NCAA Tournament 2025

[Kuiper]

The Sweet 16 contains a lot of fun matchups we don't see very often (other than the intra-conference tilt), but Messiah @ Tufts (Saturday 11/22 at 11 am EST) is more fun than most.  Here a few things of note that may only be of interest to me:

1.  Any 14'ers heading up to Medford for a little reunion?

Almost 11 years ago to the day, on Nov. 23, 2014, #20 Tufts waltzed into Allentown, PA (cue the Billy Joel song) to take on #1 undefeated Messiah in the Quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament.  53 seconds after kickoff, a Tufts free kick was knocked away by the Messiah defense and Tufts' Jason Kayne blasted through a follow-up shot to the left corner of the net that Messiah goalkeeper Brandon West couldn't get enough of a touch on to keep it out of the back of the net.  Tufts held on to that 1-0 lead to hand Messiah its only loss of the season and end Messiah's quest to win a third national championship in a row.  Tufts went on to beat Ohio Wesleyan 3-0 in the semifinals and Wheaton (IL) 4-2 in the Finals to win its first of what became four national championships.

That was the last time these two storied programs faced each other . . . until now.

And now Tufts (NPI #1 and 16-1-3) is the heavy favorite and Messiah (NPI # 107 and 13-7-2) is the underdog looking to shock the world.

2.  Form matters

Messiah had a brutal start to the season, losing 5 in a row and losing 6 and tying 1 out of the first 10.  In retrospect, that record wasn't quite as bad as it looked considering that of those 7 non-wins, 4 were to NCAA tournament teams (Scranton, Rowan, Dickinson, and Penn State Harrisburg).  Still, it was historically bad for Messiah.  Nevertheless, since those first 10 games, Messiah has gone 10-1-1, including winning its last 10 games.  Its last loss was to Lynchburg away, another NCAA tournament team.  It also demolished Calvin in the second half of its second round game and handed Hobart its first loss of the season, on Hobart's home field, in the first game of the tournament.  In effect, Messiah's NPI ranking of #107 may not be an accurate reflection of their current rich vein of form.

Messiah's form goes beyond wins and losses.  Although it has given up 26 goals this season for a team goals against average of 1.18, only 1 of those goals has come during its 10 game win streak and that was in a 7-1 win over Hood.  It has had 4 straight shutouts and 9 shutouts in the last 10 games.

There are caveats to the "Messiah Turnaround."  The vast majority of the 10 game winning streak came against teams from the MAC Commonwealth, which hasn't exactly been know as the pinnacle of competitiveness in DIII.  Moreover, although its victory over Calvin was impressive, all three of its goals came after a two hour weather delay that stopped the game in the 39th minute, which makes it a tough match to use as a measuring stick.

The biggest caveat to Messiah being hot is that Tufts is even hotter.  They are on a 18 game unbeaten streak.  Their last loss was to Williams in the second game of the season.  They rolled through the NESCAC and won the conference tournament.  If there's any indication of a slight wobble in their step, it's that they've fallen into a pattern of waiting for late game heroics to pull out wins.  Other than the Penn State Harrisburg game, which was a gimme, they beat Brandeis in the 102nd minute, they beat Conn on a blocked clearance from the GK into the net in the 82nd minute, they beat Middlebury on a goal in the 97th minute to complete a 3 goal comeback after being down 2-0, and they beat Bates with a PK off a handball in the 76th minute.  Sometimes a team can be so confident that they will pull it out in the end that they can become too comfortable and too patient, and that can bite them against a team that is urgent from the outset.

3.  These two schools don't appear to recruit in the same pools

It's no surprise that you don't see a ton of overlap between these two rosters in terms of geography, schools, or club teams.

There is at least one pair of high school teammates in the bunch, though, as Henry Perkins of Tufts and Harrison Keator of Messiah appeared to overlap at Northfield Mt Hermon School.

