In case you missed my fireworks last night with Dave McHugh of 'Hoopsvillle' on d3hoops The Boys aren't hosting, so off to Rochester to win the Final Four bid is where we'll be toasting. More on the matchup with home standing Rochester in a couple of days. The Committee who created our bracket like it was a giant trapezoid laid the foundation for this fiasco. There were several permutations that could've had schools outside the magic 500 mile statutory limit. But there was only St. Mary's (whose campus is 538 miles, according to google, from The Otter Creek brewery, and only slightly farther to Pepin) that brought into play 'By-law#31'. The essence of that By-law is that geography trumps ranking and if a team is caused to travel more than 500 miles, it must get flown to the site by the NCAA. I offered to pay for the extra diesel fuel so the St.Mary's bus wouldn't run out on the north side of Rutland, but the bean-counters at the NCAA would have none of it. So pointing out that Whitworth has to fly (Spokane is 2000+ miles from their site, and always gets hosed because they're too far away and can't host a sectional, and also that Mary-Hardon-Baylor has to fly (Texas is 1200 miles to northern Illinois), the NCAA says they have limited resources to pay for a flight from Reagan to Burlington, so The Panther Express has to go on the road. That is The Boys reward for cutting down the nets in Williamstown. And one can see why the NCAA had to rent an extra hose, or two, from the Middlebury F.D. to get The Boys out of Pepin.
This doesn't take into account that the NCAA gets the lion's share of the gate. Which I'd peg at somewhere north of $5000., if it were at Pepin, and ought to cover St. Mary's jet fuel costs. But no, the bureaucracy (I hate bureaucracies) overrode The Committee, and Rochester, probably a 6 or 7 seed if you look at the brackets, gets to host in the round of 16. Fair, it isn't. You may have heard that in d3 there is no seeding, but look at who hosted and you'll see that with the exception of Cabrini or Ramapo, no hosts had more than 3L's on their ledgers. The hosts were all the d3-powerteams, and my thought is that 7 of the 8 top-seeds got to the Sweet Sixteen.
While Midd, the nescac winner goes on the road, Williams stays smugly on Spring Street. But enough of the rant. The positives are that 'The Boys' rely on one of the stingiest 'D's' in the land, have great RB'ing, and they were in that building four seasons ago when we started this run. Add that Rochester's home edge may be dulled because they're on spring break (and when we were last there the place wasn't full or rabid), plus the fact that it's a palestra, which contributes to further nullifying the crowd's impact. Although The Road is the great equalizer, we've handled it, and it's not going to be like being at Williams. So we're not Custer going on the road to The Little Bighorn, or TheLightBrigade wondering about the Valley of Death. I'm pretty sure it's do-able and we'll know before tip whether we're getting the BuffaloState 'Wings' or the St. Mary's 'Sea Turtles' for the main course, so it ought to be fun. From Downtown, where I can just about see the sign for I-81 south that takes us to Salem. Be well. Clubbo.
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