2026 NCAA Tournament

[Kuiper]

The bracket is out

[Kuiper]

The bracket is out

Group of Death candidates.  Others?

Tufts-Penn State Abington
Babson - SUNY Oneonta

Montclair State - Southern Va.
Cortland - Christopher Newport

[SierraFD3soccer]

So this is just normal, potential Nor'easter this weekend in NY/NE area as well as Great Lakes. Bring your cold weather gear??

https://nypost.com/2026/11/09/us-news/potential-noreaster-could-usher-in-seasons-first-snow-for-millions-as-cold-air-sweeps-across-east/

[LibbyMoore]

So this is just normal, potential Nor'easter this weekend in NY/NE area as well as Great Lakes. Bring your cold weather gear??

https://nypost.com/2026/11/09/us-news/potential-noreaster-could-usher-in-seasons-first-snow-for-millions-as-cold-air-sweeps-across-east/

BRRRRR is St. Lawrence hosting? Or Plattsburgh? Those are probably the northernmost schools, right? It will be chilly at Hamilton and Middlebury too!

[Hopkins92]

The bracket is out

Group of Death candidates.  Others?

Tufts-Penn State Abington
Babson - SUNY Oneonta

Montclair State - Southern Va.
Cortland - Christopher Newport

I said in the other thread:

Amherst v. Stevens
Messiah v. Vassar

[kevdog]

So this is just normal, potential Nor'easter this weekend in NY/NE area as well as Great Lakes. Bring your cold weather gear??

https://nypost.com/2026/11/09/us-news/potential-noreaster-could-usher-in-seasons-first-snow-for-millions-as-cold-air-sweeps-across-east/

BRRRRR is St. Lawrence hosting? Or Plattsburgh? Those are probably the northernmost schools, right? It will be chilly at Hamilton and Middlebury too!

Neither team is hosting. SLU has a 7 hour road trip to Brunswick, Maine

[Kuiper]

First Preview of games involving Region X teams:

RV/#47 NPI Colorado College v. #23/#24 NPI Washington & Lee @ Rowan on Saturday, 11/14 at 2:30 pm eastern

The last time these two teams faced each other was in the 4th round of the NCAA tournament in 2023 @ Tufts, when W&L won in PKs 5-4.

Colorado College is the SCAC champion, having gone undefeated in conference play and beating LeTourneau in the SCAC finals 1-0.  I don't think this Colorado College team is as strong as its 2023 squad, but a few contributors from that game remain, including Jack Hilliard, Zeke Lubin, and Wyatt Linggi.  There are also a few players who watched from the bench including Dylan Rich, Dylan Stapley, Alex Wolter, and Spencer Besselaar, (plus Alex Meyerhoff's little brother Rocco might have been watching from the stands).

It has a 15-2-2 overall record, but only an NPI rank of 47, which is in large part because the SCAC is not particularly strong, especially after Trinity and Southwestern departed.  The second highest SCAC team in the NPI is Concordia, which is #136 and the conference has 5 teams ranked in the 300s. Coupled with a victory over Whitworth, which they probably thought would be a decent Region X opponent after finishing 4th in the NWC last season, the NPI formula dropped Colorado College's full complement of 6 "bad wins" from its NPI score and it still would have come up short without the AQ.  Its best results were a 2-1 win at Redlands, which faded at the end of the season and finished #57 and a tie in Waukesha, Wisconsin against Wisconsin-Eau Claire, which finished #61. It also played #20 Saint John's, losing 2-0 in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Notwithstanding Colorado College's middling strength of schedule, its only bad loss was 3-1 to Cal Lutheran on its opening trip to SoCal on 9/11 on a weekend that was the high point for Cal Lu, which also tied Emory 1-1 on the same weekend.

Colorado College's engine on offense is Teddy Opler, who has 13 goals and 10 assists, and Jack Hilliard, who has 8 goals and 6 assists.  Freshman F Arlo Sollinger has been a revelation, scoring 7 goals and 7 assists.  Spencer Besselaar is solid in goal, but he and current backup Alex Wolter have alternated over their college careers depending on health and form and I think both are good GKs who have benefitted from strong defenses over their years.

Washington & Lee is a very different team from 2023 when it faced Colorado College, as that was the last season Mike Singleton and his staff manned the helm for the Generals.  It is still strong, though, finishing 12-3-3 this season before falling to Lynchburg in the ODAC semifinals.  The ODAC is better than the SCAC, especially at the top with Lynchburg at #12 and a group of decent opponents in the 70s and 80s, but it does have its share of weaker opponents at the bottom of the conference.  W&L, though, is well-positioned geographically to supplement its schedule with quality opponents and it beat fellow NCAA qualifiers like Johns Hopkins and Christopher Newport in non-conference play, as well as CCS AQ Covenant.

