Yep. I know. But it’s the same configuration they put together back then. All the teams are geographically in the same region. Of those four, we’re the lowest ranked team. I’m hoping to be the #2 seed somewhere.
I swear we have always seemed to draw NU, UK, or both in regionals lately. Hopefully this is the year we can make it out we’ve come so close
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They seed the teams before they assign them to regionals. They try to keep things geographically compact, but that’s secondary to seeding. You’ll often see groups with three teams close together and one random team.
Zero chance we’d be anything lower than a 3 if the season ended today and there’s a plausible chance we could be a 2.
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I wouldn’t want to play us! Honestly. Anyone who draws us is crapping themselves. We have a very dangerous team.
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Why does that matter? Are travel costs really a concern for games of this significance?
The NCAA prioritizes regional games in all tournaments to reduce travel costs. They do still care about bracket integrity though so they don’t totally tear up brackets to get regional matchups only, but they’ll shift teams up or down a few seeds to accomplish that.
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Yes, travel costs trump bracket integrity in the eyes of the NCAA. Check out the D3 women’s hockey bracket for reference.
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But does women’s D1 softball = women’s D3 hockey?
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I don’t think there’s been a team from outside Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Virginia in any bracket we’ve ever played in. That seems quite geographically regional to me.
Look at the FCS bracket for an example then. The first round games were all between as close of opponents as possible, and even the later stages roughly grouped teams by region to minimize travel. It happens in all NCAA sports. There are just more egregious examples at times in D2/3.
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The NCAA regionalizes in all postseason tournaments. Obviously seeding takes precedence over region, and obviously there are other considerations (like avoiding early round conference matchups). But it’s considered as much as they can.
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We’re now #29 in the Massey rankings. Highest of the season?
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EKU swept Bellarmine this weekend to move to 36-5 on the season and extend their winning streak to 10 games. They were 57 in RPI coming into the weekend. Doubleheader on Tuesday could be huge for seeding for both teams, especially after dropping one today.
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Yep. I’ve been talking about them on the Central Michigan series feed. Problem is it looks like Tuesday is dead center for an 80% rain day.
The word has just come down that the double-header on Tuesday has been moved to a single game with EKU on Wednesday. One extra day to prepare for a very tough opponent.
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Good news. That long bus ride followed by the double header Saturday in Siberia obviously took its toll on Sunday.
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30/28 in the human polls and 44 in RPI.
EKU is 34/T32 and 53.
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Human judgement is often flawed.
Getting closer…
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