2011 Final Four

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I was just reading through the Championship Handbook for this year and noticed there is one reclassifying institution that is ineligible for post-season play this year.  Any idea as to which one that might be?

[pabegg]

I was just reading through the Championship Handbook for this year and noticed there is one reclassifying institution that is ineligible for post-season play this year.  Any idea as to which one that might be?

Chowan is moving to D2.  They're noted on page 48.

[diehardfan]

Anyone want to make some early predictions? It's more fun before you know the seeding...

[diehardfan]

I was just reading through the Championship Handbook for this year and noticed there is one reclassifying institution that is ineligible for post-season play this year.  Any idea as to which one that might be?

Chowan is moving to D2.  They're noted on page 48.

There was a Hoopsville argument about this one. I actually had thought Dave McHugh was right that Chowan was a DIII... apparently everyone was right.

[Warren Thompson]

One has to wonder about the wisdom of any venue moving to the NCAA "Neither-Fish-nor-Fowl" division ....

[WLCALUM83]

Anyone want to make some early predictions? It's more fun before you know the seeding...

To give equal representation to all four regions, I'll go with:

UW-Stevens Point  (North)
Amherst (East)
Mississippi College (South)
Oxy (West)

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Nothing against those picks... but I suspect Oxy and Stevens Point will be coming through the same bracket - since both are actually in the West Region and the NCAA isn't known for moving that many teams around.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Nothing against those picks... but I suspect Oxy and Stevens Point will be coming through the same bracket - since both are actually in the West Region and the NCAA isn't known for moving that many teams around.

To get from the Elite Eight to the Final Four, do we know yet which regions are paired this year?

[diehardfan]

Nothing against those picks... but I suspect Oxy and Stevens Point will be coming through the same bracket - since both are actually in the West Region and the NCAA isn't known for moving that many teams around.

To get from the Elite Eight to the Final Four, do we know yet which regions are paired this year?

Uh, of course not? They do it by the teams that make it in... the problem is that I'm pretty sure either Point will come through the Oxy bracket, or Oxy and Miss College will meet up...

[Greek Tragedy]

La Crosse got shipped to Hope/Wittenberg/Great Lakes Sectional.

[David Collinge]

I don't see anything about pairing regions in either the Men's or Women's Championship Handbooks.  If it's there and I missed it, somebody please give me a page number reference.

I think the old structure with pre-determined paired brackets (e.g. South/Great Lakes) was done away with several years ago, in favor of a more flexible structure based on geography.  In the Pairings and Site Selection section, men's page 17, the phrase "geographic proximity" is used seven times, while the word "region" does not appear.  But the fact that this question gets asked about 50 times every year makes me less confident that I'm right.

[WLCALUM83]

Okay, how about:

Wooster (Great Lakes)
Amherst (East)
Mississippi College (South)
Oxy (West) (after all, these guys "smoked out" WLC over the holidays).

[diehardfan]

I think, and I hope the committee agrees with me, that it will be more fair to combine a lot of the more western south with the west than and the eastern south with the mid atlantic. It's gonna stink if Miss College and Va Wes have to meet relatively early though... 

Oxy is a very good team... but Final Four? Hmm... I dunno... will have to ponder that one a little. I'm more comfortable with a max of Sweet Sixteen level for them... esp considering who they are likely to be paired with and how much they've been tested this year. But with the way DIII is much more even this year... who knows?

[Ralph Turner]

I think that Amherst anchors the 16 teams in the northeast part of the country, UW-SP anchors the 16 teams in the west, VWC catches the 16 teams in the Atlantic seaboard and Miss College moves into the Great Lakes and wins that.

I'll be honest.  I have seen Trinity's #1 seeded men's soccer team flown around the country because of geographic proximity.  I will be pleasantly surprised if Miss College gets to host a Sectional.  Why fly 3 teams to Clinton MS when a #1 seed Miss Coll can be flown to some venue in the Great Lakes? 

[Mr. Ypsi]

Ralph, that looks like a pretty reasonable guess on the sectional hosts (and I'll guess the winner of Woo-Witt is the 4th host).

As far as the 'regional pairings to go from 8 to 4', I guess that is the sort of 'brain fart' I get for getting highly involved with the football boards for the first time!   Somewhere in the deep recesses of what I like to pretend is a brain, I DID know that about the bball tourney!