NCAA Tournament is Set!

After scoring 24 goals in three games against SLU, Dartmouth and Cornell, Harvard is on its way to the NCAA Tournament with the Whitelaw Trophy in its possession for the third time in five years. Harvard stomped Cornell 6-2 in the final at Albany which featured two of the most lopsided wins in tournament history by the Crimson. Dartmouth took the consolation game 3-2 over Colgate. Cornell and Harvard had already secured their places in the NCAA tournament with their semifinal victories, but Harvard bumped themselves up to the top #2 seed in the tournament with their championship victory. Dartmouth, despite their consolation victory ended up with the unenviable title of last team out of the tournament. Oddly enough both conference regular season champions, Colgate and Dartmouth did not qualify, along with WCHA 2nd place team Denver who was just out as well. Will this change the way the committe looks at the tournament in the future? Who knows.

Here's this year's official NCAA Tournament Bracket.

Those not paying attention to the D-III Frozen Four in Elmira missed out on two pretty exciting games. The first game turned into a shoot out with St. Norbert's prevailing in overtime over Hobart, 5-4. St. Norbert tallied the game winner on a rebound of a shot that appear to have hit the bar inside the net to begin with. The second game, was much tighter featuring the host team Elmira against Middlebury. Middlebury scored a powerplay goal with two minutes left in the game, setting up a rematch of last year's championship matchup. The attendance was pretty paltry unfortunately, a combined 4300, with one of the games being the host squad is pretty sad for a Frozen Four at any level, or at least it seems that way to me for the level of ice hockey these teams must be playing to be one of the final four teams standing in the country. Hopefully the people will turn out en masse for the final. A quick note, if one of the names on the Elmira staff seems familiar, it is. Coach Tim Ceglarski is the son of former Clarkson coach Len Ceglarski, and looks like he's doing a pretty good job of following in his father's footsteps, and probably making some of his own.

Brett should have some thoughts on the tournament when he gets back.