I do have to express my amusement at the bio for Tufts player Will Nicholas, which states that he "surfed for Santa Monica Surf."  Although that is one of the few locations where the "Surf" moniker actually makes sense, Santa Monica Surf was the name of his club soccer team.  I think I mentioned this last season too, but no one seems to have made any effort to fix it.  I would say that it makes him sound cool to the New Englanders, but I don't think many people are going to mistake him for a surfer dude.

4.  Something has to give

Tufts has only allowed 9 goals (0.45/game) all season, but, perhaps even more impressively, they've only allowed 176 shots (8.8/game).

Messiah, by contrast, has taken 401 shots (18.3/game).  Some of that is because they were behind a lot earlier in the season, but it fits their recent pattern

v. Calvin 21
v. Hobart 14
v. Stevenson 19
v. hood 18

The question is whether Messiah can keep that up against Tufts - and maintain its shots on goal percentage of .400 (which is about the same as Tufts') -  while also garnering its impressive number of corners (152 on the season).  That would put Tufts under more pressure than its used to.  Brandeis only managed 7 shots (2 on goal) and 2 corners against Tufts.

[Kuiper]

Rowan, of course, has plenty of players from New Jersey.  In fact, they have so many New Jersey players that I'm sure the preseason ice-breaker is asking each player "What exit?" 

Indeed it seems there are ongoing playful turf battles between north and south Jersey.  And leave it to Kuiper to pick up on a critical point of the Rowan program and the rest of NJAC in my view.  If there is a talent focus within the Garden State the victor might enjoy the NJAC crown. But based simply on numbers expanding the scope from one state to 50 should yield better results on the national stage.  Could be a separate topic I suppose.

They do have one player from Holly Springs, North Carolina.  That kind of surprised me.  Maybe he got off at the wrong exit?

Actually his preferred exit number is 408 on NC I40 East heading to Surf City, NC for surfing and fishing.  When he made his decision to head north we had "the talk."  With one parent from PA and the other from MD and both grads of Lehigh U., we needed to explain New Jersey to him.  Don't get me wrong, I love visiting New Jersey.  It is just...different.

And in a stroke of luck he will be a 3 hour drive away in Lynchburg, VA this weekend heading into a holiday week.  No matter the results this weekend I will be a winner as I am heading there Saturday for the games and bringing him home early for the holiday.

3.  Emory has the better defensive stats over the season, but Rowan is coming into this game on a heater defensively

Emory has only allowed 13 goals (0.68/game) all season, compared with 25 (1.04/game) for Rowan.  In part, that's because Emory has only allowed teams 6.5 shots per game, compared to 10.4 for Rowan.  The corner kick differential is even more stark.  Emory has only conceded 36 corners all season, compared with 110 for Rowan.

On the other hand, Rowan is on a five game shutout streak, not allowing a goal in the three games in the NJAC tournament and the two games in the NCAA tournament.  Four 1-0 wins in a row and a 2-0 defeat of Wesleyan.  Those who watched the latter game and saw some of the earlier games witnessed how dramatic their change has been.  They've always passed the ball well and had nice technique, but they've been fighting tooth and nail down the stretch, winning the 50/50 balls, deflecting chances, and basically out-hustling their opponents.

The turning point for Rowan seemed to be after its 4-3 loss at Camden leaving them 1-2 in the NJAC. In a starting rotation otherwise largely unchanged the GK was changed after that game.  Since that game the Profs were undefeated including the conference tournament and last weekend.  In those 12 games they have conceded only 6 goals and 7 clean sheets.

4.  The health of Evan Schlotterbeck may be the key for Rowan

Schlotterbeck was an All Region and All Conference center back for Muhlenberg before coming to Rowan as a grad student after missing his sophomore year with an injury.  He has played more minutes than any other player on the Rowan roster in 2025, but went out in the last three minutes against Wesleyan with some kind of a knock.  That was only the fourth time all season that he didn't play a full 90 and the other three were during Rowan blowout games.  Rowan's ability to hold off Emory's high-powered attack may hinge on Schlotterbeck being available and at full strength.

