Middlebury women win the NCAA D3 Lacrosse Title.
Tufts, Trinity, Wesleyan and Colby were also in the tournament.
On the men’s side, Tufts wins the NCAA title (good spring for Tufts!).
Middlebury, Bowdoin (semi-finalists) and Wesleyan were also in the tournament.
Well, the only other news I have for spring sport NCAAs is for tennis. No NESCAC national champions this year, but Wesleyan women’s tennis were the national runner-up to Chicago.
Wes was runner up in 2021 after winning the title in 2019. D3 women’s tennis has been mostly a Williams/Emory show historically, with Amherst winning it 1999. The 5C schools show up A LOT in this sport at the national level.
On the men’s side, no NESCAC won either, but Middlebury and Bowdoin each made the semi-finals, and Williams made the tournament.
Worth noting that Chicago won both titles. So much for the Maroons not caring about sports. They recruited my soccer player very hard. But that’s another story.
Overall, it was a good spring showing for Tufts and Middlebury. Wesleyan, too.
Quiet NESCAC year for baseball and softball. Baseball and softball are a little tougher because those are both relatively low-barrier-for-entry sports and are widely played, so you’re really exposed to the broader gene pool and schools that don’t impose the academic screens that the NESCACs present. And I’m one who believes that living in warm weather states really makes a difference in the quality of regional play, though good ball players come from everywhere. Gotta have an indoor facility, though, if you’re up north.
I’d like to see the NESCAC schools start to excel in golf. A school named Methodist (never heard of 'em) has really dominated D3 golf on both the men’s and women’s side, though on the women’s side it’s a little more ‘all over the place’. But no NESCAC national titles in that sport that I can see. IDK. NESCAC should be good at golf. It would seem.
Hey! There’s an admissions tip. Be good at golf, get good grades, take hard classes, and sell yourself to NESCAC golf coaches! Before they get good at it. 
Overall, it’s hard to call trends for this League. It looked like Bates was going to own crew for the foreseeable future and they didn’t make NCAAs this year. Williams continues to be a strong all-around program and dominant in some sports. But they’re not the 800 lb. gorilla they used to be. Tufts and Middlebury have asserted themselves. Wesleyan, once a proud perennial sports doormat, has made real strides since President Roth was appointed years ago and proclaimed that if you’re going to do something, then you should try to do it well.
Anyway, there was a discussion in a thread a year or so ago about what these schools have in common and why is the NE LAC experience such a thing. Well, to me, the sports rivalries and the shared commitment to athletic excellence to go along with academic excellence is a part of it. I so much enjoyed my time as a NESCAC athlete parent and I find myself rooting for these teams and admiring the seriously committed kids who pull off being great students, intellectuals and competitive athletes.
Hamilton men’s lax had an exciting NESCAC tournament, upsetting #1 Tufts. Tufts ultimately went on to win the NCAA tournament, while Hamilton didn’t get a bid, which goes to show you the high level of play in the NESCAC and the flawed selection for the NCAA tournament. It ends up being not about the best teams to make it (because they won’t take too many NESCACs). You’ve got teams in the tournament who are ‘automatic qualifiers’ in their conference, but their conference is not nearly as competitive, who get crushed by the NESCACs once they have to play them in the tournament. I wish they’d either expand the tournament, or revamp selections (IMHO).
Agreed completely. The very clear example of that in crew has been Washington College. They are never competitive at NCAAs but are always in the tournament because they own their conference.
Edited to clarify I’m speaking of the Washington College women’s crew team. I’ve no idea how the men fare.
In fact, Hamilton mens’ lacrosse team beat 3 of the final four teams (Tufts, Bowdoin and W&L). Whether that should qualify them for an at-large bid in the NCAA tournament is an open question, but the NCAA does not attempt to fill the playoff field with the “best” teams. However, this isn’t the proper forum for a long discussion about NCAA tournament composition or competition.
Not Washington College, but perhaps another team. WC finished fourth in the Centennial Conference this year and missed the NCAA tournament. And, this was their best record in-conference since 2019.
Washington College rows in the MARC, not the Centennial (which doesn’t include rowing). And while they did not make it this year, just last season the women (the team to which I was referring) won their 9th conference title since 2013. They have been a fixture at NCAAs and, at least during our 4 years (and I believe before and after), they’ve not been competitive.
That’s how most NCAA tournaments work, even March Madness. There are automatic qualifiers who win their league tourneys but who would never beat many of the teams that didn’t get bids because they are ranked 7th in the SEC or 6th in the PAC 12 and the NCAA tournament committee can’t take every ranked team from one conference. 64 teams (really 68 because of the play-ins) and that’s it.
