2022 D3 Men's Soccer National Perspective

[Gregory Sager]

Quick Blitz Weekend Review

Tonight

6:00 -- Trinity (TX) @ St Thomas -- I think I forgot to mention in the video that St Thomas beat Trinity last year in the SCAC tournament final but unfortunately was in its final year before being NCAA tourney eligible.  Not sure what that rule is for, but whatever.

Joinng D3 is a four-year process. During those four years of provisional membership, schools are ineligible for NCAA tournaments and championship meets. The purpose is to flush all of the athletic-scholarship-bearing student-athletes out of the system before a program can enter D3 championship play, as well as to give the school sufficient time to come into compliance with all of D3's specific rules (e.g., sponsoring the requisite number of sports). It's pretty commonplace nowadays for a school such as St. Thomas to join a conference while still in the provisional pipeline, or even before entering it, so as to ensure a conference home once the school becomes eligible for postseason play.

[Flying Weasel]

Quick Blitz Weekend Review

Tonight

6:00 -- Trinity (TX) @ St Thomas -- I think I forgot to mention in the video that St Thomas beat Trinity last year in the SCAC tournament final but unfortunately was in its final year before being NCAA tourney eligible.  Not sure what that rule is for, but whatever.

Joinng D3 is a four-year process. During those four years of provisional membership, . . .

FYI: They have officially shortened provisional membership to a 3-year process.  That change was effective for the 2020/21 school year.

[PaulNewman]

Really nice field/complex for St Thomas...part of Dynamo and Dash franchises.

[Gregory Sager]

Quick Blitz Weekend Review

Tonight

6:00 -- Trinity (TX) @ St Thomas -- I think I forgot to mention in the video that St Thomas beat Trinity last year in the SCAC tournament final but unfortunately was in its final year before being NCAA tourney eligible.  Not sure what that rule is for, but whatever.

Joinng D3 is a four-year process. During those four years of provisional membership, . . .

FYI: They have officially shortened provisional membership to a 3-year process.  That change was effective for the 2020/21 school year.

Right. Forgot about that. Thanks for the correction!

[Another Mom]

W&L wins 3-1, which isn't a surprise,  but the team has some injuries so it's a good result.

[Hopkins92]

A fairly wild affair in Fredericksburg, as CNU is losing 2-3 to Mary Washington. At the half.

[PaulNewman]

Today so far has been about familiar faces....Amherst, Tufts, Bowdoin, Conn Coll, OWU, Oneonta, Cortland, SLU, W&L, etc.

MW with a big win over CNU.  My newly adopted squad the Emerson Lions managed to equalize after conceding a goal to WPI in the first three minutes but then conceded again with three minutes left to drop one to WPI.  Rutgers-Camden holds Montclair to a 0-0 draw.

The upset of the day (although maybe not an upset) has been Alvernia over Rochester 3-2.  @Kuiper was all over that.

Centre's win streak was halted at two as the Colonels fell 1-0 @ Sewanee.

Famed prognosticator, Simplecoach, as expected, won his terribly lopsided matchup with PaulNewman as Jaggar Brooker broke Denison's heart with a late goal to carry OWU to a 1-0 victory.  The game appeared to be headed to a 0-0 conclusion in an evenly played affair until the Brooker tally with 6-7 minutes left.  Denison had some decent chances but could not get the ball in the net.  OWU could have lived with a draw as that would have kept OWU in 2nd place in the NCAC with home field for the NCAC semi with Denison, but they'll gladly take the win and a probable ranked win at that.

Addendum:  Doesn't make a lot of difference but I was presumptive about #2 and #3 in NCAC...Wabash could overtake Denison.  Denison needs to beat DePauw and @Wooster (likely but not no-brainers either) and for Wabash to lose or draw @OWU.  But Denison probably doesn't care whether their semi is @OWU or @Kenyon.  Kenyon also must beat Wittenberg to stay clear of OWU.

