The NCAA Division I Women’s Lacrosse Tournament bracket was announced Monday evening. Penn is the No. 2 seed and will face Colgate Sunday at 1pm. Over the next few days I’ll provide some analysis and team reactions to the draw. First: Did the Quakers get shafted? Second: Will the Quakers see some familiar faces? Now up: Are people biased against Penn and in love with Northwestern?

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If there’s one theme that the Penn women’s lacrosse team has reiterated this season, it’s that everyone thinks last year’s record of 16-2 was a fluke, that the Quakers’ Final Four appearance was nothing but a lucky break, and that they don’t deserve national recognition this year.

In February when I first interviewed the senior captains about the upcoming season they mentioned the apparent bias against Penn.

“People love to hate us,” senior goalkeeper Sarah Waxman said back then. “They make up excuses like ‘Penn’s not that good.’”

“Definitely some people in the Ivy League think [last year] was a fluke,” attack Allison Ambrozy said that day as well.

The most recent instance of this perceived bias came on Monday during the bracket selection show. Some might say that Northwestern getting the one seed over Penn is an example of bias against Penn. But as stated in a previous post, most statistical evidence pointed to Northwestern getting the one. So can numbers be biased? However, after the seeding was announced a commentator on CBS’s CollegeSports TV, which aired the selection show, was apparently anti-Penn.

While she admitted she was over Northwestern getting the one seed, Ambrozy was not happy with the commentator’s analysis.

“There was this additional commentator… she pretty much was hating on us,” the senior said.

“She predicted that us beating Northwestern, which no one else had done, was the best thing for [the Wildcats’] season. That they’re only going to be more fired up for Penn, and that essentially it was a fluke and there’s no way we could beat Maryland [in the Final Four], which is a lot of crap, a lot of crap.”

Ignoring the UMD part for now, the part about Northwestern being extra fired up for Penn has some validity. To be honest, my initial reaction after Penn’s win over Northwestern was similar, although I did not think it was a fluke, or that Penn could not accomplish the feat again. However, Northwestern will now have a whole game to look at Penn and learn from its mistakes. Does that mean the Wildcats automatically going to win a potential rematch? No. But will they have extra motivation to beat the Quakers and earn revenge? Yes.

(For example, yesterday (fourth paragraph from the bottom) I compared the Quakers and Wildcats to the Colts and Patriots, respectively. Continuing with this, in 2006 the Colts upset the Pats 27-20 in the regular season. When the two teams met in the AFC championship, many pundits believed the Pats couldn’t lose to the Colts twice, and that Tom Brady et al would get revenge for the earlier loss. Well they didn’t. They blew a lead and lost 38-34.)

At the same time, suggesting the Northwestern game was a fluke is a slight. Basically the commentator was scoffing at Penn, diminishing what has to be the biggest win of the year so far. Was holding Northwestern — a team that averages 16.00 goals per game — scoreless for over an entire half a fluke? I would say not. Marginalizing a great win does no service to the sport.

The second “hating” on Penn, picking No. 3 Maryland over No. 2 Penn in the Final Four, is less insulting. While one does not have to agree with her, the commentator’s prediction is valid.

Maryland had an outstanding year, going an incredible 17-2 and only losing to rivals Duke and Virginia by a goal apiece. Both of those teams are in the tournament, and the Cavaliers needed overtime to dispatch the Terps in the ACC Conference Tournament finals.

So to pick the three seed over the two seed isn’t that surprising, especially considering a) the Final Four will be played in Towson, Md., just under a hour from College Park, and b) the three seed (UVA) beat the two seed (Duke) in last year’s Final Four.

Penn Coach Karin Brower, picking her words carefully, did acknowledge the commentator’s bias.

“They were talking about the Final Four, and we weren’t even given any chance” of advancing from it, Brower said. “[The commentator] said it was Maryland and Northwestern.

“And we’re frustrated with that. But then again, it’s similar to how it’s been all year. No one has thought that we’re any good. And that’s fine … Hopefully we can prove some people wrong.”

Not everyone disrespects Penn. In its short preview of the Quakers’ first round matchup against Colgate, Inside Lacrosse says “The Quakers are the best team in the country right now.” Well, apparently everyone can’t hate the Quakers. (NB: I’ll be writing a more substantial preview later this weekend).

After the jump, the opposite situation: Northwestern (more…)

The NCAA Division I Women’s Lacrosse Tournament bracket was announced Monday evening. Penn is the No. 2 seed and will face Colgate Sunday at 1pm. Over the next few days I’ll provide some analysis and team reactions to the draw. First was Did the Quakers get shafted? Now up, Will the Quakers see some familiar faces?

