(Photo Courtesy of Brown Athletics)

Championship week is here!

On Sunday night, the bracket will be released and we’ll officially know who is in and who is out of this year’s NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Tournament. Here is one last look at bracketology before Selection Sunday.

How It Works

Here is a refresher as to how the NCAA Tournament works for those of you who may be unaware or have forgotten. The 2022 NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Tournament will feature eight seeded teams and 10 non-seeded teams. Those teams will make up the 18-team bracket.

10 teams will be automatic qualifiers (AQ) and those 10 will all be conference champions. Remember, the ACC does not have an AQ because a conference needed six teams to qualify for an AQ. The ACC only has five teams. With 10 AQ’s, that leaves eight spots for at-large selections.

With the return of the ASUN on the men’s lacrosse scene, the tournament returns to two play-in games featuring the bottom four teams. The winners of those games will have to face the No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the first round.

Now how does the NCAA selection committee pick teams for at-large bids and seed teams for the tournament? According to the committee, they consider a multitude of things. The committee looks at record, strength of schedule index (based on team’s 10 highest-rated games), RPI results, average RPI wins and losses, head-to-head results, record against ranked teams (1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, and 21+), significant wins and losses, location of games, results versus common opponents, and any polls do not matter.

You can find the official NCAA pre-championship manual here.

Projected Automatic Qualifiers

We still have a lot of lacrosse to be played, but if the tournament started today this is what the AQ situation would look like. These selections are based on who is the No. 1 seed in the conference tournaments

Conference	Team	Record	Conference Record	RPI Rank	SOS Rank
America East	Vermont	9-6	6-0	39	35
ASUN	Utah	9-3	5-0	21	55
Big East	Georgetown	13-1	5-0	3	14
Big Ten	Maryland	12-0	5-0	1	18
CAA	Delaware	9-5	3-2	26	37
Ivy League	Brown	10-4	4-2	9	12
MAAC	St. Bonaventure	10-3	5-1	41	73
Patriot League	Boston U.	10-4	7-1	12	22
NEC	Saint Joseph’s	12-3	7-0	19	49
SoCon	Jacksonville	14-2	6-0	23	38

Data from Lacrossereference.com – 5/3

---

Possible At-Large Selections

As previously mentioned, after those 10 automatic qualifiers are set in stone, there are still eight other teams that will get in via at-large berths. This portion of the selection process is always fun, but maybe even more so this year with how tight things have seem to be across the landscape.

For this section this week, we are listing 14 teams that are in contention for a possible at-large bid after removing the projected AQs. Teams are listed in order based on their RPI rank.

Conference	Team	Record	Conference Record	RPI Rank	SOS Rank
Ivy League	Princeton	9-4	3-3	2	1
Ivy League	Penn	8-4	3-3	4	4
Ivy League	Yale	6-4	3-3	5	6
Big Ten	Rutgers	12-2	4-1	6	24
Ivy League	Cornell	11-3	4-2	7	8
ACC	Duke	11-5	3-2	8	13
ACC	Virginia	11-3	5-1	10	17
Big Ten	Ohio State	10-4	3-2	11	10
Ivy League	Harvard	8-4	3-3	12	15
ACC	Notre Dame	7-4	4-1	13	21
Big East	Denver	9-5	4-1	15	16
SoCon	Richmond	9-4	4-1	16	30
ACC	North Carolina	8-6	1-5	17	4
Patriot League	Army West Point	11-3	6-2	18	27

Data from Lacrossereference.com – 5/3

---

Bids Per Conference

Before getting into what I think the bracket could look like at this time, let’s take a look at how many bids each conference could recieve. There are a few conference that are sure to get multiple bids while other may get just get one bid. Some of the bottom conferences will obviously only get that one AQ, as usual.

Ivy League – Five bids

Big Ten – Three bids

ACC – Two bids

Big East – One bid

Patriot League – One bid

ASUN – One bid

America East – One Bid 

CAA – One Bid

MAAC – One Bid

NEC – One Bid

SoCon – One Bid

---

Projected Bracket 6.0

Last Four in: Brown, Ohio State, Duke, Virginia

First Four out: Harvard, Notre Dame, Denver, North Carolina

Breaking it Down

In terms of who’s on the bubble, Ohio State and Virginia are in the best shape. I feel those two are locks. Virginia is done with their season and Ohio State has a Big Ten semifinals matchup against Rutgers this week. They can lose that and are still very likely to get in. Wins over Notre Dame and Harvard really help them.

As long as the status quo holds in the Big East, Patriot League, and Big Ten, the Ivy League will likely get five teams and that would mean Brown is in even if they don’t get the AQ. The same goes for the rest of the Ivy. Now, if either Georgetown or Boston U. doesn’t win their league, or if Maryland is upset by Johns Hopkins and the Blue Jays win the Big Ten, that could bring the Ivy bid down to five. Who would be left out in that case? If they don’t win the tournament, Brown or Cornell would be the most likely as they are the lowest in the RPI of the five Ivies currently projected in.

Unless something wild happens, Duke and Notre Dame will be fighting for that second ACC spot this weekend. The winner will end up on the right side of the bubble and the other on the wrong side.