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| Did UW-Oshkosh box out UW-Whitewater by beating them in both meetings this season? Photo by Steve Frommell, d3photography.com |
This year we took a different route to coming up with our projected teams. We selected the teams live on Sunday night's Hoopsville show, and if you missed it, you can tune in and see the discussion that led to each of these teams getting selected in our mock bracket. The discussion is in the first hour-plus of the show.
There's no Pool B slot in this tournament any longer, so we jump straight to Pool C, true at-large teams.
Here's who we picked, in order: Tufts, Bowdoin, Rochester, Rowan, Marymount, UW-River Falls, Stockton, Ohio Northern, UW-Stevens Point, Guilford, Denison, DeSales, NYU, SUNY Geneseo, Christopher Newport, Johnson & Wales, Moravian, Carnegie Mellon, Wartburg, UW-Whitewater.
When UWW was taken with the 20th and last Pool C pick, Keene State was remaining on the table, along with Manhattanvile, St. John Fisher, McDaniel, Rose-Hulman, Hendrix and St. Mary's (Minn.).
When it comes to bracket, we will go through the 64 teams selected and created a bracket. We picked 16 teams that were deserving of hosting in the first two rounds, and then we matched up 16 teams that deserved, based on their record and strength of schedule, to be matched up with that caliber of team. Then we will try to mix and match teams from the middle to get a neutral site first-round game and potentially play the host on the second night. You can see those results later tonight.
This is a tough year for this because in even-numbered years, men's teams get hosting preference in the first weekend. So if a school has both its men's and women's teams in contention for a hosting slot, the men get priority for the first weekend, and that affects a few schools here.
Here's how that shook out:
At Thomas More: Mount Union vs. Bluffton; Greenville at Thomas More
At Guilford: Mary Washington vs. Maryville; Cabrini at Guilford
At Rowan: University of New England vs. St. Joseph's (Maine); Westfield State at Rowan
At Montclair State: Lynchburg vs. Christopher Newport; Johnson & Wales at Montclair State
At Washington U.: Wheaton (Ill.) vs. Denison; Loras at Washington U.
At UW-Superior: UW-River Falls vs. UW-Superior; St. Thomas* vs. Wisconsin Lutheran
At UW-Oshkosh: Wartburg vs. St. Norbert; DePauw at UW-Oshkosh
At Hope: UW-Stevens Point vs. SUNY Geneseo; La Roche at Hope
At Albright: NYU vs. Albright; Amherst* vs. Lehman
At Muhlenberg: Stevens vs. Carnegie Mellon; SUNY New Paltz at Muhlenberg
At Rochester: Ohio Northern vs. Moravian; Regis (Mass.) at Rochester
At DeSales: Tufts* vs. SUNY-Old Westbury; DeSales vs. Marymount
At Texas-Tyler: Birmingham-Southern vs. Trinity (Texas); Husson at Texas-Tyler
At UC Santa Cruz: George Fox# vs. UC Santa Cruz; Claremont-Mudd-Scripps vs. UW-Whitewater
At Bowdoin: Stockton vs. FDU-Florham; Clarkson at Bowdoin
At Scranton: Eastern Connecticut vs. WPI; SUNYIT at Scranton
* Top seed in pod unable to host because men's team also projected to host first weekend.
# Top seed in pod denied hosting rights because of NCAA financial policies.
The NCAA selection show airs at 2:30 p.m. ET, and you can watch it all here on D3hoops.com.