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Coaches — including Penn women’s lacrosse skipper Karin Brower — always preach the sports cliché “let’s take it one game at a time.” But even Brower sometimes ignores her own advice.

After looking at this year’s NCAA bracket, Brower realized that if the seeds hold — and judging by last year’s two upsets in 15 games, they will — the Quakers would face the exact same three teams they played in last year’s NCAA tournament.

“It’s kind of interesting that the bracket is similar in some aspects to last year’s,” Brower said, “in that we could come across [Boston University] like last year or we could come across Maryland like last year. So that’s kind of strange.”

The Quakers (14-1, 7-0 Ivy) drew the two seed and will face Colgate Sunday in the first round. The Quakers have only played the Raiders (11-9) twice, tying 1976 and winning in 1978. Clearly the Raiders aren’t familiar to Penn. In fact, right after she learned of the draw, Coach Brower admitted as much, saying: “We don’t know anything about them. We’ll have to prepare for them this week.”

The winner of the Penn-Colgate matchup will get the winner of No. 7 Boston University (17-2) and New Hampshire (13-5). And while Penn has never faced the Wildcats, it played the Terriers in the first round of last year’s tournament, beating them 11-5. (That was the first ever Penn-BU matchup).

But don’t fill in the rematch with the Terriers into your brackets just yet. That UNH team, despite finishing third in the league behind both BU and Vermont, gave BU fits this year. The teams matched up twice, once in the regular season and once in the finals of the America East Conference Tournament. Both times the Terriers only won by a goal. On April 12 the Terriers won 7-6, and then on April 27 they needed overtime to win 9-8. Will the third time be the charm for the Wildcats? By 2 p.m. Sunday we’ll know.

If the Quakers make it through the first two rounds unscathed, the top seed they could face would be No. 3 Maryland in the Final Four (played conveniently enough for the Terrapins in Towson, Maryland). And just like the Terriers, the Terrapins lost to the Quakers in the 2007 tournament. (On a side note, if the Quakers do face UMD and BU, they will face the only two D-I women’s lacrosse programs whose nicknames start with t-e-r.) Last year, Penn beat the Terrapins in a thrilling 9-7 comeback victory in the second round, despite being down 4-0 early and then 5-3 at the half.

Brower wasn’t the only one to realize the potential repeat matchups. Senior attack Allison Ambrozy also saw the possible rematches and had mixed feelings about it.

“We could essentially be playing the same teams as last year,” she said. “It’s boring a little bit but I also think we have an edge over them since we did beat them last year. We got a sense of their strengths, which is helpful scouting wise. But I personally would rather play some different teams.”

And finally, if the Quakers’ seed holds all the way to the National Championship game, and so does the chalk in the top half of the bracket, the team waiting for them will be the Northwestern Wildcats (17-1). The Wildcats and Quakers have faced five times over the last four years. The first four results all were heavily in Northwestern’s favor, as the Quakers lost by a combined 55- 20 (including a loss in the Final Four 12-2 last year).

But on April 27 this year Penn pulled off a big upset, beating then-undefeated Northwestern 11-7. If the Quakers and Wildcats were to square off once again in the finals, it’d cement this rivalry as the one of the top inter-conference ones in the nation. Considering by the end of that game four of these teams’ combined six losses over the last two years would’ve been to the other squad, these two teams are shaping up like the Colts-Patriots. In fact that analogy would be very applicable if the Quakers actually win the championship this year, since the year the Colts won the Superbowl they beat the Patriots in both the regular season and the playoffs.

But enough with football. In addition to teams from last year’s tournament, there are three teams in the bracket, in addition to Northwestern, that the Quakers have already played this year: Temple, Princeton and North Carolina. Penn won all of those three games. However, the chances of facing any of the three are unlikely since they’d all involve multiple upsets, and the worst of the three teams, Temple, is the only one in Penn’s half of the bracket.

For the Owls to face Penn, they would have to upset Maryland and the winner of No. 6 Georgetown/Duke. The other two potential rematches, although more likely since they involve better teams, still are unlikely to occur. The No. 8 Tigers or unranked Tar Heels would need Northwestern, No. 4 Virginia and No.5 Syracuse all to lose in order to advance to the championship game.

So while 2008 opponents probably aren’t going show up again, the Quakers might experience some 2007 déjà vu come tournament time.

