The NCAA Tournament Levels
Over the past 14 years, I have had the pleasure of coaching some really good college teams, mostly women’s tennis at the DIII level. Given that this is the championship time for NCAA teams, I thought it would be a good time to set down my perspective of the different levels of participation in the tournament and how that affects the players’ and coaches’ mindsets about the tournament.
As a quick breakdown, the DIII tournament is broken up into 8 smaller regional tournaments, with the winner of each region meeting at a central location to play for the national title. Typically there are about 47 teams in the tournament, so there are some byes in the first round, and the “regions” are not strictly geographical. For a variety of reasons, the northeast always has a greater concentration of elite teams than anywhere else. The biggest cause of this is that the NESCAC is a very strong athletic (and academic) conference and typically has about 5 out of the top 10 teams in the country.
For the most part, teams make the tournament by winning their conference championship, but there are also at-large bids, so that the second (and sometimes third or fourth) best team in a conference can still participate in the tournament, usually by beating other good teams and earning a high national ranking.
Here are the Levels for playing in the NCAAs!
Level 1: Winner of a small conference, no ranking. When I first started coaching, I longed to be this kind of team. In my mind, making NCAAs meant anything was possible! Maybe we could scrap our way to the top! I was wrong. These teams typically are between the 7th and 4th best teams in a region. Their best case is to play another team from this group in the first round and advance to the second round.
Level 2: Winner of a small conference with a ranking (or highly-ranked runner-up), 3rd-best team in the region. This was the case the first time I helped coach MIT in the tournament in 2013. We were pretty good and ranked #22 in the country, having won our NEWMAC tournament for the first time in several years. We beat a familiar foe from Boston (Simmons college who we had recently played at home) and then had to play Middlebury, a top 10 team, in the Regional Semi-final. We lost 0-5, though we did go to 9-7 at #3 Doubles and took the first set at #2. All in all, we made a decent showing, but were not going to win this match! Also, as the 3rd-best team, even if we had won, we would have had to play another team of a similar level the next day. I don’t even know who that other team was, I just know we weren’t going to play 2 perfect matches and advance.
Level 3a: Winner of a small conference with a high ranking (or highly-ranked runner up), 2nd-best team in the region. This situation is a major improvement! Typically, if your ranking is just a bit higher (like mid to low teens), you have the chance to advance to the Nationals (the final 8) by just upsetting one higher-ranked team. The first time we held this high a ranking, did not work in our favor, even though we were #13 in the country. We ended up as the #2 team in a region with Amherst College, who had beaten us 9-0 not once, but twice, earlier that spring. Though we made the final, Amherst rocked us 5-0 that day (we did enjoy a good BBQ place nearby!). Going into that match, getting one match victory over Amherst would have been a good outcome, but it wasn’t to be.
Level 3b: Winner of a small conference with a high ranking (or highly-ranked runner up), 2nd-best team in the region, with a chance to win! This has turned out to be the sweet spot for the Engineers over the years. We have actually advanced 3 times to Nationals from this level. The first time, we had actually lost our conference tournament (at that time, held in the fall) to a spirited Babson College team, but had a really awesome spring, taking down some good teams and earning a ranking right around #13 again. Perhaps not wanting us to get smashed by Amherst, we were sent out of region to Virginia, where we were second behind #4-ranked Washington and Lee and Mary Washington, who had a slightly lower ranking. We got through Mary Washington relatively smoothly, and then played some great singles to rally from a 2-1 deficit and win 5-3. Our #6 player was also way up in her match when we clinched. I remember heading into this match thinking that we had worked so hard in the spring, being very thankful to not be playing one of the monster teams of the NESCAC, and feeling that we had been playing good enough tennis to surprise them. Huge win! We got to go to Nationals where we met…Amherst. This time, we did take a doubles match (as I recall we were down 6-5 when there was a brief rain delay, and then we came out and played perfect tennis for 3 games to take it 8-6) for our first point against them in recent memory, but they clinched the match 5-1 with several close matches still on the court.
In subsequent years, MIT came through as an underdog and beat Tufts and Bowdoin at their home courts to advance in 2018 and 2019. This is a tough way to win, but it is possible.
Level 4: Winner of a small conference with a high ranking (or highly-ranked runner up), Best team in the region, possibly hosting. Well, we made it this year. Due to a great performance at Indoor Nationals, MIT sat at #6 or 7 in the rankings for most of the spring. We beat a couple of other top 10 teams late in the spring (Sadly, some COVID cases made those victories a bit easier, if less satisfying.) and were chosen to host after we banged our way to another NEWMAC Championship. In our Regional, we had a first-round bye, and got by a small conference team and a pretty dangerous Williams squad to advance to Nationals, where we will face Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, who is ranked slightly ahead of us. I don’t know what will happen in this match, but I know I love this team and we are going to battle to try to win our first team match at Nats! I will update when we get back from Orlando.
Our match is Monday 5/23 at 3:00 pm. The website may have some video streaming and/or live scoring options.