Agreed.

I didn't realize I was inadvertently discussing your son!  Congrats to him and his team for their successful season thus far!  Enjoy the game(s) this weekend.

[Kuiper]

It's raining and "cold" (well, 50s) in SoCal, so my thoughts naturally turn to Augsburg and Cortland (which play on Saturday @ 11 am Central in St. Louis).  Here are a few things about this matchup that may be of interest only to me:

1.  This will be the first postseason away games for both teams

Not only did Augsburg and Cortland each host 1st and 2nd round games in their pod, but they also both hosted all the games they played in their conference tournaments.  Augsburg hasn't had an away game in three weeks and Cortland hasn't played an away game in a month.  And flying to an away game is a whole different experience.  I can't find any evidence that Cortland has done it in the last decade. Augsburg's last road trip that I assume involved air travel was in 2023 when it flew to Oregon to play Linfield and George Fox.  So, at the very least it's been awhile for most players.  Moreover, the time change will be a body clock adjustment for the Cortland players.  It's easier to go east to west than the reverse, and going from eastern to central time zones is the easiest transition, but it's not nothing. 

Not saying this will be a deciding factor, but both teams may have been aided in getting this far by playing at home and they lose that advantage in the third round.  We'll see who adapts the best.

2.  The teams are a study in contrasting strengths/styles

Cortland has an elite defense, only conceding 9 goals all season and 0.45/game and shutting out opponents 13 times.  Augsburg also has a pretty good defense, only conceding 15 goals, or 0.68/game and shutting out opponents 14 times.  On balance, however, Cortland has been a little stingier in allowing goals.

Augsburg has scored 58 goals this season, for an average of 2.64/game, although it was helped by three outlier games (9-0 over Linfield, 7-0 over Northwestern-St. Paul, and 6-0 over Concordia-Moorhead).  It's not that Cortland is not good at offense, but it has scored more than 20 fewer goals than Augsburg, although that may be because it played fewer outlier opponents or emptied their bench more in those games.  The most noticeable difference in the offensive stats is that Augsburg has taken about 50 more shots than Cortland and it's shots on goals percentage is .487, compared to .435 for Cortland.

3.  If it comes down to PKs, Augsburg might have the edge

Augsburg is 4-4 on PKs this season, while Cortland is 1-3.  Considering teams usually have their best kicker take the individual PKs during the season, it's not great if your best kicker is only making 1/3 of their PKs, although the sample size is too small to draw any hard conclusions.

[Mr_November]

The Sweet 16 contains a lot of fun matchups we don't see very often (other than the intra-conference tilt), but Messiah @ Tufts (Saturday 11/22 at 11 am EST) is more fun than most.  Here a few things of note that may only be of interest to me:

1.  Any 14'ers heading up to Medford for a little reunion?

Almost 11 years ago to the day, on Nov. 23, 2014, #20 Tufts waltzed into Allentown, PA (cue the Billy Joel song) to take on #1 undefeated Messiah in the Quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament.  53 seconds after kickoff, a Tufts free kick was knocked away by the Messiah defense and Tufts' Jason Kayne blasted through a follow-up shot to the left corner of the net that Messiah goalkeeper Brandon West couldn't get enough of a touch on to keep it out of the back of the net.  Tufts held on to that 1-0 lead to hand Messiah its only loss of the season and end Messiah's quest to win a third national championship in a row.  Tufts went on to beat Ohio Wesleyan 3-0 in the semifinals and Wheaton (IL) 4-2 in the Finals to win its first of what became four national championships.

That was the last time these two storied programs faced each other . . . until now.

And now Tufts (NPI #1 and 16-1-3) is the heavy favorite and Messiah (NPI # 107 and 13-7-2) is the underdog looking to shock the world.

