I agree the basketball committees are usually chaired by one of the power conferences head commissioners and are made up of people who understand the game and what really goes on with these teams and conferences. Not to say that they don't have their issues especially with mid major conferences. The only coach I recognize on the soccer list is Ann Clifton, the head coach from Villanova. For the west coast not to have a rep from the PAc 10 or WCC is wrong. Especially in soccer scores do not always tell the story.......
There is no logical way to look at this from a soccer standpoint. Rankings (including Albyn-Jones) were completely disregarded. W-L-T does not hold form either: #12 Texas (13-6-2), #13 Arizona (15-5-0), #13 Washington (14-4-1), #14 UCLA (13-6-0), #15 Washington (14-4-1), and #16 Santa Clara (14-4-2). The geography argument might be valid, but then why would Duke not be sent to UNC to play. That is essentially the equivalent of sending Stanford to Santa Clara. If teams can be sent a couple of hundred miles across the east coast, then certainly they can do that in the west as well. I really believe that money is the base theory on the tournament seeding. I believe in these even stronger, knowing that the committee is a group of administrators whose job it is to look a bottom lines and not to have any soccer knowlegde what so ever. With the College Cup in NC again, it is certainly more likely to draw a large crowd if teams from the east are. The theory is more eastern teams at the end = more revenue at the College Cup. How else do you explain seedings that would result in UCLA (PAC 10 Co-Champ) @ Virginia (ACC Tourney Champ), Arizona (PAC 10 Co-Champ) @ Notre Dame (Big East Champ), and Santa Clara (WCC Co-Champ) @ North Carolina (ACC Champ) ALL IN THE ROUND OF 16. I contend that each of these matches is worthy of being at least an elite eight game, if not a possible final four game based on this years teams. However, if it were allowed to happen, it is most likely certain that the West Coast teams would not bring as many fans to Cary, and revenue would not be as high. Maybe we'll learn more about this one when the Men's draw occurs next Sunday, and well see if the scale is tipped west (Men's College Cup at the Home Depot Center). The only logic that I can find is that without a representative from the WCC or the PAC 10 on the committee, there was no one to provide any knowledge on the real status of the women's game in these two conferences. The bracket is surely a result of that.
I'd say that's true, but the question remains why, after last year's mess, the committee didn't try to find someone with that knowledge. I've heard Kevin Boyd at Cal was distinctly unhappy with the draw. And the San Jose Mercury News coverage focused entirely on Santa Clara's shafting. The Merc's website requires registration, so here's that article: Santa Clara shocked by No. 16 seed BY DYLAN HERNANDEZ SANTA CLARA, Calif. - (KRT) - The Santa Clara women's soccer team was not expecting any favors from the NCAA tournament selection committee, but it never imagined anything this bad - a No. 16 seed and a potential third-round match at No. 1 North Carolina. The Broncos, ranked fifth in the nation in the NSCAA/Adidas poll and sixth by Soccer America, turned silent as the pairings were unveiled Monday. They will host the first two rounds of the 64-team tournament at Buck Shaw Stadium, opening against Cal Friday. Also in their section are Stanford and Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo. Last year, Santa Clara received the tournament's No. 9 seed although it was ranked third. The seeding forced the Broncos to face the defending national champion, Portland, and No. 1 North Carolina on the road in the third and fourth rounds. The Broncos lost to North Carolina, which went on to win the national title. "I expected the worst after last year," Broncos senior midfielder Leslie Osborne said. "However, I didn't expect 16. I was thinking more along the lines of 10, 9." Broncos Coach Jerry Smith did not realize where his team had been placed when the first bracket appeared on television. After seeing North Carolina at the top of the screen, he didn't even bother to look at the bottom half, thinking, "That's not going to be us." "Then I heard people say 16, 16, 16," Smith said. "Even in the worst-case scenario, I didn't see us there." Smith was particularly puzzled about his team receiving a significantly lower seeding than No. 5 Portland. Santa Clara defeated Portland 1-0 on Oct. 24 and shared the West Coast Conference championship with the Pilots. SCU was seeded lower last season as well, even though the Broncos won the conference title outright. "To be seeded so differently ..." Smith said, shaking his head. However, Smith warned his players not to look ahead to North Carolina, as the Broncos had mixed results against the teams it will host this week. The Broncos beat Cal but tied both Stanford and Cal Poly.
