Hoyas #8 Seed?!?!

[Joe Hoya]

As per ESPNews selection show...

#8 Hoyas face Navy this weekend at MSF. Winner plays in Towson the 21st against the winner of #1 Virginia-Notre Dame.

Were the Hoyas robbed? Did the loss of the Duke game hurt our schedule? Yes, and maybe. This sucks.

[nychoya3]

Damn! Yes, we got absoutely jobbed. Teams like Hopkins, Cuse, and Princeton are ahead of us, even though they have 3 or 4 losses each. Did winning our last two games by just a goal hurt us this much?

Any other seed but 8 would have been fine. After Virginia, there's a lot of teams that are pretty equal - but UVa is a step above. And that's not even talking about having to face one of the best defensive teams in the nation in the first round. Oh, and the second round is at Towson where I can't attend. Grrrr...this sucks.

[DFW HOYA]

Politics in lacrosse? Of course! There can't be an NCAA field unless Hopkins, Syracuse and Maryland all get their seat in the semifinals..it's in the Homewood Field Rulebook!

Georgetown was somewhere between #6-8 in the RPI and its strength of schedule hurts their cause--the Duke game cost them a top 10 opponent and the late finishes over Penn State and Rutgers was not the kind of momentum you want to finish a season.

More importantly, the bottom of the ECAC hurts the overall scores, and non-conf. games with Hobart, Delaware, and the Mount hurt as well. However, if Georgetown plays too many Top 10 teams and did not get the AQ, the committee would take it out on them as well (see Loyola).

The fact that no ECAC team got in at-large and three Ivies did reads as very political, but that's the nature of the lacrosse selection committee.

[hoya4ever]

Unbe-friggin-lievable! Syracuse is a !5! seed? Of course, the winner of this game is going to play against the winner of UVA and ND. Unless ND pulls the biggest upset this year then it's safe to say we were just f***** by the selection committee.

[CAHoya07]

When does the women's bracket get announced? Maybe we'll get better luck there.

As disappointing as the seeding is, everybody who is on or near campus this Sunday better get their asses to the MSF to support this team. I imagine Navy will bring a good crew of fans there, so we must represent. A full rockin' house of Hoya supporters at the Yard on Sunday will hopefully quell any hard feelings of a snub and lead to a victory.

[LizziebethHoya]

Wow, I just saw this. Wow....I really have no words. This is kinda ridiculous.

[Joe Hoya]

cahoya07 said:

When does the women's bracket get announced? Maybe we'll get better luck there.

Tomorrow night, and somehow I doubt it. All those close wins will probably make us a 10 seed.

[hoya4ever]

I thought it was simply a mathematical equation where a win is a win, and that includes RPI. Do you think they look at how you beat them? Cause in that case our last two wins could not have helped (in the guys, if it's true for the girls I have lost all hope)

[HoyaSinceBirth]

WTF THAT IS COMPLETE BULL $H!T We got completely hosed. can anyone explain the logic behind this. was our schedule that weak compared to the other seeded teams ahead of us?

[Joe Hoya]

We went 3-1 against teams in the field (beat Syracuse, Navy, and Massachusetts, lost to Maryland), and were 2-1 against teams that ESPNews listed as "bubble" teams (beat Penn State and Delaware, lost to Loyola). 5-2 against the better teams, 5-0 against the teams we definitely should beat...ridiculous. The loss of the Duke game HAD to hurt us here...even a loss would have helped whatever numbers they use to calculate their seedings.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

Is it OUR fault that Duke can't control its athletes?! It is absolutely incredible that the NCAA would punish us for something that happened in Durham. I hope we close Cameron Indoor next year.

[FLHoya]

I probably should just pull an Ed Stimes (not the annoying one...the old one who could never comment either way on a given subject) regarding my opinion of the NCAA Men's Lacrosse Selection Committee.

For the record, though, GTown's RPI is #6. You can look up the rest and decide on which specific grievance is your personal fave:

www.laxpower.com/update06/binmen/rpi01.php

(The women's team has an RPI of 3).

The one good thing that came out of this bracket is at the very least Georgetown vs. Navy will be an incredibly interesting first round game and an amazing crowd atmosphere. Navy's fans travel well and there are a lot of them...many of them are also loud and obnoxious--but in a "good way". Think: some might be as drunk as West Virginia's basketball fans, but they're nowhere near as annoying, much more clever, yet at the end of the day it's still funny as hell when their team is losing and they shut up. If they're winning though, they can actually be intimidating (saw them my senior year at old Kehoe in some freak-ass rain/wind storm and their fans were going completely nuts).

Each of the two home tournament games I've been to at GTown were really fun. Lots of Towson fans showed up at the one two years ago at Harbin Field, so both sides were full. Army didn't bring as many last year so North Kehoe was kinda full but not packed, but the game kicked ass.