2.  Form matters

Messiah had a brutal start to the season, losing 5 in a row and losing 6 and tying 1 out of the first 10.  In retrospect, that record wasn't quite as bad as it looked considering that of those 7 non-wins, 4 were to NCAA tournament teams (Scranton, Rowan, Dickinson, and Penn State Harrisburg).  Still, it was historically bad for Messiah.  Nevertheless, since those first 10 games, Messiah has gone 10-1-1, including winning its last 10 games.  Its last loss was to Lynchburg away, another NCAA tournament team.  It also demolished Calvin in the second half of its second round game and handed Hobart its first loss of the season, on Hobart's home field, in the first game of the tournament.  In effect, Messiah's NPI ranking of #107 may not be an accurate reflection of their current rich vein of form.

Messiah's form goes beyond wins and losses.  Although it has given up 26 goals this season for a team goals against average of 1.18, only 1 of those goals has come during its 10 game win streak and that was in a 7-1 win over Hood.  It has had 4 straight shutouts and 9 shutouts in the last 10 games.

There are caveats to the "Messiah Turnaround."  The vast majority of the 10 game winning streak came against teams from the MAC Commonwealth, which hasn't exactly been know as the pinnacle of competitiveness in DIII.  Moreover, although its victory over Calvin was impressive, all three of its goals came after a two hour weather delay that stopped the game in the 39th minute, which makes it a tough match to use as a measuring stick.

The biggest caveat to Messiah being hot is that Tufts is even hotter.  They are on a 18 game unbeaten streak.  Their last loss was to Williams in the second game of the season.  They rolled through the NESCAC and won the conference tournament.  If there's any indication of a slight wobble in their step, it's that they've fallen into a pattern of waiting for late game heroics to pull out wins.  Other than the Penn State Harrisburg game, which was a gimme, they beat Brandeis in the 102nd minute, they beat Conn on a blocked clearance from the GK into the net in the 82nd minute, they beat Middlebury on a goal in the 97th minute to complete a 3 goal comeback after being down 2-0, and they beat Bates with a PK off a handball in the 76th minute.  Sometimes a team can be so confident that they will pull it out in the end that they can become too comfortable and too patient, and that can bite them against a team that is urgent from the outset.

3.  These two schools don't appear to recruit in the same pools

It's no surprise that you don't see a ton of overlap between these two rosters in terms of geography, schools, or club teams.

There is at least one pair of high school teammates in the bunch, though, as Henry Perkins of Tufts and Harrison Keator of Messiah appeared to overlap at Northfield Mt Hermon School.

I do have to express my amusement at the bio for Tufts player Will Nicholas, which states that he "surfed for Santa Monica Surf."  Although that is one of the few locations where the "Surf" moniker actually makes sense, Santa Monica Surf was the name of his club soccer team.  I think I mentioned this last season too, but no one seems to have made any effort to fix it.  I would say that it makes him sound cool to the New Englanders, but I don't think many people are going to mistake him for a surfer dude.

4.  Something has to give

Tufts has only allowed 9 goals (0.45/game) all season, but, perhaps even more impressively, they've only allowed 176 shots (8.8/game).

Messiah, by contrast, has taken 401 shots (18.3/game).  Some of that is because they were behind a lot earlier in the season, but it fits their recent pattern

v. Calvin 21
v. Hobart 14
v. Stevenson 19
v. hood 18

The question is whether Messiah can keep that up against Tufts - and maintain its shots on goal percentage of .400 (which is about the same as Tufts') -  while also garnering its impressive number of corners (152 on the season).  That would put Tufts under more pressure than its used to.  Brandeis only managed 7 shots (2 on goal) and 2 corners against Tufts.

Wait, hold up...

*pauses...shivers*

Was a gust of cold wind just passing through? Oh wait, nevermind. It was this post. This post gave me chills.

[camosfan]

like your presentation!

