Looking Ahead To Today's Selection Show For The NCAA Tournament

I apologize for being a bit late with this as I had a couple of appointments to attend to earlier this A.M. but wanted to provide a bit of a preview for the upcoming NCAA Tournament Selection Show that will begin at approximately 1:30 P.M. (Central Time) this afternoon.  You can watch the entire show courtesy of D3Hoops.com and here's the link for that.

http://www.d3hoops.com/playoffs/women/2017/women-selection-show


From D3Hoops.com women's bracket selections, it appears right now that GAC is without question a "lock" to make the field of 64 which I predicted that they easily would be.  The bigger questions right now appear to be swirling around both Bethel and George Fox from the Northwest Conference. While the Royals have a solid 22-5 overall record, what hurts them before the eyes of the selection committee when their name comes to the table for discussion is their 0-4 record against regionally-ranked opponents (0-5 if you count the semifinal playoff loss to GAC).  Again, I personally feel strongly that they SHOULD be in given their play this season and the fact that they've accomplished a great chunk of work without arguably their best player in senior Kalli Zimmerman.  But you also have to keep in mind that, in Division III Women's Basketball, you have over 400 teams and 64 spots available in the actual NCAA Tournament.  43 of those spots go to the "AQ's" (automatic qualifiers) that are normally either regular season champs or conference tournament winners.  Then you have one "Pool B" spot along with your other "at-large" bids and there's a lot of criteria out there for a whole host of teams in each of the seven different regions for the committee to consider.  Ultimately, a lot of very good teams wind up left on the table and we've seen this happen before more than once. For a review of what the wonks at D3Hoops.com have to say about their projections, here's the link for that for your reading enjoyment.

http://www.d3hoops.com/playoffs/women/2017/projected-womens-bracket


Anyway, I'll be watching closely come 1:30 this afternoon to see how everything shakes out and I'll have something to say about it all afterward.  Feel free to fire away with thoughts.