[PaulNewman]

Some talk about Rochester in another thread.  UR now 6-3-4.  Three away games left at CWRU, CMU, and Brandeis.  All winnable but maybe 2-1 or 2-0-1 more likely. If win all three UR is 9-3-4 which is entirely consistent with recent bids and might depend on CWRU and CMU being regionally ranked at the end as UR, like some other teams, may be a little light on ranked wins.  If 2-0-1 they're 8-3-5 and 2-1 makes them 8-4-4.  Do the latter two scenarios put them on wrong side of bubble?

They could be competing for one of last Pool Cs with SLU, Hamilton, NYU, and maybe CWRU and/or CMU.  Of those SLU is likely to end with a couple of more wins but could be light on ranked wins depending on who is ranked that last week.  Of all those listed, Hamilton has three clear ranked wins in the bank, more than any of the others if I'm counting right.  I've been saying for a few weeks that Hamilton's fate could come down to this odd last game away at Oneonta.  While having 3 ranked wins, Hamilton also could end up with 4 ranked losses.  Not sure how the cmte would evaluate that.  Worst case, Hamilton loses to Oneonta and their NESCAC quarterfinal and would end up 8-4-4.  As for Wesleyan, they may need to beat Conn or at least win a NESCAC quarterfinal and and maybe a semi and then maybe hope the cmte gives them a few "make up for last year's snub" points.  The game with Conn is huge and both desperately need that game.  As tough a time as Conn has had I would bet a win over Wesleyan and a quarterfinal win gets the Camels in.  It will be tight and could come down to whether a team like Williams is ranked at the end.

There definitely will be some teams with unattractive records getting bids, and the average fan may not be fully prepared for how highly valued SoS and ranked wins are.

[EnmoreCat]

Can someone please repost the information about how teams qualify for the tournament?  I wanna feel like I am studying calculus again for the first time

[PaulNewman]

UWEC nips Carleton 1-0 to move to 17-2.

@EnmoreCat, is it safe to assume Cubeddu won't be back this season?

[Ron Boerger]

Can someone please repost the information about how teams qualify for the tournament?  I wanna feel like I am studying calculus again for the first time

D3soccer.com has this in much greater detail:  https://www.d3soccer.com/ncaatournament/2022/2022-about

Pool A:  Win your conference (or conference tournament).  Each conference chooses who their automatic qualifiers are; some conferences may not have a post-season tournament and award their AQ to the regular-season champion.  43 conferences receive Pool A bids.

Pool B:  If you are in a conference that is too small to receive a Pool A (6 teams are required) or not in a conference you can compete for one of these.  There is only one Pool B bid so the "best" team (see Pool C discussion) will get in. 

Pool C: All teams that didn't already receive a bid are in this pool.  The NCAA creates regional rankings via a complex process I won't begin to describe here but includes records, records against other regionally ranked teams, strength of schedule, strength of opponents' schedules.  The top-ranked team from each of the ten regions are compared against each other.  The best of the ten is selected  by a committee and replaced by the next best team from that region.  Rinse and repeat until the 20th bid is awarded.

The 64 teams will then participate in four-team single-elimination pods the first week of the playoffs.  The host may or may not be the team that has earned the right to host depending on travel costs (teams fly if they have to travel more than 500 miles so the NCAA does what it can to limit flights) and whether or not a school is already hosting a women's pod (this year women have priority; it alternates).    Same thing happens the following week when Round of 16 pods are handed out.   

Teams from the same conference will not be forced to play each other in the first round. 

[Ejay]

Where is SoS available/found?

[paclassic89]

The data sheets that the NCAA releases with each ranking

[Ron Boerger]

The data sheets that the NCAA releases with each ranking

Which are found on the NCAA's page:  https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/soccer-men/d3/regional-rankings - see the links at the very bottom. 

[Hopkins92]

Weirdly, unless I'm missing something, those data sheets are from November 2021.