Hamilton’s record was 9-7. It beat Tufts in the conference tournament (14-13 in OT) but lost to Tufts earlier in the year. Should all 7 teams that beat Hamilton during the season go to the NCAA championships?
Yes, the NESCAC is strong in Lax, but so are other conferences. And the conferences that aren’t good still get to send the conference winner and there is always the chance that team will win - that’s what the tournaments are all about.
Actually Tufts softball made it to the NCAA finals this year and Williams made it to the Super Regionals. They had a decent showing this year.
Wow. How did I miss that?
Yes, they did.
Hamilton’s record was 9-7. All 7 losses came in NESCAC play. That’s her point, and if we’re being honest, fans of teams who play in deep conferences make this argument all the time, and I think there’s something to it. SOS matters. Hamilton’s losses were as follows:
#15 Amherst
#2 Tufts
#9 Bowdoin
#18 Middlebury
Trinity
Williams
#10 Wesleyan
#10 Wesleyan
They were undefeated in out-of-conference play, including wins over MIT, SUNY Oneonta, #12 Lynchburg and Utica. I don’t see where they beat W&L, but in 16 games they had to play 3 top 10 teams, and two of them twice (Tufts and Wesleyan), and two other top 20 teams. And one of those teams was an NCAA semi-finalist and the other won the whole thing. That Hamilton team in another conference probably makes the tournament.
It’s just a super deep conference, and especially so in Lacrosse. I also realize that nobody wants an NCAA tournament comprised 90% of NESCAC teams.
But that’s how conferences and NCAA tournaments work. They don’t pick everyone from the same conference even if they are ranked that way from play during the season because then it would be an NESCAC tournament and not an NCAA one.
The NCAA tournaments have to have a wider representation. My daughter’s conference was a very strong one in Div 2 and one school often won the NCAA championship, and often 4 teams were ranked in the top 10 at the end of the year. There were only 12 teams in the NCAA tournament and they could have all come from 2 conferences if they were done only by rankings from play during the year. Instead the NCAA divided them even more as at first they only had 2 brackets for play and split that into 4 (and increased to 16 teams) to include teams from the West, so I think only 2 teams could come from the same conference even if 4-6 teams from that conference were ranked in the top 16. Sucked if you were number 4 overall but number 3 in that conference, and you didn’t get to go to the NCAA tournament but some team ranked 25th (that you might have beaten during non-conference play) did.
Exactly. Thanks for so eloquently summing up my point. I totally understand that nobody (outside of the NESCAC, lol) wants an NCAA tournament comprised of 90% NESCAC teams, but the NCAA tournament is billed as the best teams in the country, and it’s just not. National rankings are based on this, it impacts recruiting, etc., so it matters. I understand this isn’t an NCAA thread, so I’ll leave it here, but perhaps the solution then is to expand it.
Look at March Madness. It is not the 64 best teams, it is teams from all conferences, conference winners who aren’t that good at all but every once in a while there is a St. Peter’s that comes in ranked #15 and upsets a #2 and even makes it to the sweet 16, and every year the Ivy league gets to have at least one team in it and they can lose big in the first round because all the Ivy teams are bad that year. This year NC State would not have made the tournament based on the regular season but won the conference tournament so got an auto bid (and others from that conference also got bids) and went deep into the NCAA tournament. Sometimes it’s being hot at the right time.
If the NESCAC is that strong in any year (as they often are) then the NESCAC tournament is the real test for them as all teams play in it. Win that and tout yourself as the best (and they do).
How are they going to expand the tournament? They already have 38 teams playing in Div 3. Div 1 only has 17 in the tournament.
Not all NESCAC teams play in the NESCAC tournament, only 8 do.
I hear what you’re saying and I understand it. The point I’ve tried to make is, I’d have less of an issue with it if, say, the top team in every conference just went to the tournament, and it was billed only as such- a tournament of each conference winner. However, again, it’s billed/touted as the best teams in the country and that is not accurate, which then falsly impacts rankings, etc. MANY of the best teams/players simply can’t gain access and those athletes never get to experience it, while other teams will go regularly, with far less competitive athletes. This is nothing new, and I’ve beat a dead horse at this point.
I’ll just amplify @Crosbylane 's post / point by beating a dead horse of my own and emphasize the example of Washington College in women’s crew.
I don’t want to indulge in trashing the program, but as mentioned up-thread, that school gets an auto-bid to NCAAs quite frequently. From 2013 to 2023 they made NCAAs nine times, and when they get there they are obliterated. Teams like, say, Hamilton, which a few years ago began really knocking on the door as a strong “up and coming” crew program with some really fast boats, are affected by virtue of where they compete because getting out of the northeast to NCAAs is very, very tough. And yet those Hamilton boats I’ve seen at conference and regionals were, I’m confident, significantly faster than the Washington College boats based on comparative results against the rest of the field.