[Kuiper]

Only one more day until the Sweet 16, but three more games to preview.  Here are some aspects of the Williams @ St. Olaf game (Saturday 11/22 at 11 am central) that may only be of interest to me:

1.  Did two teams that headed into the NCAA tournament on mini-tailspins turn it around?

If you were picking a NESCAC team to flame out in the NCAA tournament, you wouldn't have been blamed for going with Williams.  They only won 1 game in their last 5 games of the regular season, beating Keene State (5-1), tying Western Connecticut (3-3), and losing to Wesleyan (0-1), Conn College (0-1), and Middlebury (0-3).  Then, the Ephs were sent packing in the first round of the NESCAC tournament by Conn again (2-1).

St. Olaf's late season performance didn't dip as much as Williams, but there were signs of problems.  It conceded two goals to Augsburg in its last conference game of the regular season and it looked like it was heading for its first conference loss before scoring goals in the 87th and 89th minutes to salvage a tie.  Although it managed to win the semifinals of the conference tournament against Saint Johns fairly comfortably, it unraveled spectacularly in the MIAC championship to Macalester, losing 4-1 on its home field.  Perhaps as evidence that things were growing tense in Northfield, Head Coach Justin Oliver went on a tirade on X about the pod and his first round opponent (Wisconsin-Superior (NPI #75), which had beaten St. Olaf 3-2 for its only regular season loss)

Both teams obviously won the first two games in the NCAA tournament to earn a spot in the Sweet 16, including St. Olaf dispatching Superior 3-0 and beat Luther 1-0, and Williams taking care of business against overmatched La Roche and beating Scranton while scoring only the 2nd goal against them all season and the only time Scranton has conceded two goals this year.  Still, with St. Olaf having trouble with the two teams ranked near them in the NPI (Ausburg and Macalester) and Williams faltering against three teams ranked above them in the NPI (Conn, Wesleyan, and Middlebury), this may be a better test of whether they have truly turned it around than the games against lower ranked opponents in the first two rounds.

2. Can they get over the hump?

This match-up is interesting in the sense that while both schools have gotten to the championship game in recent years (St. Olaf winning in 2023 and Williams losing in the finals in 2022), those have thus far been one-offs.  The best they have done in recent years, both before and after those peak years, was get to the Sweet 16 before losing.  Williams lost in the Sweet 16 to W&L last season and didn't even qualify in 2023, while St. Olaf lost in the Sweet 16 to North Park in 2021, lost in the Sweet 16 to Gustavus Adolphus in 2022, and lost in the second round to Wisconsin-Superior in 2024 (hence Coach Oliver's tirade). The Sweet 16 seems to be the gatekeeper that filters out the teams that can beat schools ranked below them and those that can go toe-to-toe with anyone.

3.  Contrasts

There are a number of contrasts in their stats

St. Olaf has scored 66 goals (2.87/game) with 68 assist, while Williams has scored 38 (2.11/game) with 31 assists.

St. Olaf had 174 corner kicks this season, while Williams had 76.

Williams has limited opponents to a shots on goal percentage of 0.387, while St. Olaf has allowed a shots on goal percentage of 0.425.

Williams has committed 250 fouls and been shown 28 yellow cards, while St. Olaf has committed 183 fouls and received 17 yellow cards.

[Kuiper]

On Sweet 16 eve, the time for previews is running short.  Since the Conn College v. Bowdoin game (@ Tufts on Saturday 11/22 at 1:30 pm EST) is a pretty familiar matchup for most fans, I'll keep it short.  Here are a few things about it, though, the may be of interest only to me.

1.  A game between teams from the same conference in the Sweet 16 is by no means unprecedented.

It's not even unprecedented between NESCAC teams.  The other way to look at it is that NESCAC is the only conference guaranteed to have a team in the Elite 8, just like the UAA was the only conference to be guaranteed to have a representative in the Sweet 16 because of the Wash. U. - Chicago 2nd round game.

