Bracketology #3 – ASouth Edition

When the lights go on, ASouth is here to step into the spotlight. The Guru is busy enjoying his seven day spirit quest in Timor Leste, which means that I get to take his place this week with the most commented article of the year.  That’s right, it’s Bracketology time once again. Now, the DI Brackets will be getting released today yesterday, and they actually have some bracketologies on their side too, but we all love DIII Tennis, so of course we have to try and outdo DI with our own bracketology today. This article kind of speaks for itself, so I guess I don’t really need to hype it up all that much.

For an update on the Pool C discussion, I wrote an article yesterday:

http://www.division3tennis.com/pool-c-update-4-pre-nescac/

The Rules
If you want a better understanding of the NCAA Rules, please reference the article below:
http://www.division3tennis.com/ncaa-selection-work/
In that article, it was incorrectly stated that there are 3 Pool B teams this year. There are only 2 this year.

Pool A – The Conference Champions (* denotes already qualified)
Allegheny Mountain – Franciscan*
American Southwest – UT-Tyler
Capital Athletic – Christopher Newport*
Centennial – Johns Hopkins
CCIW – Carthage
CUNY – Baruch
Colonial States – Cabrini*
Commonwealth Coast – Nichols
Commonwealth – Messiah
Empire 8 – Stevens
Great Northeast – Ramapo
Freedom – Wilkes
Heartland – Rose Hulman
IIAC – Coe
Landmark – Goucher
Liberty League – Skidmore
Little East – W.Conn
MIAA – Kalamazoo
Midwest – Grinnell*
MIAC – Gustavus
NESCAC – Middlebury
NEWMAC – MIT
North Atlantic – Colby-Sawyer
NCAC – Kenyon*
Northern Athletics – Edgewood
Northwest – Whitman*
Ohio Athletic – John Caroll
Old Dominion – Washington & Lee
Presidents – Thomas More*
Skyline – Yeshiva
Southern Athletic – Sewanee*
SCIAC – CMS
SCAC – Trinity TX*
UAA – Emory*
USA South – NC Wesleyan*

Williams Scenario:
This scenario includes Williams as the last Pool C spot. This discussion was covered in the Pool C article yesterday and below we will be presenting a bracket in which CMU takes the last Pool C spot.

Pool B
UWW
TCNJ

Pool C
Wash U
Wesleyan
Amherst
Chicago
Bowdoin
Williams

The Bracket:

1. Emory*, Sewanee, Washington & Lee, NC Wesleyan
2. Middlebury*, Skidmore, TCNJ, Colby-Sawyer, Baruch, Yeshiva
3. CMS, Trinity*, Whitman, UT-Tyler
4. Wash U*, Kenyon, Kalamazoo, Carthage, Rose-Hulman, Edgewood
5. Wesleyan*, MIT, Stevens, Wilkes, Cabrini, Messiah
6. Amherst, Johns Hopkins*, Christopher Newport, Thomas More, Goucher, Franciscan
7. Chicago*, Gustavus, UW-Whitewater, Coe, Grinnell, John Carroll
8. Bowdoin*, Williams, Nichols, Ramapo, Southern Maine

My Take:

This was a very interesting bracket to create and it really tested my google maps skills. I think the most important thing here is that Williams and Bowdoin would face off in the Sweet 16.  Bowdoin is in this position because they had that loss to Bates on the road, which basically drops them below all the teams that didn’t have a bad loss this year. With Bowdoin hosting the best #2 seed, this greatly benefits Chicago, who will now have Gustavus as their #2 seed. I was trying to find Chicago a tougher #2 seed and I simply could not given the geographical restrictions. As you can see above, I have Amherst going to Johns Hopkins because of the Christopher Newport conundrum, and I’ve included Thomas More in there with their win over Grove City this weekend. Some other interesting matches are a potential Kenyon/KZoo rematch, as well as the TEXAS REGION. We have never had a Texas Region in my years of blogging, and since UC Cruz is now out of the picture for NCAAs, it looks like Trinity may be able to host CMS in their digs. Whitman vs Trinity should be a nice round 2 matchup that I’ll be looking forward to.  I’m really liking some of the 2/3 matchups in this draw. However, we do need to go over another draw!

CMU Scenario:
This scenario includes CMU as the last Pool C spot.

