11.10.2009 5:09 am
Mizzou women’s soccer team snubbed
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Mizzou’s women’s soccer team became the first regular-season champion in the Big 12 Conference to be excluded from the NCAA Division I tournament.Mizzou failed to secure one of the 34 at-large bids in the 64-team field.
The Tigers (13-6-3, 7-1-2) won the regular-season title but missed out on the conference’s automatic bid Saturday when they lost to Oklahoma State 3-2 in a Big 12 tournament semifinal.
I don’t know much about womens soccer but I don’t understand how a conference champion can be left out of the NCAA tournament. Can you imagine if this happened in a major conference in the men’s basketball tournament. their would be a huge public outcry. The lady tigers deserved better than this from the NCAA.
Their RPI did them in. Here’s the analysis, thanks to my colleague, Tom Timmermann:
Mizzou was No. 47. There were five teams ahead of them in RPI that didn’t get in: No. 32 Colorado College, No. 36 Indiana, No. 42 Minnesota, No. 45 Miami and No. 46 Vanderbilt. Three underdogs won conference tournaments that forced other teams in their leagues to take at-large berths, San Diego State in the Mountain West, Memphis in C-USA and Oklahoma State in the Big 12. None of those probably would have gotten in if not for winning their conference tournament.
In some college sports, conference winners automatically see postseason play, THEN additional teams are taken according to computer rankings.
I have never heard of a major conference winner not playing in the postseason, but I’m not a sports researcher, just a general fan.
Unintentional or not, it’s a slap in the face to the team and the program. No matter how “down” the Big 12 is, I would expect their conference winner in any sport to see the postseason.
they were snubbed because they were regular season champs not the big 12 they didn’t when their conference championships so they are not really a major conference winner as they did not win their conference that would be OSU unfortunately
Their line about the RPI is BS. They use RPI as an argument when they need to defend their position. By the RPI rankings, Portland should have been a 1 seed, but got dropped behind UCLA due to ‘other factors’, such as basically who they thought was the better team. That was the argument that Bradshaw gave when asked about Portland’s seeding. So RPI isn’t everything.
It’s the NCAA. They’ve never let sound logic get in the way of their selection process. Going 7-1-2 and winning the Big 12 is an amazing accomplishment and its a disgrace they were left out of the tournament.
Texas A&M and Okie State are both in. Both are good teams, but in a situation like this, if you’re gonna put in two Big 12 teams, how in the hell is the regular season champion not one of them??
Bummer. –denny, http://www.tracychapstick.com
If all else fails screw Mizzou. My understanding is that since ok st won it they got in. Since A&M is hosting the final four, they got in is my opinion. I’d say throw the automatic bid system away but that’s how Mizzou got in last year.