In a sport like crew, where logistically you are limited to the number of competing schools, Washington College for years has really taken up valuable space at NCAAs, leaving out faster boats that would add much more competition to the event.
I think the solution is to increase the “at large” pool and to create space for it by penalizing teams in weaker conferences more than they do currently. There should be a substantive review of the schools’ season results and significant weight should be assigned to ranking and overall SOS. Teams in historically weak conferences will be on notice that they need to schedule aggressive OOC match-ups to shore up their SOS and rankings. That’s my view of it, and I will now let the horse lie in peace.
Yes, in NCAA Women’s Rowing (and virtually all NCAA sports), there are always teams representing conferences (or, in some cases, regions) that have no chance of being competitive at a national level.
As @cquin85 surely knows, this year in DIII that was St. Mary’s of Maryland (from MARC) and Puget Sound from the “Pacific Region.” In DI, this was Jacksonville (MAAC), SMU (American), and Rhode Island (Atlantic 10) - at the very least. Obviously other sports do this too. (If you knew what MARC and MAAC stood for, pat yourself on the back.)
I see it differently - I think of NCAA tournaments as including the best teams in the country and representing a wide variety of conferences, and I assume most people know that. March Madness (aka the tournament everyone knows about) is well-known to include small-conference seeds and it’s part of the fun, but everyone knows the 61st team that won its tiny conference wouldn’t really beat the N+1’th team from the ACC. I also don’t really think that when these teams show up and lose, they really move up in rankings. Maybe you have data that differs. (I agree that some sports/divisions could probably increase their field size - but that’s generally a one-way door and I understand how some sports might be loath to expand.)
Is it possible that the missing at-large team that isn’t included in a tournament might have gone on a Cinderella run? I mean, maybe, and they’d be more likely than Jacksonville in DI rowing - but (in most sports - maybe men’s lax is an exception?) generally not.
I can’t speak for all sports, but in my daughter’s field sport, I can definitively say that 100% making the tournament impacts rankings, regardless of how competitive (or not) a team’s conference is. You can literally see the shifting of teams each week during the NCAA tournament and for teams that didn’t get an at-large bid (because their conference is so incredibly competitive- i.e., NESCAC), they drop ranking spots as the tournament goes on. So again, it does matter. For my daughter’s sport, at least a couple of teams made the tournament that my daughter’s team (NESCAC) beat pretty easily. Those teams made it a couple of rounds, and their rankings moved up past D’s team, despite D’s team having beat them easily in the regular season. So, no guarantees, but D’s team definitely would have had a shot making it at least a couple of rounds in the tournament, which again equals more playing time, more opportunities/games for a team to prove their competitiveness, and more opportunities to move up in rankings.
And I definitely agree with @cquin85 that teams in historically weak conferences need to schedule much more aggressive OOC matches to shore up their SOS. That’s another beef of mine- at least for my daughter’s sport, wins equate to moving up in rankings even if a team is only beating incredibly non-competitive teams. It seems ludicrous. Legitimate question- who determines a team’s OOC match-ups? Do individual coaches? The conference? For example, I believe the NESCAC has some rules/guidelines regarding distance of OOC games? What if there are 6 (hypothetical) OOC schools/teams within a couple of hours drive of a NESCAC, why does it seem that NESCACs play the same couple of OOC schools and not others? Just curious how it works and who decides…
Usually it’s the Head Coach that lines up out of conference matches. Also apparently the NCAA selection formula for the tournament has changed. I’m not following it, but think it emphasizes wins over SOS. But I could be wrong!
That ranking drop is pretty trivial and insignificant though, and I don’t know why it would matter (to look at one sport, for women’s soccer last year) if a team that didn’t get an at-large tourney bid drops from, say #34 at the end of the regular season in Massey rankings to #37 after the tourney like Conn College did.
5 out of 11 teams from NESCAC made the 64-team 2023 NCAA D3 tourney (and 6 teams made the 2022 tourney). All of the NESCAC teams that had greater than 0.500 conference records made it. I don’t feel all that bad for the 6th or 7th best NESCAC teams who didn’t get an at-large bid. They know what they need to do to make it next year: finish in the top half of the conference.
I feel worse for teams from less strong conferences with one really dominant team who are ranked in the 30s to 40s who don’t get the automatic bid for their conference and are frozen out. For example, UC Santa Cruz lost to #1 nationally-ranked at the time Christopher Newport in PKs in their conference final and didn’t get an at-large bid. They ended up ranked #33 in Massey.
