An extra regional berth to next year's nationals in Louisville could provide extra motivation for some teams in the Midwest and West regions.
Under NCAA rules, regions placing a team in the top eight "earn" an extra spot for that region the following year.
In the West, which goes from three to four spots, that could get Cal Poly Pomona, Western Oregon or Humboldt State to nationals. Or, perhaps, ensure the return of Chico State or Alaska-Anchorage. (Western Washington ought to make it with ease.)
In the Midwest, look for Hillsdale or Wayne State (Mich.) to make a run for that region's fourth spot. (Grand Valley State and Southern Indiana will also return.)
The South and South Central lost out in Evansville.
That will put a host of teams in a bind, namely West Georgia, Alabama-Huntsville, Nova Southeastern in the Southeast and Pittsburg State, Southwest Baptist, Central Missouri and perhaps Missouri Southern in the South Central.
Is it time to redraw the regional map?
The Central, Midwest and West will now account for 13 of the 24 spots at nationals -- and 7 of the 12 "extra" spots. The remaining five regions will get a shot at 11 qualifying spots. In Evansville, four of the six bottom teams hailed from the South or Southeast regions. These also produced the bottom two in Slippery Rock. Conversely, those regions have also produced title-contenders Queens (N.C.) and Harding.
Perhaps a better question is: Does too many (or too few) qualifying spots in a region adversely affect competition?
Many of the regions have at least 5-6 teams better than the number 2 team in Queens' or Harding's region. Yet this year they each got 3 births because their top teams placed high in Slippery Rock.
ReplyDeleteI heard the coaches voted down a proposal that would have removed the top team from each region and then looked at the top 8 when determining "extra" births. Schools like Western Oregon and Pomona in the west got screwed this year, as they would have placed in the high teens (at least) at nationals, but they didn't even get to compete.
At least the west gets another birth next year, although Chico almost blew it (who would have thought?)
I'm just tired of seeing teams qualify for nationals that obviously don't belong there.
Ocho--thanks for the post. i got to thinking later, that I wonder if the physical location of the conferences has to do with the regions. but having said that, there appears to be a lot of overlap...
ReplyDeletej
Ocho, The coaches actually forwarded their same proposal that they tried to get through the year before that would take top team from each region out of the process of picking the teams for the following year. Hopefully this will pass the next step (championship committee) so a few more deserving teams will be able to attend the big dance next year. Stay tuned.. But the coaches didn't vote down this proposal.. they nixed Simmons' proposal that tried to take the rankings after regionals into consideration.
ReplyDeleteBy Simmons I take it you mean the Queens (N.C.) coach?
ReplyDeleteYes Simmons the coach at Queens. The proposal was pretty confusing and in my personal opinion nothing better than what is in place.
ReplyDelete