Pool B
UWW
TCNJ

Pool C
Wash U
Wesleyan
Amherst
Chicago
Bowdoin
CMU

The Bracket:

1. Emory*, Sewanee, Washington & Lee, NC Wesleyan
2. Middlebury*, Skidmore, Nichols, Colby-Sawyer, Baruch, Yeshiva
3. CMS, Trinity*, Whitman, UT-Tyler
4. Wash U*, Kenyon, Kalamazoo, Carthage, Rose-Hulman, Edgewood
5. Wesleyan*, MIT, Stevens, Wilkes, Cabrini, Messiah
6. Amherst, Johns Hopkins*, Christopher Newport, Thomas More, Goucher, John Carroll
7. Chicago*, Gustavus, UW-Whitewater, Coe, Grinnell
8. Bowdoin, CMU, TCNJ*, Ramapo, Southern Maine, Franciscan

My Take

I waffled back and forth with this bracket too and here’s where I really miss the Guru. The issue basically stems from where I can put CMU. In the past, I would have had CMU go to Chicago, as it seems the easiest thing for the NCAA to do to allow the #1 seeds to host. But, there is also the question of a fairer bracket – Bowdoin has dropped to the lowest #1 seed and the NCAA does have an opportunity to get the lowest #1 and the highest #2 to play against each other. They do this by allowing TCNJ to host, as they have hosted in the past, and I believe they have the outdoor and indoor facilities required to host such a region.  The rest of the regions stay the same as above. Please note that if the NCAA does decide that CMU should go to Chicago, that would set up a stacked region of CMU/GAC/UWW/Coe, which means potentially 5 top 40 teams would be in the same region. That would also leave Bowdoin with a very weak #2 seed.  To me, the right way to go is to strip the home field advantage from Bowdoin and essentially play the match at the neutral site of TCNJ.

I hope that I did a decent job replacing the one and only Guru with this exercise and it doesn’t help that this was a pretty tough one. I even have the unprecedented scenario of 3 non #1 seeds hosting their regions. This could really blow up in my face but that’s okay! That’s what I’m here to do. Hope you all enjoyed and that this one will generate as many comments as the last one did! ASouth, OUT.

*Alternate scenario via D3West

As AS mentioned, it’s possible that the committee would decide to preference hosting over a fairer bracket, in which case everything would shift a little in the NE.

1. Emory*, Sewanee, Washington & Lee, NC Wesleyan
2. Middlebury*, TCNJ, Stevens, Nichols, Colby-Sawyer, Baruch
3. CMS, Trinity*, Whitman, UT-Tyler
4. Wash U*, Kenyon, Kalamazoo, Carthage, Rose-Hulman, Edgewood
5. Wesleyan*, Skidmore, Wilkes, Cabrini, Messiah, Franciscan
6. Amherst, Johns Hopkins*, Christopher Newport, Thomas More, Goucher, John Carroll
7. Chicago*, CMU, Gustavus, UW-Whitewater, Coe, Grinnell
8. Bowdoin*, MIT, Ramapo, Southern Maine, Yeshiva

Basically, Chicago gets the hardest #2 seed, and then all the other #2 seeds shift down. Bowdoin can’t drive to Johns Hopkins, so Amherst also gets screwed in this scenario. Middlebury would be the big beneficiary, as they would have to get through the TCNJ/Stevens winner to make the Elite Eight, which is nice. I prefer AS’ bracket, but this is another option.

4 thoughts on “Bracketology #3 – ASouth Edition

  1. Any possibilities of a women’s D3 bracketology? Come on guys! They deserve one! Great work above. Thanks for adding some excitement to the mix!

    1. D3 Northeast

      Thanks for reading! Unfortunately, it’s not a matter of “deserve.” The women’s side of DIII absolutely deserves equal coverage in every way, but none of the current writers have the expertise or the time to provide the product. If you or anybody you know would like to write for the women’s side, please reach out to me (d3northeast@gmail.com) or any of the other writers.

  2. Quaker

    You seem to count Earlham out of the Heartland Conference title.

    We have had an incredible year and have a very strong shot at winning the tournament.

    We lost 3-6 by 3 matches(3 doubles and 6 singles 4 singles) we were expected to win and are still favored in going into the conference tournament.

    1. D3AtlanticSouth

      I am absolutely not counting out the Quakers! For the much smaller conferences such as the Heartland, I will admit I do not know enough about them to say who is the favorite. Whether you are the favorite or not, for the smaller conferences I will use the winner of the conference from last year in order to make this exercise easier.

      Best of luck in your conference tournament!

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