Big difference between when we potentially face Marquette, and when I originally expected to face them.
I thought we'd be the 3 seed. I thought the top 5 were pretty static in terms of who were involved: us, Denver, Maryland, Yale and Brown. I also thought they'd give Maryland the #1 seed based on them winning the B1G tournament. I also thought that Brown would get the #5 seed based on having some of the worst losses in that group (Bryant and Harvard come to mind).
Brown, of course, was automatically funneled into the Providence quarterfinal site. I also thought the Committee would bend over backwards to keep both us and Denver in Columbus, in that they planned on using the Columbus site to showcase the sport in an area that's not a regional hotbed, and they wanted to place one team in relatively close proximity to Columbus (us) and another that was a western team (Denver), both with a lot of success in recent years. By process of elimination, that meant giving Yale the #4 seed, since they were the only remaining team that could get sent to Providence. Denver got the #2 seed over us on the basis of the head-to-head win, I think.
I also expected Marquette to be unseeded, and based on geography, I expected Marquette to match up against us in the first round.
If you were to seed all of the teams in the field top to bottom based on quality of play, I personally think that Marquette would rank somewhere between #6 and #14, likely around 11 or 12. Essentially, that means that Marquette would have been underseeded as a first round opponent for us, and is overseeded as a potential second-round opponent for us. Jmho.
The one that beat Denver 10-9 or the one that lost to Duke 16-1.
I think ultimately our depth would win out over them though.
We beat Ohio State on that same field back in March.
The AFA game is at 7:30 et on ESPNU. I figured we'd play Saturday as commencement is on Sunday. Most years, the tournament opens the weekend after finals, so our first tournament game usually is on Sunday.
That Duke made the field ahead of UNC. I'm not saying there was a ton of separation between the two -- in fact, I think the opposite is true -- but I do think Duke got in first.
since we joined the conference. Pity that Duke couldn't join them.
I seem to remember that they might have, although I could be mistaken on that point.
I guess two head to head wins don't trump pedigree
SoS is a huge component of tournament selection and not playing at least an ACC team likely killed them and then playing a team making the move from D3 and a bunch of also rans doesn't help. Rutgers only played 2 tournament teams - Hopkins and UMd - going 2-2. Hopkins played 6 going 3-3.
Don't get me wrong, Brown is going to torch Hopkins defense because it is awful but Hopkins is one of the 18 best teams in the country even with all of their issues.
Edited to add: If Rutgers should be mad at any team making the tournament it is Navy.
And won 15 straight after losing to tournament teams Navy and Denver. However, those 15 wins included only one tourney team, Duke, who they beat in OT. And they won their conference.
We were supposed to play Air Force in January in a pre-season game. I can't remember, did that not get played?
I like Hopkins. I feel nothing for Buttgers. Fuck Duke!
Hopkins had all kinds of issues this year. Their defense was going to be a huge work in progress. It only returned one long stick defenseman and one SSDM that played last year. The other two spots were filled by a freshman and junior transfer. Their starting LSM is a freshman that played attack in HS. Naturally, their clearing game was awful. Their goalie is a sophmore but not very good regardless.
But, before the year even started this year, they lost their 2 top middies for the year - one to NCAA violation, the other blew out his ACL. By 3/4 games in they had lost two additional top 6 middies and then lost another 2 line middie for a few weeks. So at one point, they only had 2 of their top 9 middies playing.
I thought I had read some rumblings earlier in the season about whether Petro was on the hot seat or not. I stand corrected.
he would have been fired. The team was geared for last year. Hopkins would have last made the FF in 2008 (the last Rabil year) and 2016 was the last year of his contract if they didn't make it. Thus, it would have been easier to fire him. He made the FF and was a pipe away from the championship game and got an extension until 2020. I think it was sort of a mistake to give him that long. There is no doubt the program has struggled over the last 6-7 years more than it should given parity.
Most people expected Hopkins to struggle on defense with only 1 real guy coming back and rely on their offense. But, it is almost shocking how bad the defense is. The offense is top 5 or so with 12.8 GAF but defense is an all time worst under Petro at 11.4.
I like our draw better than Maryland's or Denver's.
Our work is cut out for us, let's do this!
We aren't going to give up 17 goals to UNC again. I just wish Denver was on the opposite side of the bracket.
Marquette getting a 6 seed was huge for us. If they had been unseeded, I'm convinced that we would have drawn them in the first round for geographic reasons.
As I said above, if I were to seed all of the teams in this year's field, I would seed Marquette lower than 6 but higher than 14 (their de facto seed if they were our first-round opponent). Thus, Marquette would have been a tougher first-round matchup than we had reason to expect, but an easier second-round opponent than we had reason to expect. The Selection Committee did us a favor by making Marquette a seeded team. And I suppose they wanted Marquette in the Columbus QF bracket, although they could have made Marquette a 7 seed rather than a 6. Perhaps they wanted the possibility of two Midwest schools (ND and Marquette) matching up in Columbus.
I too would rather have seen Denver on the opposite side of the bracket. But I think, in hindsight, that the combination of Brown's loss to Harvard, Denver's loss to Marquette and Maryland winning the B1G championship, sealed our fate in that regard. In any event, until proven otherwise we have to get past Denver at some point to win the championship.
I'd probably prefer to meet them in the finals, but it's not like they've dominated us. We're overdue to beat them.