NCAA Division III Bracket: 28 Teams, Tufts Get a Bye, First Round Wednesday
Twenty-eight teams, twelve games on Wednesday, and four sides who get to watch it all from the sofa.
The Division III bracket came out on Sunday night, and the headline is the same as it has been all season: Tufts. The Jumbos are 18-0, NESCAC champions for a fourth time after beating Middlebury 2-0 in the final, and they’re the defending national champions. They’ve got a first-round bye, and they’ll host a regional this weekend. Nobody in this field will want to go to Medford.
Middlebury get a bye too, despite losing that NESCAC final. So do Christopher Newport and Bowdoin. Bowdoin host a regional for the first time since 2015, which tells you how long they’ve waited for a draw like this.
Everyone else plays on Wednesday 11 November, and the schedule is a long night for anyone following from Pakistan. Rowan against Rhodes starts it at 11:00pm PKT. Then Babson against Union and Salisbury against Penn State Harrisburg at 1:00am on Thursday, followed by Hamilton against Southern Maine, Johns Hopkins against Denison, Wesleyan against SUNY Geneseo, York against Washington and Lee, Ursinus against Stevens and Stevenson against Colby-Sawyer all at 2:00am. Swarthmore against Scranton, Amherst against Endicott and Williams against Bridgewater State round it off at 4:00am.
Twelve winners, four bye teams, four regionals on Saturday. The second round is 14 November, the quarterfinals on Sunday 15 November at 11:00pm PKT, and then it’s off to Geneva, New York, for the semifinals on Friday 20 November and the final on Sunday 22 November at McCooey Field, William Smith College.
The ties that jump out
Rowan against Rhodes is the one to watch first. Rowan won their sixth straight NJAC title by beating TCNJ 2-1, and they’re at home. Rhodes won their conference championship 1-0 in overtime against Sewanee on Sunday, and now they’ve got three days to get to New Jersey. The winner goes to Bowdoin for the second round on Saturday.
Penn State Harrisburg against Salisbury is the other one with a story. Harrisburg have just won their first United East title, beating St Mary’s in a shootout. Salisbury are old hands at this. If Harrisburg win, it’s the kind of result that changes a programme.
And then there’s Colby-Sawyer. First GNAC title in school history, 5-2 against Simmons on Saturday, and their reward is a trip to Stevenson on Wednesday night. That’s how this tournament works. You win your league, you get a Wednesday night in Maryland.
The ten at-large teams tell their own story: Amherst, Bowdoin, Christopher Newport, Hamilton, Middlebury, Stevenson, Swarthmore, Ursinus, Wesleyan and Williams. Eighteen conferences sent their champions. That’s the whole point of Division III. You earn your way in by winning something, or you earn it by being too good to leave out.
For our money, it’s Tufts’ title to lose. Eighteen wins, no defeats, and a team that has now won 23 straight games. But Middlebury will have something to say about that, and Bowdoin at home in a regional for the first time in eleven years is exactly the kind of thing that produces an upset. Wednesday night sorts the dreamers from the contenders. Saturday sorts the rest.
