Bracketology Issue #1

I talk a lot about NCAAs, but it's late enough in the season to start looking at some potential scenarios. The NCAA Breakdown has been in the latest news tab for most of the season, but for those who haven't seen it, here's a brief overview...29 spots are available to teams that win their conference, these are called automatic qualifiers. Their conferences are recognized by the NCAA as conferences who's champion receives an auto bid to NCAAs. The next group is for teams that don't come from automatic qualifiers. There are 7 spots for these teams. It is called Pool B. The remaining 6 teams come from conferences that have automatic bids, but these teams don't win their conference. This is what I constantly refer to as Pool C.

I've made a couple assumptions for the purposes of simplicity. I think this is what the tournament will look like IF IT STARTED TODAY. I had to make "predictions" as to who would win each conference, however I just used the higher ranked team. For example, I think Amherst will end up winning the NESCAC, however, at the moment, Middlebury is #1 and Amherst is #4, so I have the conference going to Middlebury. This is just to make things simple and avoid conflict.

The Field of 42:

Automatic Qualifier
American Southwest - Tyler
Capital Athletic - Mary Washington
Centennial - Hopkins
CUNY - Baruch
Colonial States - Marywood
Commonwealth - Elizabethtown
Empire 8 - Ithaca
Freedom - Manhattanville
Heartland - Transylvania
Iowa - Luther
Landmark - Drew
Little East - Western Connecticut State
MIAA - Kalamazoo
Midwest - Grinnell
Minnesota - Gustavus
NESCAC - Amherst
NCAC - Kenyon
Northern Athletics - MSOE
Northwest - Whitman
Ohio - Ohio Northern
ODAC - Washington & Lee
President's Athletic - Grove City
Skyline - Farmingdale State
SCIAC - CMS
SCAC - Trinity (TX)
St. Louis - Westminster
Commonwealth Coast - Western New England
UAA - Emory
USA South - NC Wesleyan

Independent
1. Santa Cruz
2. MIT
3. Skidmore
4. Vassar
5. Whitewater
6. TCNJ
7. UW Lacrosse

At-Large
1. Amherst
2. Wash U
3. Pomona-Pitzer
4. Chicago
5. Williams
6. Trinity (CT)


Regions (* denotes host team)
1. Middlebury*, MIT, Vassar, Ithaca, Western Connecticut, Western New England
2. Emory, Mary Washington, Washington & Lee*, Elizabethtown, Grove City
3. CMS, Santa Cruz*, Pomona-Pitzer, UT-Tyler
4. Amherst*, Trinity (CT), Skidmore, Baruch, Manhattanville,
5. Wash U*, Whitman, Kalamazoo, Grinnell, Westminster
6. Kenyon*, Johns Hopkins, UW Whitewater, Ohio Northern, Transylvania
7. Chicago*, Trinity (TX), Gustavus, Luther, UW Lacrosse, MSOE
8. Williams, NC Wesleyan, TCNJ*, Drew, Marywood, Farmingdale State

In the Final 8: Champ of 1 plays 8, 4v5, 3v6, 2v7.