| Could Carroll host? Carroll athletics photo |
By Patrick Coleman
D3sports.com
The NPI, or NCAA Power Index, does away with four hours of work that we used to have to do on Selection Sunday. The games are completed, the numbers are run, you hit refresh a bunch of times, and voila! You have 64 teams.
We are guaranteed to get all of those teams right. Sorry to anyone not on the list: Unfortunately, there is no longer hope. The math is the math. The drama is gone. NPI’s proponents call this a feature of the system, not a drawback.
So what’s left is mocking up a bracket with those 64 in it, one which is faithful to the NPI and the relative seeding of each team, and within the NCAA’s not-entirely-clear rules for how many flights you can have in a bracket. And, this year, we seem to have a little extra knowledge about who has applied to host women’s tournament games. If Transylvania had applied to host, it would have helped the bracketing cause quite a bit! Even if you aren’t in the top 16 or near the top 16 in NPI, you might still host games because of the following reasons:
- One of the projected top 16 teams might not be able to host (facility unavailable, men’s basketball slated to host the first weekend [only relevant in even-numbered years], top 16 team might be too far away from any opponents to host within the NCAA’s budget constraints.
- Even if all 16 can host, you might be in a position to help the bracket geographically. For Transylvania, that’s almost always true. It’s often true in Indiana and Ohio. That’s where the glue of a Division III basketball bracket can be found!
Here are our projections.
Each pod is set up the same, with teams “seeded” 1-4, and the host team playing the 4 in the first round. Teams which fly in the first weekend are noted with an asterisk.*
Top left quadrant
No. 1 NYU hosts No. 63 Framingham State; No. 30 Southern Maine faces No. 33 Cortland
No. 14 Bates hosts No. 49 Merchant Marine; No. 18 Smith faces No. 45 DeSales
No. 8 Bowdoin hosts No. 56 Emmanuel; No. 22 SUNY New Paltz faces No. 44 Johnson & Wales (R.I.)
No. 9 John Carroll hosts No. 54 Southern Virginia; No. 24 Baldwin Wallace faces No. 42 Union
Bottom left quadrant
No. 4 Scranton hosts No. 60 Maine-Farmington; No. 27 Gettysburg faces No. 38 William Paterson
No. 13 Bethel hosts No. 51 Millsaps*; No. 20 Chicago faces No. 46 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps
No. 5 Johns Hopkins hosts No. 57 St. Mary’s (Md.); No. 31 Otterbein faces No. 34 Randolph-Macon
No. 12 Concordia-Moorhead hosts No. 64 UW-Superior; No. 26 UW-River Falls faces No. 40 Hardin-Simmons*
Top right quadrant
No. 2 UW-Oshkosh hosts No. 62 Webster; No. 28 Wisconsin Lutheran faces No. 39 St. Mary’s (Minn.)
No. 15 WashU# faces No. 50 Whitman*; No. 19 UW-Platteville hosts No. 47 Coe
No. 7 Hope hosts No. 55 Penn State-Behrend; No. 29 DePauw faces No. 43 Washington & Jefferson
No. 11 UW-La Crosse# faces No. 53 LaGrange*; No. 20 Carroll hosts No. 36 Gustavus Adolphus
# hosted at UW-Platteville and Carroll because WashU and UW-La Crosse are likely hosting men’s basketball; in even-numbered years, MBB has priority when two teams from the same school are in line to host on the tournament’s opening weekend
Bottom right quadrant
No. 3 Washington and Lee hosts No. 59 Hunter; No. 32 Messiah faces No. 35 Christopher Newport
No. 16 Ohio Wesleyan hosts No. 52 Geneseo; No. 17 Illinois Wesleyan faces No. 48 Immaculata
No. 10 UW-Whitewater hosts No. 61 Austin*; No. 23 Ripon faces No. 41 Transylvania
No. 6 Denison hosts No. 58 TCNJ; No. 25 Trine faces No. 37 Shenandoah
Six teams were seemingly going to fly, but no island team is in the top 16 seeds, or even in the top 32, so who could even really host a pod? This committee has talked about rewarding seeds, and doing so means that you have to fly those teams out to other pods.
Keep an eye on D3hoops.com for coverage of the bracket reveal on Monday, and post your questions in the comments section below.