The NCAA Division I Women’s Lacrosse Tournament bracket was announced Monday evening, and Penn is the No. 2 seed and will face Colgate Sunday at 1pm. Over the next few days I’ll provide some analysis and team reactions to the draw. First up, Did the Quakers get shafted?
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Everyone’s heard of Selection Sunday when the March Madness bracket is announced. But how about Selection Monday?

Well for Division I Women’s Lacrosse teams the first Monday in May, not the third Sunday in March, is their big night to find out their seed and draw for the NCAA tournament.

And yesterday, the Penn team sat waiting inside the women’s basketball team’s locker room (apparently the only Athletics room that gets CBS’ CollegeSports TV) to hear who they’d be playing and what seed they’d gotten

In the end, the No. 1 Quakers discovered that despite their top national ranking, they had earned the second seed behind No. 2 Northwestern. They’ll play Colgate 1 pm Sunday at Franklin Field.

So did the team get shafted out of the No. 1 spot?

“We thought we’d be a one or a two seed” because of “our record and beating the then-No. 2 team and the team that was No. 1 throughout the whole season” coach Karin Brower said alluding to victories over Princeton and Northwestern, respectively. But “we’re happy to be in the top four. No matter where you are you have to play good teams.”

The players seemed a little more disgruntled, but they also realized that a two seed — the highest the team has ever received — is nothing to sneeze at.

“It was a little disappointing,” senior attack Allison Ambrozy said. “It would’ve been quite a thing to be number one. You know we’re number one in the rankings and we beat Northwestern, but having the two spot is not too bad.”

Looking at the two teams’ numbers, it’s not that surprising that the Wildcats got the higher seed. The Quakers do have the head-to-head factor, as they dispatched the Wildcats 11-7 on April 27 at Franklin Field. And they are currently ranked higher in the Inside Lacrosse Media Poll, albeit it by the smallest of margins (213 votes overall including six first-place selections vs. Northwestern’s 210 and four, respectively).

But besides those two (important) factors, Northwestern holds basically every other advantage. Northwestern is the three-time-defending National Champion, and while one would believe the tournament committee wouldn’t take into account past performance, it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination if that was an underlying factor. Looking at this year, the Wildcats do have a better overall record (17-1 vs 14-1) and those losses are significant as well. Penn lost to Stanford (12-8), who despite winning its conference and earning the 17th spot in the media poll, did not receive an at large bid (its conference, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, does not receive an automatic bid). Northwestern’s loss is to a top quality program, Penn.

Furthermore, the geeky numbers the selection committee looks at point to Northwestern’s edge. Just like other NCAA tournament committees, the women’s lacrosse one doesn’t openly admit what numbers it looks at and what weight it gives such numbers. However, laxpower.com has a composite summary of important statistics called the “Tournament Selection Index” that maps out seven different numerical values. The TSI then ranks all 85 NCAA D-I programs with the lowest score earning the No. 1 spot. Northwestern is first on that list with -15.75 (again the lower the better). Penn is fourth at -.60.

The categories included are poll ranking, power rating, RPI, SOS, Quality Win Factor, Losses, and a Trend factor. (Read more about TSI here.) NU’s power rating is higher (first vs. sixth), NU’s RPI is higher (first vs. second), NU’s schedule is harder than Penn’s (fifth vs. 14th), and NU’s QWF is higher (first vs fifth).

So in the end, it’s not that surprising that Northwestern is the one seed and Penn is the two. But ironically, being No. 2 might actually help Penn. The NCAA does not seed the bottom half of the sixteen team bracket. Instead, the lower half is assigned to a top-eight seed depending on geography. Hence, just because Northwestern is the top seed doesn’t mean they get the easiest first round matchup. In fact, it appears Penn might have that advantage.

Colgate has the worst record of any NCAA participant with an 11-9 overall mark. Their power rating is ranked 44th vs Penn’s sixth-ranked one, and they give up over 13 goals a game vs Penn’s 6.00 (which leads the nation). At the same time, the Raiders have been to three of the last five NCAA tournaments, something Penn can’t claim (this is only its second since 1984).

Northwestern, meanwhile, gets a really tough first round draw. The closest team to them that’s unseeded is nationally-ranked No. 10 Notre Dame (12-6). The Fighting Irish probably were the best team to not get a top eight seed. Their power rating isn’t that much lower than NU’s (11 vs 1). However, the Wildcats did destroy the Irish April 9 16-2. So don’t go writing in that upset just yet.

