miacmaniac (and anyone else), I apologize for letting my disappointment in how the season ended for CAR be greater than the restrain needed to keep from getting too personal on this board. I've actually enjoyed reading everyone's comments the last couple of years.  It's been fun...  In closing, you are right - if you don't win....!

Best of luck to IWU and St. Thomas.  They both are fine teams.

Ok. I'm not over the Carleton snub yet and want to say something before the games start tomorrow.
Somebody give one good explanation why IW is playing here instead of CAR?  

CAR was this year's Top-seed, conference title winners at 17-3, compared to IWU third place finish at 9-5.

It sounds like the word is that IWU resurged after some injuries this year.  The same situation was true about CAR at the start of the season.  They started 0-3 to open the season, mainly due to Jonker's knee injury and lack of playing time. Jonker was a beast once he worked past the injuries.  That St. Thomas loss should have been a CAR win, but he sprained his ankle at 4 mins in, went 0-6 for the game ,with 1 pt.  Different game if he was not hurt.  
 
But comparing both teams down the stretch (Jan/Feb),
   
   IWU  was  9-5 , with 1-1 in conference playoffs
   CAR  was 14-3,  with 0-1 in conference playoffs

Carleton was 11-1 late in the season until the last loss in the Semi-s. This looks stronger to me than IW's so called improved play.   It looks like Carleton had the edge on this team and should be playing in St. Paul.

It looks like the NCAA didn't do their homework or really don't know the competition level in the MIAC.

gacbacker, your observations on the CAR/GAC game have a lot of validity.  Doubling and triple teaming Jonker was effective, because it altered CAR offensive flow and Sutherland's game was out of sync because of the foul trouble.  CAR needed those shots to fall from outside.

I thought the most important game statistics were at the foul line.  Foul calling determined the change in the flow of the game along with GAC shooting 55.3% for the game and CAR at 41.3%. 

In the first half, CAR was 4-9 at the line and GAC was 4-5, but this changed after CAR was up in the first half (1st half:5 calls on CAR, 8 for GAC) .  The biggest factor of the game was that GAC was 12-16 at the line in the second half, while CAR was 0-0 (2nd half: 12 calls on CAR, 6 for GAC). 

Hard to overcome that disparity and CAR didn't.