Division II Conference Tournaments: Three Quarter-Final Cards Today, Mercy and Shippensburg Waiting
While Divisions I and III wait for Wednesday, Division II gets going today. Three conferences play their quarter-finals on Tuesday, and the winners will know by tonight whether they’re still alive.
The Northeast-10 has the busiest card. No. 4 Pace host No. 5 Bentley at 3:30pm ET, No. 3 Adelphi host No. 6 American International at 6pm ET, and No. 2 Assumption host No. 7 Southern New Hampshire at 7pm ET. The three winners join top seed Saint Anselm, 13-4 and 8-1 in the conference, in Friday’s semifinals. Saint Anselm and Assumption finished level on 8-1 in conference play, so the top of this league is genuinely tight. The NE10 final is Sunday 15 November.
The PSAC might be the strongest conference in the division. No. 3 East Stroudsburg host No. 6 West Chester at 1pm ET, and No. 4 IUP host No. 5 Bloomsburg at 2pm ET. Waiting in Friday’s semifinals at Shippensburg are the two big guns: No. 1 Shippensburg, 14-2, and No. 2 Kutztown, 17-1. Kutztown’s only defeat all season is the reason this tournament matters so much. They’ve been the best team in the division for two months, but Shippensburg are the hosts and the top seed, and the PSAC final on Sunday is at noon ET.
The South Atlantic Conference plays its quarter-finals tonight too. No. 4 Converse host No. 5 Wingate at 6pm ET and No. 3 Lander host No. 6 Coker at 7pm ET. The winners travel to Newberry for Friday’s semifinals, where top seed Newberry, 15-1 and a perfect 12-0 in the conference, wait for one of them, and No. 2 Belmont Abbey, 12-4, take the other. The SAC final is Sunday at 1pm ET.
The East Coast Conference goes Wednesday
The fourth Division II conference, the East Coast Conference, skips the quarter-finals and goes straight to Wednesday’s semifinals. No. 1 Mercy, 9-7, host No. 4 D’Youville at 1pm ET, and No. 2 Roberts Wesleyan, 10-8, host No. 3 Dominican of New York at 6pm ET. The final is Saturday 14 November.
For viewers in Pakistan, today’s early games start late in the evening: 1pm ET is 11:00pm PKT, 3:30pm ET is 1:30am PKT on Wednesday, and the 7pm ET starts are 5:00am PKT.
All of this feeds into Sunday night’s Division II selection show at 8pm ET, when the eight-team national bracket is revealed: five teams from the Atlantic region and three from the East. The first round is Saturday 21 November.
For our money, the PSAC is the one to watch. Kutztown at 17-1 against a Shippensburg side hosting the semifinals and final. If those two meet on Sunday, it’ll be the best game in Division II all season.