Regardless, facing an easier first round opponent than the Wildcats is the silver lining for the Quakers’ two seed.

“I’d rather play Colgate than Notre Dame,” Ambrozy said. “And despite being No. 2, we might actually have an easier first two rounds. So No. 2, we can’t complain.”

Raise your hand if you had four No. 1 seeds in your Final Four. I did, actually — two years ago. But I was promptly ridiculed by my friends for having a cheap bracket, and I haven’t done the same thing since. Shows what I know.

Obviously, I was less surprised by Kansas’s win over tenth-seeded Davidson than by Memphis’s over second-seeded Texas. (I’m still of the mindset that free-throw shooting matters, but the Tigers reminded me that it doesn’t matter if the game isn’t close.) In the grand scheme of all things basketball, though, Davidson’s loss was far more important. Every year’s Tournament is a testing ground to see how the rest are holding up to the best in college basketball, whether all this parity we keep hearing about is a reality. In that sense, Stephen Curry’s sudden transformation back into mortal man was far more jarring, because what might have become a great Tournament for midmajors turned into a banner Final Four for the elite of Division I.

We had a midmajor in the Elite Eight and had Western Kentucky, whose success came at the expense of another midmajor, Drake, in the Sweet Sixteen. That’s better than last year, when Butler was the only midmajor to win two games (I don’t count Southern Illinois and UNLV) but not the sea change that enthusiastic promoters of the game want us to believe.

So yes, San Diego and Siena won games. And yes, Davidson almost became the next George Mason. But this March has been by no means a step up for midmajors. Four No. 1’s in the Final Four is an insult to the injured. It’s hard to be a fan of the little guy right now and celebrate.

You know the drill. Here’s your dose of pregame reading before the ‘Cats and the Jayhawks tip off in about five hours. Enjoy the game.

• Kansas City Star
• Wichita Eagle
• Sports Network
• CBS
• Lawrence Journal-World
• USA Today
• Buffalo News
• Philadelphia Inquirer
• Comcast SportsNet
• Philadelphia Daily News

PS: I apologize that these links aren’t opening up in new windows. Josh Wheeling and I thought we had this one figured out, but lately the links have started opening in the same window anyway. We’ll try to fix it soon.

Tipoff is at 7:10 tonight. Here’s your dose of previews:

• Tulsa World
• International Herald Tribune
• Sports Network
• Cherry Hill Courier-Post
• Philadelphia Inquirer
• Philadelphia Daily News
• Austin-American Statesman
• New York Daily News
• Norman Transcript
• The Hawk
• Philadelphia Evening Bulletin

Tipoff for (12)Villanova vs. (5)Clemson is at 9:50 tomorrow. Here are preview articles galore:

• Spartanburg Herald Journal
• Philadelphia Inquirer
• Sarasota Herald-Tribune
• PhillyBurbs.com
• Deadspin.com
• Tampa Tribune
• BleacherReport.com

(11)St. Joe’s vs. (6)Oklahoma is at 7:40, and I’ll have links for that game up later.

To summarize the Cornell game, Cornell got crushed. The box score is here and a recap is here. As a Penn fan, I want to see Ivy League teams get better seeds in the future, so I was disheartened to see such a blowout. Here the Times wraps things up and looks at what Stanford can expect in its next game, against Marquette.

Giant Killer?

Yeah right.

Scratch that last remark. It is as bad as it could be, because it couldn’t be much worse than being down 38-17 at halftime. Cornell missed three key shots in the last minute and a half, and Stanford pounced to stretch their lead from around 14 to 21 in a matter of moments.

Steve Donahue’s club has problems. Cornell shot just 5-for-32 from the field, compared with 16-for-32 for Stanford. The Big Red were supposed to have the advantage from deep, but they’ve only hit 2 of 14 three-point shots. Louis Dale, who was on a hot streak coming into this game, has been playing out of control and has had trouble finishing over the Cardinal’s big men. He hasn’t scored yet after 8 shot attempts. Jeff Foote has 3 fouls, and Adam Gore hasn’t gotten open enough to take quality shots.

Cornell is on pace to break the Tournament record for lowest shooting percentage in the shot-clock era. They’re at 15.6 percent right now; the lowest ever was when Prarie View A&M shot 23 percent against Kansas.

Michigan State 72, Temple 61

Things aren’t looking good for Cornell either, although only being down 12 with three minutes to go isn’t nearly as bad as it could be, considering how awfully they have shot the ball. Also, who is the kid running the point for Cornell, and what did he do with Louis Dale?