Rowan Sellers is the top scorer, with 10 goals, and Matthew Jenkins leads in assists with 6.  It hasn't scored nearly as many goals as Colorado College (36 v. 52), though, which has been a year-long struggle for the team against better opponents, but it has conceded fewer of them (14 v. 18) and I think its GK, Miles Furman, is a commanding presence along with Miles' brother Spencer and Anthony Careccia, who both offer senior experience in central defense.  W&L's loss to Lynchburg in the ODAC tournament, when it allowed two goals in the last six minutes to give Lynchburg the lead, had to sting and likely will be a point of emphasis coming into the tourney.

W&L has a few players remaining from its 2023 game against Colorado College as well, with Spencer Furman starting and playing the full 110 minutes, while Nick Apostolu getting a cameo off the bench.  Anthony Careccia, Aaron Cordova, Taha Kaba, Matthew Jenkins, Trian Kechagias, Nati Seife, and Jack Travis watched from the bench.

With the longer travel, different time zones, and weaker overall resume, it would be an upset for Colorado College to win this game.  Nevertheless, Colorado College is on an 11 game unbeaten streak, while W&L hasn't been quite as dominant down the stretch, going winless for a four game stretch before beating ODAC cellar dwellers Guilford and Averett and narrowly defeating Randolph Macon in the ODAC quarterfinals.

[Ryan Coleman]

Hey friends!

Did you know we're doing a bracket challenge for the men's and women's tournaments this year?

Registration remains free (we are committed to making this service always free, albeit ad-supported).

Men's Bracket: https://d3challenge.com/challenges/28a43ef3-dc83-11f1-8f0b-bc24116fe3db

Women's Bracket: https://d3challenge.com/challenges/5a73a388-dc83-11f1-8f0b-bc24116fe3db

Also new this year... we are testing an iOS app. Hopefully soon we can get an Android app set up and released.  You can test run the app via Apple's TestFlight platform. Currently have build 16 out for testing and there are a bunch of new features in the app and fixed in the latest build. If you can help with this testing process it will go a long way to getting a final product out on the market.

For rounds 3 and beyond we may do a head-to-head challenge for soccer games to help garner more interest in the app and the process but that will be dependent on a few back-end updates with score tracking and reporting that I will work on tomorrow.

TestFlight the app today on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS (Apple Silicon only).

Thank you!
--Ryan Coleman
d3photo

[Kuiper]

More Region X previews

#38 (NPI) Trinity v. #74 (NPI) La Verne, Saturday, 11/14, at 5:30 pm at Southwestern

This is the unusual case of a rematch between a SAA and SCIAC team.  Trinity and La Verne played each other back on 9/11 and tied 1-1.  Trinity had the better of possession in what was otherwise a pretty even game, but La Verne could have won it but for a PK that hit the post in the second half.  Trinity had a man advantage starting in the 77th minute when Aiden Tapia-Palacios was shown a red card for grabbing a Trinity player's neck, but La Verne stayed compact and held on.

Trinity is a very different team than it was against La Verne in the regular season. First, Gustav Moberg, who delivered the assist on Trinity's goal, hasn't played since Oct. 18 against Oglethorpe.  Second, Ethan Cowdrey, Trinity's 6'7" center back, who started and played a half that game, played 1 minute in the Millsaps game on November 1 and missed both games in the SCAC tournament.  I'm not sure the defense isn't better against a team like La Verne in the run of play with a quicker defender out there, but Cowdrey offers a dimension on corners and set plays that is valuable.  They will miss him if he isn't available.  Third, that was the last game Max Salinas has played for Trinity this season.  They really could use his creativity in the middle of the park.  Finally, Eduardo Parra, Trinity's leading scorer with 11 goals, didn't even get off the bench against La Verne that game.  He scored his first goal the next game against Texas A&M San Antonio and he has been on fire to end the season, scoring goals in 6 of the last 8 games.  He offers more than Joey Perryman, the starter the last La Verne game, does, and is the kind of player who can challenge La Verne's defense.