Well, guys, it seems like the consensus is no one is happy. You all have made some great points that I didn't originally notice...what a dissappointment all-around. The most anticipated moment of the soccer season and what a bummer. I am (currently) the most shocked at the make-up of the committee. To have non-soccer people on it is just asinine, especially when soccer is one of those sports where score and record are so misleading. My plan is to write an open letter (email if I can track them down) to the members of the committee and the ncaa overseers. ALong with the outcry of the coaches, hopefully we can make enough noise. And I hate to hamstring the East like this, but I hope the West tears thru the brackets and brings 10 fans to Cary. No, that's not fair to the girls, but you know what I am saying. Would anyone be interested in writing to the committee? If so, I will post any contact info I find. I know this sounds awfully soapbox-y, but I urge you guys to let your voice be heard on this. The NCAA is money-driven, if they hear dissention from their consumers, then maybe we can enact some sort of change. Two questions: 1) does the committee remain the same each year? Does anyone know? 2) should I post any contact info I find? Would anyone be interested in writing in? You all have shown credible knowledge about the sport, and a respectful, but pointed email or letter can't hurt. Lastly, if anyone gets terribly bored or has a lot of time to kill, how about posting a revised bracket (using the same teams) that makes some sense? We promise not to villify you! (oh and three teams from the ivy league is a joke)
Good idea, upprv. To save you some trouble (I'd already been ticked off enough to do the research): Kristin W. Fasbender Assistant Director of Championships NCAA P.O. Box 6222 Indianapolis, Indiana 46206-6222 Phone: 317/917-6222 Fax: 317/917-6826 E-mail: kfasbender@ncaa.org Colleen Lim Associate Athletics Director Yale University P.O. Box 208216 New Haven, Connecticut 06520 Phone: 203/432-1435 Fax: 203/432-7772 E-mail: colleen.lim@yale.edu FYI, the committee is essentially the same as last year's. Lim is still chair, and I think only two members are new. One of the departing members was from USC, i.e., a PAC-10 representative. It'd be nice to think he left in protest, but I somehow doubt it. I'll leave it to you to create a more reality-based bracket .
I put together a "fantasy" bracket prior to the conference tournaments. If someone wants to go back an swap in the correct conference tournament champions and at large teams, the basic framework is done. It does need a little tweaking as some of the seeds would SLIGHTLY change. https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=147506&page=1
I have just looked into this post after being elsewhere for a few days but wanted to respond to some issues: 1) the Committee you named is just the National Committee. Each one of these people chairs their respective regional committee. Those regional committees ( which are supposed to have representation from all "major" confrences in their region) rate and rank their teams all year long and send their chair off to the national meeting with those rankings. The national committee can change things but, from what I hear, rarely does. Thus SCs issue might lie closer to home. 2) As for the "knowledge" of the committee vs that of other sports ( basketball) I think we are dealing primarily with a cultural issue. The NCAA mandates that committees be at least 50% administrators. Administrators are a) more likely to have a knowledge of basketball than soccer and b) have a far greater access to seeing teams play (via tv) in basketball than soccer. This means that half of the committee is almost assured to be more informed in Basketball than in soccer 3) The committee is allowed to do just 2 things once the teams are picked Seed and protect the top 16 and assign all other games geographically. Thus we see AZ "protected" by flying them to UConn to play unseeded teams. Protects them and cheaper than flying the 3 teams to AZ. We also see SC playing who they play. The #16 seeding of SC well that is a crime!
