Shock.
That was the only way to describe the atmosphere in the McCormick-Tribune Center on Monday night, when Northwestern learned that it had received the No. 4 seed in this year’s NCAA tournament.
When the Wildcats, ranked No. 1 in both the IWLCA and Bounce Entertainment/Inside Lacrosse polls, saw their matchup appear on the CSTV broadcast of the selection show, a group gasp overtook the room.
“What?!” one NU player exclaimed as a stunned murmur grew among team members. Coach Kelly Amonte Hiller sat jaw dropped, hands in the air asking the same question as the rest of the Cats: Why?
“I expected us maybe to go as low as three, but I didn’t expect us to go to four,” Amonte Hiller said.
But that’s what NU (16-1) will be labeled when it takes on Stanford (12-5) in the first round Sunday at the Thomas Athletic Complex. Should the Cats move on, they will play the winner of the North Carolina/Maryland game May 20 in Evanston.
NU already has defeated all three potential opponents from the first two rounds of play earlier this season, including a 19-8 triumph at Stanford.
“I mean, there’s nothing you can really do about it,” junior Kristen Kjellman said. “I don’t know what really goes into the decisions they make for the seeding, but for some reason, they felt that that’s where we should be. So we’re just going to take it and do our best.”
The seeding is likely to spark new debate over the supposed “East Coast bias” in lacrosse. The top seed in the tournament went to Duke (16-2). The Blue Devils, ranked No. 2 in the polls, handed the Cats their only loss of the season April 7 with a 16-10 victory in Durham, N.C. Virginia (15-3), which has defeated ACC-rival Duke twice this year, took the two seed.
But it was the No. 3 spot that most surprised the NU coaching staff and much of the lacrosse world. Georgetown (13-3), the Big East champion, took the third seed and will face Monmouth in the first round.
“We’ve taken care of everything that we can do, and that’s all I can say,” Amonte Hiller said. “We’ve lost one game in the last two years, and hopefully we don’t lose again.”
As far as why the Cats fell to fourth, strength of schedule is the likely cause. Georgetown had the No. 4 hardest season in the nation, according to RPI computer rankings, while NU was No. 7. The Hoyas also were helped by an 8-4 win over Virginia in April.
The Cats were also the only team out of the ALC to qualify for NCAAs this year, with teams like Johns Hopkins and Penn State missing out on the tournament. Georgetown will be joined by Notre Dame out of the Big East.
“I think that they put a lot of weight on strength of schedule, and I just think that that is a little bit of an East Coast bias because sometimes it’s difficult for teams like us to get the toughest schedule we can,” Amonte Hiller said.
The NU coach said that despite her best efforts to creating a challenging season for her team, it can be difficult for a Midwest school to get East Coast powers to travel so far for a game. And while the Cats embarked on a six-game road trip that saw the squad travel more than 10,000 miles, it was not enough to overtake Georgetown in the strength of schedule battle.
“We’ve tried to beef our schedule up every single year since I’ve been here, but sometimes the East Coast teams won’t play you. And that’s something that’s going to have to be realized by the criteria that they set for us.”
As for an East Coast bias on the part of the selection committee, players were not yet ready to cry fix.
“I don’t know (if there’s a bias),” Kjellman said. “I would like to hope not.”
Reach Ben Larrison at [email protected].