I tend to think this will happen more in the future because of the growth in the strength and number of programs in the Midwest and upper Midwest and in the Southeast.  Unless someone decides to fund flights even more than they do now, strong geographic regions are going to end up with these kinds of matchups in the 2nd and 3rd rounds of the tournament.

Here are a few examples from the recent past:

Wisconsin Eau-Claire v. Wisconsin-Platteville (2024)
St. Olaf v. Gustavus Adolphus (2022)
Tufts v. Amherst (2018)
Ramapo v. Montclair State (2018)
Kenyon v. Ohio Wesleyan (2014)

2.  If NPI rankings mean anything (and they mean everything according to the NCAA selection criteria), Bowdoin and Conn had easy routes to get here

Conn beat Babson, a strong program that had a subpar year, on two PKs.  Babson was ranked #63 in the NPI and that seemed pretty accurate for a team that only won one of its last five regular season games and was beaten by a pretty weak Emerson team during that stretch.  It won the NEWMAC AQ by beating Coast Guard and WPI, two teams that only barely finished above .500 and were 126 and 127, respectively in the NPI.

Bowdoin beat UMass Boston, which had a good year, but it only won 3-2 after letting UMass Boston score in the 86th minute to make the last few minutes nervy.  UMass Boston was only ranked #58 in the NPI, in large part because of the weak competition in the Little East.  It did well in beating Roger Williams in the first round, but that was another strong team from an even weaker conference.

None of that takes anything away from Conn or Bowdoin, but other than Hardin-Simmons, those were the two lowest ranked opponents of the teams that won to reach the Sweet 16.

[Kuiper]

Last but not least in the previews of the Sweet 16 is Wheaton (MA) v. Macalester @ St. Olaf (Saturday 11/22 at 1:30 PM Central).  Here are a few facts that may only be of interest to me:

1.  Macalester should feel right at home.

Northfield is about 43 miles from Macalester's campus in Minneapolis, so it should be easy for friends and classmates to attend.  Moreover, not only did Macalester just crush St. Olaf 4-1 in the MIAC championship game on this field, but this is the third time it has played on St. Olaf's field this season and the fifth time in the last three years.

Wheaton has to fly to Minnesota and I can't find any evidence that it has played a game far enough to fly to in at least the last 6 years.  In most years, it doesn't even travel to play a team outside of Massachusetts or an adjacent state. I think its longest road trip this year was a 3 hour bus ride to Schenectady to play Union.  So, this will be different for them.  That can be exciting or it can be tiring and a challenge.

2.  Unstoppable force v. immoveable object or stoppable force v. moveable object?

In its last 10 games, Macalester has scored 33 goals and has scored at least 2 goals every game.  They haven't just been feasting on the weaklings either.  They thrashed #3 St. Olaf 4-1 in the MIAC championship game and beat #11 Wisconsin-Eau Claire in the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament 2-1.

On the other hand, Macalester has had trouble keeping teams off the board, only shutting out one team in the last 10 games and allowing 10 goals during this period.

Wheaton has had 7 shutouts in the last 10 games, only conceding 3 goals during that stretch.  That includes shutting out Babson and Middlebury.

Wheaton has done better offensively than Macalester has defensively, but it has been held to 1 or fewer goals five times over the last 10 games, including a 1-0 loss to WPI in the NEWMAC championship game.  It also has had weirdly high 9 PK goals (in 12 tries) in its overall goal tally, but only 1 of those came in the last 10 games.

The key to this game might be which team can step up the weaker side of its game.

3.  If there are goals, there's a good chance they will be assisted

There are only 32 players in the country that have 10 or more assists and 3 of those players will be playing in this game.  Macalester's Kasdan Blattman has 12 assists, which is tied for 4th in the country, and Ondieki Maina has 10 assists.  Wheaton's Aidan Doyle has 10 assists as well.  Only 2 other players on teams in the Sweet 16 are members of this exclusive double-digit club (Ryan Bechtel of St. Olaf with 12 and Josh Grand of Emory with 10).