2017 Bracketology – Edition #1

AS: Well, it’s about that time again. As you know, the Blog always has their sights on NCAAs, especially the man that some call The Guru. The Guru contacted me this week from his remote living quarters in the Tibetan Alps to inform me that a Bracketology must go out sometime this week. Not wanting to disturb his extremely organized and monk-like schedule, I obliged. I told him “If the Guru wishes it to be so, it will be.” And here we are again with the first annual Bracketology of the year.  Bracketology has been happening on this site for over 5 years now, and we continue to use the same format over and over. Fear not – after this bracketology I will look for a new format that you all can look at easily. Kind of like the magic I did with the Power Rankings. Anyways, let’s go through a quick roundup of the rules prior to going through the exercise.

The Rules

Overall, there will be 43 teams competing in the NCAA tournament.  This includes 35 Teams from Pool A.  Pool A competitors are from conference championship winners.  There will also be 2 teams from Pool B (independents) and 6 teams from Pool C (at large bids). It’s important to know the flying rules for the tournament.  Usually, the NCAA committee provides no more than 3 flights for DIII Tennis.  What that means is any team that travels more than 500 miles will be flown to the host site.  Yes, this means the return of the “As The Crow Flies” Calculator (This was an old joke about one of our favorite readers, you can probably guess who it is)! Kidding, we don’t actually use that.  You’ll see that the bracket below incorporates that rule into the projected bracket.  In addition, the bracket below incorporates which schools will put in bids to host.  If you are unfamiliar, schools may opt out of putting in bids for a few reasons.  The most common reason is that this may be a year where it’s the women’s team’s turn to host.  This happens at Emory, CMU, and a few other schools.  The bracket below assumes Emory can host this year.  If you want a better understanding of the NCAA Rules, please also reference my 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.  Okay, now let’s get to who’s who.  See below for your current Pool A teams. If you have information on any changes that need to be made here, please let us know via the comments.

Pool A

Allegheny Mountain – Franciscan

American Southwest – UT-Tyler

Capital Athletic – Mary Washington

Centennial – Johns Hopkins

CCIW – Carthage

CUNY – Hunter

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 – Southern Maine (already lost to Western Connecticut 6-3 in 1st league match). So either W. Conn or maybe UMass Boston who sits atop the standings at 2-0)

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 – Grove City

Skyline – Yeshiva

Southern Athletic – Sewanee

SCIAC – CMS

SCAC – Trinity TX

UAA – Emory

USA South – NC Wesleyan

Current Scenario, based on ITA Ranking:

Okay, got it? If the above teams are your Pool A teams, that means we still have Pool B and C to be determined.  Since there is a lot in flux right now, we decided to make two brackets for you. One being the current scenario based on ITA Ranking and another based on where we think the teams will end up.  The current scenario is as follows:

Pool B

Santa Cruz

TCNJ

Pool C

Bowdoin

Chicago

Wash U

CMU

Wesleyan

Williams

Bracket #1 – Current State (no Amherst)

*denotes host site

1. Middlebury*, MIT, Skidmore, Colby-Sawyer, Hunter, Yeshiva
2. Emory*, Sewanee, W&L, NC Wesleyan
3. CMS*, Whitman, Tyler, UC Santa Cruz
4. Bowdoin*, Trinity TX, Stevens, Nichols, Ramapo, Southern Maine
5. Chicago*, Gustavus, Coe, Carthage, Grinnell, Edgewood
6. Wash U, Kenyon, Kalamazoo*, Rose-Hulman, John Carroll
7. CMU*, Johns Hopkins, Mary Washington, Cabrini, Grove City, Franciscan
8. Wesleyan*, Williams, TCNJ, Wilkes, Messiah, Goucher

The Blog’s Predictions

Now, the above scenario projects CMU, Wesleyan, and Williams to be the last Pool C teams in the tournament, along with the favorites in Bowdoin, Chicago, and Wash U.  However, we think that one team in particular (Amherst) has the ability to reach the tournament with a big win over Wesleyan or Williams.  If Amherst jumps ahead of Wesleyan and Wash U, we have a very different bracket where Amherst takes Williams spot and bumps everyone else down.  That scenario is below.

Pool B

TCNJ

UC Santa Cruz

Pool C

Bowdoin

Chicago

Amherst

Wash U

Wesleyan

CMU

Bracket #2 – Including Amherst

*denotes host site

1. Middlebury*, MIT, Skidmore, Colby-Sawyer, Hunter, Yeshiva
2. Emory*, Sewanee, W&L, NC Wesleyan
3. CMS*, Whitman, Tyler, UC Santa Cruz
4. Bowdoin*, Trinity TX, Stevens, Nichols, Ramapo, Southern Maine
5. Chicago*, Gustavus, Coe, Carthage, Grinnell, Edgewood
6. Amherst*, Johns Hopkins, TCNJ, Messiah, Goucher
7. Wash U, Kenyon, Kalamazoo*, Rose-Hulman, John Carroll, Franciscan
8. Wesleyan*, CMU, Mary Washington, Wilkes, Cabrini, Grove City

I will give my thoughts on this bracket because I think this is the one that is the most likely to occur given what we know. Of course, this is our first bracketology so I am unsure if we’re even going to be close to accurate in this one, but this is meant to get you commenters thinking and asking questions.  In the above bracket, there are three flights, which are UT-Tyler, Whitman, and Trinity TX. It looks like we’d get a couple great regions here – specifically the final region with Wesleyan hosting CMU in a battle of teams that have not seen much playoff success. Wesleyan, in fact, would be hosting their first ever NCAA regional.  The Amherst/Johns Hopkins region could be a nice one, despite the recent injury to the MVP, and don’t sleep on Kenyon during hte NCAA Tournament. Another interesting aspect is the potential quarterfinal matchup between the defending champion Bowdoin and Chicago, who made the semifinal last year. I think there are 5 top teams this year and they all want to avoid that 4-5 quarterfinal matchup.  Both the UAA and NESCAC Tournaments will loom large when determining seeding, as they always do.  

OKAY! The first bracketology is complete and we’d love to get to know your thoughts. That means you, commenter Matt. Or maybe Dante Quazzo. Or maybe even ROGER? Anyways, have fun, and remember, let us know if we got any Pool A teams wrong in the comments. We know that there are always shifts in conference winners so we are relying on you to keep us honest.  Check back tomorrow as I give you Pool C Update #2, where we will go through scenarios on who can make it and who can’t. Shoutout to the Guru. ASouth, OUT.