Re: Reactions...and the 2005 seedings Looking into the crystal ball . . . Broncos and Cardinal Headed to La La Land 11/5/2005 (Santa Clara, CA) Despite a #4 national ranking and winning their fifth straight West Coast Conference Title, the Bronco Women's Soccer Team went unseeded by the NCAA Women's Soccer Selection Committee for the 2005 tournament. The Broncos (15-3-2) will open the tournament in Los Angeles be facing Bay Area rival Stanford (12-5-1) in the opening round. The winner of the Santa Clara/Stanford game will advance to face the winner of San Diego (13-3-4) and the site host, the 16th seeded UCLA Bruins (16-3-0), champions of the PAC 10 Conference. With no seeded team in Northern California, it appears that the committee had no choice but to pair the Bay Area rivals with UCLA due to "geographic constraints on the scheduling"
Thanks for the info EJ. So then our question becomes..who are on the regional committees? I think my issue here is accountability. In all of our lines of employment, there is a certain level of accountability for our decisions and actions. As a college coach (not soccer) i demanded and tried to teach accountability to my players, as it is so important. yet here we have the governing body of college athletics making poor decisions, I would like them to have some accountability. That ncaa meeting is hard, I know that, but to repeatedly make bad decisions year after year shows me that there is no accountability, so in place of that, I ask us as informed fans to weigh in with our opinions so that those people in power know that someone is watching. I was on a selection committee of a much smaller scale and we served for 2 year terms. Apparently, after our first term, people didn't like our seedings...adn boy did we all hear about it. I can tell you this, we were a heck of a lot more careful in year #2 knowing the letters and emails that would be forthcoming if we didnt pay close attention to what we were doing. So please voice your complaints in the form of letters or emails. ussoccr: that is very funny. the scary thing is, it isn't THAT far from reality.
My biggest reaction, as I attend a WCC school (Gonzaga), is that Pepperdine made it into the tournament while finishing seventh in the league! Two other teams (USF and Gonzaga) finished ahead of Pepperdine in the WCC, yet did not make it into the tournament. I witnessed Gonzaga dominate Pepperdine, and it is beyond comprehension that Pepperdine made it.
I agree wholeheartedly . . . just another example of how out of touch NCAA Committee was with soccer in the west. With virtually identical records and better finish in the conference, Gonzaga and USF have plenty to gripe about. Especially seeing 3 teams in from the Ivy League?! My guess is that USF would have gotten in had Cal Poly not upset UCSB in the Big West Tournament. Had UCSB won, they would have filled the UCLA pod , and USF would have most likely taken Cal Poly's spot at Santa Clara. Likewise for Gonzaga, had UNLV won the Mountain West tourney, there would have been less of a chance that Utah would have gotten in, freeing up an at large spot to fill in Portland. This whole geographic seeding has gotten too extreme in the west.
Looks like the committee had no clue what to do with the WCC teams, other than to screw most of them over.
Can we all agree that if you look at the four major polls and the Albyn-Jones, they should accurately give the seedings? After all, the polls are all by people or groups who are all at least following the games, and the Albyn-Jones is the best statistical model. Well let's see . . . (Seed) Team NSCAA-SA-SB-AJ (Note: Soccer Times Poll N/A) (1) UNC 1-1-1-1 (2) Penn State 5-7-4-2 (3) Virginia 3-2-3-3 (4) Notre Dame 2-3-2-4 (5) Portland 6-5-5-5 (6) Ohio State 8-6-8-20 (7) Princeton 12-11-9-12 (8) Kansas 13-17-14-6 (9) Texas A&M 7-12-7-14 (10) Florida 9-8-10-13 (11) Tennessee 10-14-13-8 (12) Texas 20-16-26-23 (13) Arizona 17-13-15-26 (14) UCLA 11-11-11-7 (15) Washington 14-15-12-10 (16) Santa Clara 4-4-6-9 I can't argue much with 1-4. It is clear that the Santa Clara was completely screwed. Princeton and Texas were given way too generous seeds. All the others seem to be within reason. I might add that I think that while Ohio State is certainly a good team, and has a really good coach, they were rewarded too much for their Big Ten Tournament win on their home pitch.
