May 5, 2008

by Matt DaSilva, Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff

Who needs the Big East when you've got the Great West?

Notre Dame men's lacrosse coach Kevin Corrigan, an avid proponent of a Big East men's lacrosse conference, might want to reconsider his position after three - count 'em, three - Great Western Lacrosse League teams qualified for the 2008 NCAA Division I tournament.

The Irish, who secured the GWLL title and automatic bid Sunday with a stifling, 9-2 victory over Ohio State in Birmingham, Mich., are joined by the Buckeyes and Denver, who were at-large selections in the 16-team field. Only the ACC (four) boasts more postseason representatives.

What's more, when No. 6-seeded Notre Dame hosts Patriot League champion Colgate at noon Sunday (ESPNU), it will mark the first NCAA Division I tournament game played away from the East Coast.

The Irish were also seeded in 2001 and advanced to the national semifinals, but first-round games were played as neural-site doubleheaders at the time. They've won 18 straight games at Alumni Field in South Bend, Ind.

"Playing at home is terrific for us, particularly because this is exam week, and it always has been," Corrigan said Monday. "With travel, exams and everything else, it means one less thing to worry about."

A banner year in the GWLL notwithstanding, Corrigan has not changed his stance on a Big East conference, a development that has gained steam with Syracuse reconsidering its previous ad hoc position.

"Maybe if Georgetown had played a Big East conference schedule, they would've gotten in. And if Denver didn't play us, would they have gotten in? There's too much speculation there to answer that question," Corrigan said. "Our school is a Big East school, and if the Big East is going to have lacrosse, we want to be a part of it."

A look at the history of West region teams in the NCAA tournament:

In 1987, the NCAA expanded its Division I men's lacrosse tournament to 12 teams, with the requirement of at least one team from the West region. Michigan State became the first non-East Coast team to qualify for an NCAA tournament that year.

In 1995, Notre Dame became the first team to turn that token berth into a tournament victory, upsetting fifth-seeded Duke, 12-10, in a first-round game. The Irish qualified for the NCAA tournament 10 times in 12 years (1990-2001).

In 2001, the Irish rode the West region's first-ever seeded entry to an historic final four, trumping Bucknell in a first-round game at UMBC and, gasp, Johns Hopkins in an NCAA quarterfinal in College Park, Md. They lost to Syracuse in the NCAA semifinals at Rutgers, but the bar had been raised.

In 2003 and 2004, as the NCAA tournament expanded to 16 teams, Ohio State, led by Joe Breschi, jumped into the mix.

In 2006, Notre Dame returned to the NCAA tournament as the Great Western Lacrosse League's champion, but with a cohort. Denver joined the race as an at-large entry, and for the first time in NCAA history, two West region teams qualified. The numbers belied traditional biases. It wreaked havoc on the seeds.

(The NCAA requires teams more than 300 miles apart to fly, but permits just two flights for eight first-round games. The Irish and Pioneers had to fly somewhere, whereas presumptive No. 16 seed Providence could drive to Hofstra. Logistics had top-seeded Virginia hosting Notre Dame in the first round, its most difficult obstacle to an eventual national championship. After all, who could have foreseen two Great Western teams in the tournament?)

Now, three GWLL teams have qualified for the NCAA tournament for the first time in the conference's 15-year history. No. 6-seeded Notre Dame hosts Colgate, while unseeded Denver and Ohio State play first-round games at No. 7 Maryland and No. 8 Cornell, respectively.

When it became evident that as many as three GWLL teams could qualify for the 16-team field, and considering a precedent of precluding conference rivals from meeting in the first round, the NCAA waived its two-flight limit to allow the Division I men's lacrosse committee to schedule Notre Dame, Ohio State and Denver appropriately.

The committee foresaw the need to apply for a waiver in recent weeks as the Irish, Buckeyes and Pioneers rose above the RPI fray.

"You certainly don't want to not put a team in because of a flight limitation...They waived that rule and allowed for one more flight in the event that either a third team from that conference got in, or that two teams from that conference got in, but there was also a need for a third flight," said Hofstra athletic director and committee member Jack Hayes. "I don't know in the past if that many teams outside the area were under consideration. It's the first time I'm aware of that the rule was modified to allow a third flight."

More NCAA tournament notes:

* While Georgetown's exclusion from the 16-team field might have come as a surprise to some, judging by sheer numbers, it wasn't even close. According to LaxPower's formula compiling RPI, strength of schedule and quality win factors, five other teams omitted had better standing than the Hoyas.

* Colgate's upset of then No.2-ranked Syracuse on Saturday had significant RPI ramifications. "It's challenging," Hayes said of selecting at-large qualifiers. "Colgate's win had an impact throughout the whole thing. Anybody who had a win over Colgate, their RPI jumps significantly on the very last day. When you've played a team, first of all, but beaten a team that on the last day of the season beats the No. 2 team in the country, everybody's RPI there improves."

* More from Hayes: "I think that the numbers clearly showed who the teams should be. You can get into subjectivity on who should be seeded where and what are the eight first-round match-ups that make sense. But I think the numbers guided the process and enabled us to get to the point where all the teams that should be in are in, and allowed us to hone in on the schools we needed to take a good look at."

* Just two teams, champions Cornell (Ivy League) and Loyola (ECAC), qualified from the nation's lone remaining conferences not to sanction a conference tournament. According to LaxPower, Navy's Patriot League semifinal against Colgate bumped Lehigh from the No. 10 slot in its strength of schedule index, fortifying the Midshipmen for inclusion. A team's strength of schedule is determined by the top 10 ranked opponents it plays over the course of a season.

Contact Matt DaSilva at mdasilva@uslacrosse.org.