Springfield was ranked 4th on the NPI. It was placed on the bracket where a 4th seed should be and is playing the weaker of the two other Midwest teams in their region’s first round. A regional being played at Carthage. Not exactly sure what this means. Did Springfield decline the opportunity to host or were they even offered it in the first place to make sure one region would be in the Midwest to be accessible for the 3 conference champs from there? Does the NCAA offer compensation for it to travel and save the cost of no less than two additional round-trip team flights? All very curious.
It seems the committee was compelled to strengthen the region by having a program other than Cal-Lutheran join with Carthage, Aurora, and Mount Union – Springfield is the most logical choice to do that. With Cal Lutheran already having played all 3 of these teams earlier, it made it so there wouldn’t be a rematch from this year in the first round. Instead, the committee set up a rematch of last year’s NCAA Final in the first round having Cal-Lu flying to the Big Apple. Fair, Fun, and a Fan-Tastic touch of intrigue!
The rest of the bracket shapes up pretty similar to the projection posted Sunday with the exception of the T100 thinking Lancaster Bible, rather than Nichols, should be playing on Thursday to earn a Sweet 16 berth. * In fact, the Chargers find themself on a #10 line, six spots better than what the T100 believed true. Nichols, on the other hand, sits on the #19 line, six spots worse, with a date against 14th seeded Randolph-Macon. Nichols is the slight favorite to win that match at 53% with the Bison as #22 and Randolph Macon at #24 on the last T100 ranking two days ago. Actually, all of Thursday’s matches shape up as very competitive affairs because rather than what ought to be a circle seeded construct for seeds 14 thru 19, the T100 sees the weakest two teams playing for the right to face #1-NYU, the next weakest two teams playing for a date against #2-So. Virginia, while the strongest of the six, the aforementioned Nichols & Randolph-Macon winner, will match up with the #3 seeded Stevens the next day.
*Interesting that Lancaster Bible & Nichols were the two bookends of the three “LMN” teams under the microscope on the NP-Eye “LMN Effect” post on an April 3rd. (The “M” being MSOE who at #36 on the NPI is the last team to offer a bonus to those who defeated them. A whopping .018 bonus points for defeating a team that the other 3 experts report as the 20th, 21st, and 25th best in the land! This borders on criminal Mr. NPI Developer!)
The most likely championship final on 4/27 is certainly Violets- Knights! It might be a little surprising to find out the chances they meet on that last Sunday in April is less than 1 in 3. Interestingly, only once in the last 5 seasons has a #1 seed won the Natty. Even the #2 getting that job done two times. It seems to me #2 Southern Virginia having a chance to redeem itself from last year’s Regional Final loss to NYU wouldn’t allow that opportunity to pass should they meet again in this year’s championship match. Don’t forget about Stevens, either – A team who let a 10-6 Cinco set lead against Cal-Lu in last year’s semi get away after being up 2-0. They outhit the Kingmen on that day .292 to .227, also. That is a kind of loss that can galvanize a team across 12 months with the notion of unfinished business on their minds. The sum of the chances for one of these 3 top seeds to climb the mountain all the way is 77.5% which makes the odds 7 to 2 against the rest of the field. I’d be hard pressed to take those odds even with the strong candidates on the table seen below!
Champions in BLUE, Runner Ups in RED, & Semi-Finalists in GREEN – Every year of the NCAA Championship Tournament and the Seed# (W-L) records of the teams who were there! All time tournament records by every program can be seen on the right margin with overall WINS & LOSSES. This year there are 4 new participants who’ve never been there before, and of the 15 who have, they account for 88 of the 134 total victories all time. Just shy of two-thirds.
The table below shows the all-time appearances by every program up until 2025 and the frequency for how far they went. Together with what is shown above find the answers to the following trivia questions and see what your score ends up being – Max is 30 points. NOTE – They become increasingly more difficult as you move down the list from #1 to #5 with each subsequent answer worth 2 more points than the previous. (Point awards are indicated with the answers.)
To see the answers and point values to the above Trivia Questions you can click the # below:
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