I really feel that it is wrong by the NCAA to do this a second time to Santa Clara. If it really is a money issue, I would submit that Santa Clara is a little Catholic school without the huge athletic department monies of the big football and basketball schools. Does that, however, translate into attending a soccer Final Four. My experience is that you get the local soccer kids, parents and relatives of players, and a few soccer coaches and "junkies". The NCAA is nuts to think that there would be a lot more people at the Final Four if we try to keep an east coast team semi or final. I feel that producing a great game that is watched on television and entertains millions is what will ultimately make money for the NCAA. Last year, the final became very boring. Maybe against North Carolina, any opponent would have been something less than exciting. However, Santa Clara did give a better game than UConn and UCLA. Further, if Santa Clara was seeded 16th solely because of their record, what about Texas with a 13-6-2 record being seeded 12th. Though I think that the records for North Carolina, Notre Dame, Virginia, and Penn State make some sense for their seeding with some concerns about Penn State, how is it that Penn State is seeded ahead of Virginia or Notre Dame. How is it that Portland gets the 5th seed when Santa Clara totally dominated their game limiting Portland to 1 shot? That game was televised on CSTV. Did the committee not have access to a satellite dish? Thus, I am not sure that the reasoning for the seeding being the result of the committee not being informed because the information and access was available. I then am left to wonder is there something about Jerry Smith or the style of play by his team and other west coast teams that the NCAA does not like? Winning a National Championship is about peaking at the right time and having healthy players. Doing as well as North Carolina has done merits their seeding, but putting Santa Clara in a position that will have them somewhat beat-up and against North Carolina in the third-round is unfair to both teams. However, coming into the game with huge games against Campbell and the winner of the William & Mary/Virginia Tech game certainly makes the health issue a signficant plus for North Carolina. Cal is a battle, and Stanford is a battle for Santa Clara. There is a storied rivalry with these teams. With a National Ranking of 4th and 5th, the seeding at 16th was wholly wrong and does more harm than good for the Broncos. Portland on the other hand, has Weber State with a less than .500 record and the winner of the Colorado/Utah game before it faces Texas/North Texas or SMU/West Virginia. None of this makes a lot of sense. On the other side, Princeton ends up with the 7th seed for beating the likes of Cornell and Harvard. If the seeding is going to continue to be this out of sync with reality, why doesn't the NCAA just pick 64 teams and throw the names into a hat. The seeding is a joke; and if the NCAA continues to tinker with it, for whatever reason or reason, it will do more harm than good in producing semis and a final that has any real sport and entertainment value.
CAA--> 3 (First time Colonial has 3 teams in NCAA since 1997 - Virginia Commonwealth, James Madison, William & Mary).
Even though OSU coach Walker was a little surprised by the seeding, I think that a high seed is justified. A 13 game unbeaten streak during the season, a 13 game unbeaten streak at home, and 3 quality losses to then #6 Washington, #4 Portland, and an earlier loss to #3 Penn State. Led by an exciting player in Lara Dickenmann, who will challenge for the Herrmann soon, and winning the Big Ten tourney defeating #3 Penn State and NCAA bound Michigan along the way. No doubt SC got played, and who has Princeton played out of conference? But as long as there is a human factor involved some team is not going to get what they think they deserve.
I wonder if the NCAA selection committees have similar problems putting together acurate brackets for other Olympic sports, especially women's sports, such as volleyball or softball? Occassionally, there are questionable pairings with the women's bball tourny but nothing like what we've seen with soccer (bball is higher profile so more pressure to get it right).
From what I've seen, the selection committee does a pretty good job for softball. I haven't followed volleyball long enough to know about their pairings/seedings. Lol, that's the post of the year.
