There weren’t any surprises in the 11 teams announced for the NCAA Women’s Hockey Championship.
After the five conference winners, the remaining six at-large selection basically as expected based on the next highest ranked teams in the polls. All the teams selected were either from the WCHA (Ohio State, Minnesota & UMD) or the ECAC (Colgate, Clarkson & St. Lawrence).
The only team that maybe could have received an at-large bid was Quinnipiac, but at the end of the day, they didn’t beat Clarkson in the ECAC playoffs, so that removed their opportunity.
The only surprises were the conference upsets and seedings.
Congrats to Boston University and Sacred Heart, winning their championship even though they weren’t the top seed.
As for the seedings, they didn’t go exactly as I expected, but nothing I am really bothered about (unlike last year when UMD should have had a higher seed and avoided Ohio State in the second round). It seems the Pairwise ranking was given more weight than the Poll:
- With Minnesota beating Ohio State in WCHA semi-finals, I thought the Gophers might get the #2 seed
- I had Penn State as the #8 seed, but they ended up #7
- I thought St Lawrence would be the #7 seed, but they ended up #10 – it’s possible the committee didn’t want an all-ECAC match-up vs. Clarkson meeting in the first round if SLU was ranked #8 or #9.
Best of luck to all the teams this week. I expect there to be a couple of upsets this weekend.