I'd expect not only a great game, but I think with the combo of all the fans of both schools coming out and hopefully a good weather day...I'll go out on a limb and say the stadium will be at overflow and it'll be the best crowd atmosphere so far at an MSF event. So yeah, roll out of bed, drink some Gatorade or something with electrolytes in it, throw on an oven pizza and get your Senior Week hung over butt out to the MSF next weekend.

(EDIT: Having written that, I'm preheating my oven and taking out a 32oz of Gatorade from the fridge as we speak).

[jerseyhoya34]

Can we mix the Gatorade with alcohol? Amazing what one can learn in a health class in public school.

[Jack]

Reading some of the lax boards, I was surprised to see how much the selection committee apparently takes into account the potential gate from different matchups. Basically, folks think they try to set things up so the best traveling teams play closest to home in the QF, and they don't really rank 9-16 except to take into account travel. Those factors did not help GU at all.

[FLHoya]

jack said:

Reading some of the lax boards, I was surprised to see how much the selection committee apparently takes into account the potential gate from different matchups. Basically, folks think they try to set things up so the best traveling teams play closest to home in the QF, and they don't really rank 9-16 except to take into account travel. Those factors did not help GU at all.

Yeah, I saw a lot of people on Laxpower predicting a GU-Navy 8-9 matchup, and that's where they get that from I guess. I just figured the whole travel/gate thing for a QF was gonna make it super-likely we'd have some path like UMBC then Maryland in Towson (come to think of it...why the hell DON'T we have that path...just switch us with Princeton and it's all good). I dunno...maybe it's the reverse karma from last year, cause we prob. shouldn't have been a 5 seed playing a pretty weak Army team in the first round after that PSU loss.

The other thing I read but still don't totally get is the whole "plane flights" thing. Like, from what I gathered, the NCAA only has it budgeted for two airplane flights or something...so all but two first round matchups have to be between teams within a reasonable bus ride of each other (and it used to be only 1 plane flight before this year). Not that it's a super-big problem in lacrosse, which is still a relatively regional sport...but at least this year I guess Notre Dame owes their at large bid to the extra plane flight (cause Denver won their league's auto bid and is probably figuring out the DIA to DCA/BWI route right now).

[Joe Hoya]

www.laxpower.com/update06/binmen/ncaa01.php

Selection criteria for Men's Division I tournament. Apparently the ECAC doesn't receive an auto-bid anymore.

Georgetown's SOS is 11th, according to the link on that page.

I just noticed how awful Harvard's numbers are...this whole thing is perplexing...what a hose job.

[FLHoya]

joehoya said:

Selection criteria for Men's Division I tournament. Apparently the ECAC doesn't receive an auto-bid anymore.

As I understand it, for a year or so not long ago, the ECAC didn't have the minimum number of teams needed to qualify for an auto-bid (I wanna say Navy left the conference, maybe some other teams). There's 8 ECAC teams now, but there is a "probationary period" or something like that before you get the bid back. I believe next year is when the ECAC gets it back.

(EDIT: You know how long it had been since I'd had a Tombstone pizza? Since I was like, 15 or something I bet.)

[TigerHoya]

Baseball is really big on the gate thing too.

Of course, schools put in cash bids/guarantees for the regionals and super-regionals - does that happen in Lax?
(Last year, Winthrop was a #1 seed in baseball but they had to go all the way to Tempe to play in the ASU regional.)

[AustinHoya03]

As if I needed something else to sour my mood after hours of studying Federal Income Tax. Georgetown got hosed. The "pass the crackpipe on the right hand side" Club, aka the tournament committee, seeded us below two overrated Ivies and an even more overrated Syracuse, whose only claim to fame this season has been beating those two overrated Ivies.

You know who should really be hopping mad right now, though? Dartmouth. The Green had the same conference record as last-in Harvard, had a better overall record than the Crimson, and just beat the Crimson in Cambridge in triple overtime. Of course, Dartmouth tripped up in every big game it played this season, while Harvard did manage to beat one top 10 opponent.

Seriously, though, if Loyola had beaten Hopkins at Hopkins this weekend, it would have been in the tourney. (Same goes for if the Greyhounds had actually won some of the games they were supposed to this year.) Similarly, if Towson hadn't lost to Delaware on Senior Day to close the season the Tigers might be in. Harvard is not a great team, but I can't point to any other team and say "they were definitely more deserving than Harvard." Of course, the tournament committee could have avoided cries of "Politics!" had they added one of the above teams instead of a 4th Ivy.

Also, it continues to displease me that the MAAC has an auto-bid.

[hoya4ever]

austinhoya03 said:

As if I needed something else to sour my mood after hours of studying Federal Income Tax.

The mood on campus isn't good either since we are taking final after final after paper after project. Many students believe spring season should be a good season for Georgetown what with two excellent lax teams, a terrific track and field, and a rising baseball team. You don't need to hear about your team getting hosed during finals. While it's raining.