While I think Princeton's seeding is high, Ivy League Women's Soccer is not the same as Ivy League Football or Bball. Princeton beat Texas A&M. Harvard and Yale beat UConn, Yale has close losses to Stanford and Santa Clara and Harvard has 1 goal losses to Penn State and Portland. The league features full internationals and youth internationals. They play a good brand of soccer. Not to say others dont deserve to be in but at least some of the Ivies are doing it right- going out and playing top teams (not just those in their conference) and doing well . I would rather see that rewarded than the 18-2 records of those teams who play no one.
And the one thing NOT considered is conference standings. How you finish in your conference ( aside from the obvious AQ) is completely irrelevant.
The NCAA just doesn't care. It's soccer, it's women's soccer. No RESPECT! On another note, NCAA has always promoted student first, athlete second or so they say. So why do they allow a choice of day/date in the 3rd round? Could be either Friday, Saturday or Sunday, Nov. 19, 20, or 21st. Games should be played on Sunday no matter what. They should be concerned that the student athletes miss the least amount of class time possible. If games are played on Friday, teams will have to travel on Wednesday and miss classes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and fly back just in time for a weekend ( west coast teams to east coast locations mostly) How much sense does that make??? If games are played on Sunday, the travel day would be Friday (only missing one day of classes) with a practice day on Saturday/day to adjust for any jet lag. Then back home immediatly after Sunday's game in time for a nights sleep and back to class on Monday. These people don't put a thought into anything! No surprise there.
AMEN! In 2001 when everyone was supposed to stay warm and safe at home for the first two rounds SCU - seeded 3rd or 4th as I recall (altho we won YaHoo!) got shipped to Champaign Illinois for two first round games - the ONLY seeded team to which this was done. I used to think that the Dorrance Conspiracy was just a rumor, but now I think it is true. In addition to the championship, the tournament shold be an adventure and exciting for the kids. So Cal Poly, Stanford, Cal and SCU - all of whom have played each other this year and all of whom could sleep in their own beds every night - make up a first round group? Hell, how are we going to find out which regions are made up of highly rated weenies unless you mix and match and watch the 4th palce team in a conference have their way with the champs from across the country? As I have said before, I guarantee that the decisions about seeding and selection for NCAAA Division I basketball are not made by administators from schools who have never been in the tournament or have only done one-and-done appearances. Yet look at this rogue's gallery above and ask where are the reps from the teams who do the work and schools who support the program and expect at tournament time someone with a friggin' clue will be making decisions? Idiots. Jim
The Huskies were not #6 when they played OSU. We were not ranked at all. After beating 9th-ranked Penn State and 18th-ranked Ohio State back-to-back to open the season, then we came into the rankings at 15.
Ah Yes the Dorrance conspiracy theory... In a smoke filled room with his closest lackeys, coach Dorrance once again flexes his muscle for evil (never good), (for the second year in a row) by craftily placing his team on the same side of the bracket as the team that happened to knock his crew out of the NCAA tournamnt two out of the last three tries. What an ingenious plan he thought, to get them in an early round. Just for good measure and to drive everyone crazy, he placed two other powder puffs, Notre Dame and Portland, there as well. (didn't each win something in recent memory?) Let's play another game. I bet that if you take every person in the selection committee and play six degree's of separation to Kevin Bacon, you will get to Mr. Bacon well before you get to Coach Dorrance. If it is a "rouge gallery" with people who have little to no knowledge of the game and don't give a crap about it, logic would dictate that they only know Dorrance by name (if that) it would be prudent on one's part not to blame (or even imply) something on someone because you are unhappy. And if you want to cry, shed some tears for UVA, UCLA, and Duke while you are at it. Lastly, I could not come up with a pithy or sarcastic name for the bumblers who represent the "Selection Committee" so maybe Big Soccer could put up a prize for a "Name the Clowns" contest. Discuss.