On MURedhawks.com It cheers for the RedHawks winning our 8th consecutive regular season championship. However, when I look at the seeds for the tourney we are the #3 seed. So what happened was that James Madison, App State, and Miami all finished 7-1. JMU beat us but lost to App State, App State lost to Miami but beat JMU, Miami lost to JMU but beat App State. Somehow JMU is #1 seed and App State #2.
Top 6 ( out of 8) make the tournament. Schedule goes like this, with the winner getting the automatic NCAA bid which we have been winning every year.
Wednesday Quarter Finals
Game 1 #4 Kent vs #5 Ball State 11:30 AM
Game 2 #3 Miami vs #6 Ohio 2:30 PM
Thursday Semi Finals
Game 3 #1 JMU vs winner of game 1 11:30 AM
Game 4 #2 App State vs winner of game2 2:00 PM
Saturday Championship Game 2:00 PM
JMU joined the league this year, App State fairly recently. Next year UMass enters the league, they are ranked #14 and won the A-10. So our league is suddenly getting much stronger.
Maybe we will become a two bid league. Hard to believe how successful we’ve been but also hard to fathom it all ending if you have a top 15 joining and only one bid. Not so say we can’t still win it or beat them just harder.
Lost to App State 3-2 in overtime. I assume this means the end of the season, because I doubt the #3 MAC team is getting an at-large, no matter our history.
Before today’s commanding 3-0 victory over #37 JMU, Miami had an RPI of 26. It’s an 18-team tournament. Would be extremely awesome to avoid the first round and get a bye into the round of 16.
Champions 7 years in a row. We walked down to the field hockey stadium after basketball and watched the second half. A lot of James Madison player’s family there, so a standing room crowd.
All our stars are 4th or 5th year players, wonder if we can win again next year? We outscored the opposition 12-3 in winning the 34 tournament games.