La Verne also has dealt with injuries, but they seem to be rounding back to health at the right time.  Hernan Sevilla, a defender who started and played 86 minutes the last game, missed the the last week of September and the whole month of October, but he came back for the SCIAC tournament, logging 34 and 27 minutes in the last two games.  His twin brother Uli Sevilla, however, who also started and played most of the game v. Trinity, continues to be out.  On the flip side, second leading scorer and playmaker Juan Manzano (5g/7a), who missed the Texas trip altogether and a chunk of October, came back and had a goal and an assist v. CMS in the SCIAC tournament.  The Colombian player will be a handful for the Trinity defense. Forward Josiah Barber, a DI transfer from UC Santa Barbara who has 4g/2a this season, also missed the Texas trip and came back in mid-October after being out a month.  Since he returned and got his fitness back, he has come alive, scoring in 3 of the last 5 games, including opening the scoring against CMS in the SCIAC tournament. Getting him, Manzano, and Hernan Sevilla back for the tournament was an underrated part of their success.

Trinity should be heavily favored given travel and coming into the game with a 16 game unbeaten streak that started after they returned from their SoCal washout trip and tied La Verne.  One advantage La Verne has in addition to being familiar with Trinity is that they played at Southwestern two days after playing at Trinity, so they are familiar with Southwestern's field and locker room setup.  Those little things can take the edge off the nerves of being in the NCAA tournament for the first time.

[Kuiper]

Another in my series of previews of games involving Region X teams

#13/#18 (NPI) Southwestern v. #184 (NPI) Hardin-Simmons at Southwestern on Saturday 11/14 at 3 pm central

It is curious that this is the game in the Texas pod that does not involve a re-match.  Not only did Southwestern and Hardin-Simmons not play each other this season in a non-conference game, but they haven't played each other since 2023.  Before that, they played each other quite often, facing each other 18 times between 2000 and 2023.  Part of that is Southwestern's move to the SAA, which left them with more non-conference games to schedule, but all the SCAC teams as potential opponents along with hosting teams like Lynchburg and La Verne this season.  Hardin-Simmons also has fewer non-conference slots because of the ASC moving this season to a double round robin.

The teams do have some common opponents.  Hardin-Simmons lost to Texas Lutheran 5-1 on 9/18, lost to Trinity 4-0 on 9/20, and beat East Texas Baptist 3-1 on 10/8, 2-1 on 10/15, and 4-1 on 11/8, while Southwestern lost to East Texas Baptist 3-1 on 9/4, beat Texas Lutheran 2-0 on 9/11 and tied Trinity 0-0 on 10/6.  These are wildly different outcomes depending upon opponent, but I would chalk it up to timing.  Hardin-Simmons started out slow (when it was crushed by Texas Lutheran and Trinity) and finished strong (when it beat ETBU) and East Texas Baptist started out strong in September (when it beat Southwestern) and finished poorly in October/November (when it lost to H-S three times).

Hardin-Simmons is coming in hot, having gone unbeaten in 7 games with 5 wins in a row, but all of those games have been in-conference and the ASC is not particularly strong.  Southwestern had gone 15 games unbeaten before losing on a late goal to Rhodes in the SAA semifinals.  Southwestern once again struggled for lack of offense, offering only 3 shots on goal, including 0 shots of any kind in the first half. 

I expect Southwestern to be motivated as a result of its loss to Rhodes, but it might play into Hardin-Simmons' hands if they are overly aggressive on the offensive front.  Hardin-Simmons has kind of specialized in bunkering and launching counters as part of their mid-season turnaround.  They have given up 8 goals in the last 10 games after giving up 21 goals in the first 8 games of the season.  Against Mary Hardin-Baylor, they only took 6 shots, compared to 28 for UMHB, but scored on a goal by Jaxon Shaffer, who came back from injury right around when Hardin-Simmons started turning its season around.  He scored all 6 of his goals in those last 10 games, often providing a speedy outlet on the right wing for the counter attacks.

One interesting note is that H-S rotates its goalkeepers, with Joel McPherson typically starting and Joaquin Sanchez coming on in the second half.  I think more schools would be better served by doing that, but in this case when Sanchez comes on it will be interesting to see if Southwestern adjusts its offensive strategy at all.  Defender Cooper Pero is already Southwestern's second leading scorer with 6 goals, but at 6'4" against 5'8" Sanchez, the mismatch is obvious on set plays.  H-S doesn't have a lot of height on the back line to protect Sanchez either, with MF Noah Halpin the tallest regular starter at 6'3", but I'm not sure he can physically stay with Pero.  They have some big defenders on the bench, but they are freshmen.