NCAA Division I Bracket Is Out: Northwestern Top Seed, Penn State Left Out, Yale Get UMass

The bracket’s out, and it’s thrown up exactly the kind of first-round ties that make this tournament worth staying up for.

Northwestern are the No. 1 seed. No surprise there. The Wildcats have just won the Big Ten for a second straight year, beating Maryland 3-0 in the final, and they’re the defending national champions. They open against the winner of Wednesday’s opening-round game between Saint Joseph’s and Vermont.

Maryland are No. 2, Harvard No. 3, UConn No. 4. Then Princeton at five, Yale at six, Iowa at seven and North Carolina at eight. This is the first year the committee has seeded the top eight teams, not just the top four, and it shows in the draw. There isn’t a soft landing anywhere.

Yale’s reward for a first Ivy League title is a first-round tie against UMass on Friday at Harvard’s Berylson Field. The Bulldogs are in the NCAA tournament for only the second time in school history, 14-3, and they’ve already beaten Harvard and Princeton in three days. UMass finished 18-2 without a regulation loss all season. That’s a horrible draw for both of them, and a brilliant one for anyone watching.

The other first-round ties are just as sharp. Princeton, the Ivy runners-up, get Syracuse. Harvard, the No. 3 seed, get Old Dominion, fresh off ending UConn’s 12-match winning streak in the Big East final. UConn themselves face Lafayette. Iowa take on Duke. North Carolina, the lowest seed, play Miami of Ohio.

The Penn State call

The story of the selection show isn’t who got in. It’s who didn’t.

Penn State finished 12-6, ranked No. 12 in the RPI, and beat the No. 1 team in the country and two-time reigning national champions in late October. They still missed out, for a fourth straight season. They were the first team mentioned on the selection show when the committee talked through the sides that didn’t make it.

The margins were brutal. Wake Forest finished with an RPI of 0.605, North Carolina 0.604, Penn State 0.603, Massachusetts 0.601. Penn State had the second-highest RPI of any team left out. The committee’s line was that three and four seeds winning their conference tournaments, Old Dominion chief among them, squeezed the bubble until there was nothing left.

Old Dominion had no at-large path at all. They had to win the Big East, and they did, beating UConn 2-1. That one result probably cost Penn State their place. That’s the cruelty of this system, and it’s also what makes conference finals week matter so much.

How the week works

Two opening-round games on Wednesday 11 November: Fairfield against Wagner at midnight PKT, then Saint Joseph’s against Vermont at 1:00am PKT on Thursday. The winners go straight into the first round on Friday.

Friday’s first round, all times PKT: Maryland against the Fairfield or Wagner winner at 10:00pm, UConn against Lafayette at 10:00pm, Harvard against Old Dominion at 10:00pm, Northwestern against the Saint Joseph’s or Vermont winner at 11:00pm, then Iowa against Duke, Princeton against Syracuse and Yale against UMass all at 12:30am on Saturday, with North Carolina against Miami at 1:30am.

The second round is Sunday 15 November. The semifinals are Friday 20 November and the final is Sunday 22 November, both at Trager Stadium in Louisville. The early rounds stream on ESPN+, the semis and final are on ESPNU.

For our money, Northwestern are still the team to beat. They’ve won the Big Ten, they’ve got the top seed, and they’ve been here before. But Yale against UMass is the tie of the first round, and Harvard against Old Dominion has upset written all over it. Old Dominion have already ended one long winning streak this week. Don’t bet against them ending another.