I am, at the same time, both (1) thrilled about Calvin’s inclusion
in the field of 62 for the NCAA Tournament and (2) not thrilled about their
draw. It wasn’t completely unexpected that Calvin would have to start on the
road – the writing was on the wall when they were regularly ranked fifth and
sixth in the region by the Great Lakes committee – but there was a chance that they’d get a home game, and
that, obviously, would have been more pleasant. But even after we look past the
home/road decision, we see that Calvin has a tough road ahead.
First of all, let’s reiterate that the tournament
timeline is different this year. We typically have Friday-Saturday pods of four
teams on the first weekend that get us down to the Sweet Sixteen and then
Friday-Saturday sectionals the following week that whittle the field down to
the Final Four. This year, however, the tournament is being stretched so that
the D-III (and D-II) championship games line up with the D-I Final Four
weekend. So here’s our new one-year schedule:
Saturday, March 2: Round of 62 @ campus sites
Saturday, March 9: Round of 32 @campus sites
Saturday, March 16: Sweet Sixteen @campus sites
Friday, March 22: Elite Eight @ Salem, VA
Saturday, March 23: Final Four @ Salem, VA
Sunday, April 7: Championship Game @ Atlanta, GA – (Monday,
April 8 should a “we don’t play on Sunday” team such as Calvin make it there)
So we’re usually looking at the four regions of 16 teams each
as groups that will have to meet on campus sites until the neutral floor of
Salem, VA (the traditional Final Four site), but this year we’re (I’m) more focused
on the sub-regions of eight teams that will eventually meet for the Elite Eight
round in Salem. This year’s committee was probably more hamstrung with the
first three rounds – having to make sure most/all were within 500 miles to
avoid the cost of flights – but were more free to move these groups of eight
around to balance the bracket. Whatever, I can tell you’re bored.
Anyway, here’s Calvin’s sub-region with Massey Rank noted
parenthetically:
Calvin (#8) at Rose-Hulman (#23)
Northwestern (Minn.) (#82) at UW-Stevens Point (#4)
Aurora (#72) at St. Thomas (#1)
St. Norbert (#28) at Wheaton (#10)
That’s four top-10 teams and six top-30 teams. When it
comes to the tournament, everyone’s good, but this is a meat grinder. Obviously
the national committee isn’t setting out to balance the bracket according to
Massey Rating – they’re using the handbook criteria – but it sucks all the
same. From the way the criteria looks, the seeding/hosting priority order in
this group/region/sectional looks like (in order): St. Thomas, UW-Stevens
Point, Wheaton, Rose-Hulman, St. Norbert, Calvin, Northwestern (Minn.), Aurora.
So Calvin will likely be needing a major upset or two if they hope to host a
future round. Potentially Calvin and St. Norbert could be flipped in the above
order.
Just for fun, here’s the sub-region just below Calvin’s
(the one that they’ll meet up with in the Elite Eight) looks like this:
Delaware Valley (#120) at Virginia Wesleyan (#16)
Rutgers-Newark (#67) at Christopher Newport (#37)
Wesley (#47) at Williams (#17)
Staten Island (#121) at Catholic (#24)
No top-10 teams and only three top-30 teams. I want to go
to there.
The term “bracket of death” has been floated out with
respect to the region that includes:
Spalding (#68) at Washington U (#12)
Transylvania (#39) at Illinois Wesleyan (#6)
Dubuque (#36) at UW-Whitewater (#2)
Centre (#61) at North Central (Ill.) (#3)
So yeah, sucks that there’s a possibility for a would-be,
could-be Final Four matchup in the second round, but overall this isn’t really
any more “bracket of death” than the one Calvin’s in. The two regions look
equally difficult – save for the higher Massey-ranked teams all having home
games in this second one. We’re talking about seven of Massey’s top-ten teams
existing in these two sub-regions (plus the #12). That leaves only three
top-tens to be spread across the other six sub-regions. Cool.
So it is, of course, true that “you’ll have to beat these
teams sooner or later”, but knowing that Calvin is going to (likely) have to
play all road games in perhaps the toughest section of the bracket is not an
encouraging thought.
But one can’t think of it like that. We have a full week
in between games, so it’s full focus on Rose-Hulman and then we can worry about
Stevens Point when we get to that. I’ll break out some numbers on RHIT a bit
later.
