamton are all in as AQs Penn State, ND and UNC all lost in their conference finals but are in regardless. Who else is in this group? Are there 23 AQs? That leaves 41 at-larges. How many are we up to? The spots start getting tight!
Florida is in as the AQ, and Tennessee and Auburn from the SEC are shoe ins(I think all 3 have made a case to host the 1st 2 rounds as well). Not sure if the league will get any others, as Vandy and MSU are the only 2 other teams eligible to make it. They finished 4th and 5th in the league, but that probably won't be enough.
There are at least 29 AQs. Might be 30 if the Southwestern gets an AQ (they did not last year). ACC: Virginia American East: Binghamton Atlantic Sun: Campbell Atlantic 10: Dayton Big East: Connecticut Big Sky: Weber State Big South: Birmingham-Southern Big 10: Ohio State Big 12: Texas A&M Big West: Cal Poly Colonial: Virginia Commonwealth Conference USA: Alabama-Birmingham Horizon: Detroit Ivy League: Princeton MAAC: Loyola (MD) MAC: Bowling Green Mid-Continent: Oral Roberts Missouri Valley: Creighton Mountain West: Utah Northeast: Central Connecticut State Ohio Valley: Eastern Illinois PAC 10: Arizona Patriot: Colgate SEC: Florida Southern: Furman Southland: Texas State Southwestern*: Grambling State Sun Belt: Florida International WAC: Southern Methodist WCC: Santa Clara At large that should get in ACC: North Carolina, Duke, Florida State, Wake Forest, Clemson Big East: Notre Dame, Boston College, Villanova, West Virginia Big 10: Penn State, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan Big 12: Texas, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska Conference USA: St. Louis Ivy League: Yale Missouri Valley: Drake Mountain West: UNLV PAC 10: UCLA, Stanford, Cal, Washington SEC: Tennessee, Auburn, Mississippi State WCC: Portland, San Diego That give us 30 of the 34-35 at large teams. The next tier would be other regular season champions who failed to win their conference tournament, along with other over .500 teams from major conferences (St. Johns, Rutgers, Virginia Tech, Maryland, Northwestern, Oklahoma State, San Francisco, and Gonzaga
Re: Fantasy Tournament Bracket Tough to get Maryland in with only 7 victories (7-6-4). However the quality of their wins and ties gets them serious consideration as a bubble team. Too bad they couldn't have beaten Miami, Towson, and NC State. With those 3 wins, instead of a loss and two ties, they would have definately made it.
Did Santa Clara get the automatic because of their head to head win against Portland? It was my understanding they shared the conference title. Just wondering what the tiebreaker was on that (head to head makes sense).
Yes, Santa Clara's 1-0 victory on October 24th over Portland gave them the head to head tiebreaker for the automatic bid.
You need to be over .500 to be eligible. Did Rutgers make it over? The big question is whether they will take strong win-loss vs strength of schedule or the other way around. There are a number of teams with strong schedules (Maryland, Harvard, Pepperdine, ASU etc.) but not great win-loss. The question with those will be did they grab a "big" win or 2 Personally, I think they should reward teams that go out and play the toughest schedule possible. But thats just me.
I love CSTV and the affiliates. I have gotten to do nothing but watch games for the last 24 hours. My observations (I am interested what others who have watched think) Notre Dame is very good. The loss will probable only focus them more for a big run. They seem to get upset every year in the NCAA's. Coming earlier this year might help. I don't see the same early exit this time around with Thorlakson playing the way she is. What a special player. As for Connecticut, I think they are not as strong as in the past, but who really wants to go against them at this time of year. They are experts at sitting back and waiting for the special moments (see NCAA run last year). Good Coaching! UNC is still so dangerous. I was surprised by their lack of finishing yesterday. This has always been a strength. You KNOW they will sort it out and will be there in the end, but a team that can possess it like UVA has a chance against them (until maybe Tarp is back and ready to go full speed). UVA looks very good. They seem to have more will to win then in the past and their possession is excellent. Penn State is very athletic and strong in the goal. I think it comes down to getting Weimer the ball. When she scores they win. When she does not they get upset like yesterday. Ohio State does not seem to quite fit in the Big 10. In a conference with the reputation of being big and whacking it, they possess it like the west coast teams I like to watch. Maybe that comes down to having a player like the swiss kid who put on quite a performance. I am excited to see the SEC game (have not gotten to it yet). I hear it was quite a game. Not sure anyone will want to draw Florida and Tennessee in the tourney. From what I have seen this year they are both very athletic and dangerous in the box.
I am a west coast person, just wanted to state that for our east coast friends.... I have been doing the math, and we are out of spots. If pac 10 gets 7: u of a, ucla, stanford, cal, wsu, uw, osu wcc gets 5: scu, portland, usd, pepp, lmu big west: SLO where will the unlv's go? we are full if we get 3 pods....the only way a hawaii, ucsb and unlv can go is if people get shipped out and we have 4 pods. will they take unlv over a pepp and lmu? maybe. i am very curious how this will play out. I can see USD hosting u of A's regional...since u of a's facility is sub par, usd is close for travel adn fans and a great field! any thoughts? we will know soon
USSoccr, is your SEC projections accurate? Do you take Mississippi State over Vanderbilt? Maybe take them both?
The other interesting thing out west is what to do with SCU. Are they seeded as the top team from the west? Where will they play (men's team currently has games at Buck Shaw - Friday 7:00 PM and Sunday 1:00 PM)? Only one hour to wait!
Looking again, neither has 10 wins (which seems to be the magic number), neither has a high profile win, but Vandy did beat MSU twice, so you would have to take Vanderbilt before Mississippi State. They are both serious bubble teams. They will be looked at in comparison to teams like St. Louis, UNLV, and UW-Milwaukee (won their conference regular season, but not their tournament).
Ties might help Vandy's cause. They tied Florida, Auburn and Wake Forest, that might be enough to get them in, along with finishing 4th in the league. If the league does get 4, they will be the 4th.