Last evening, two of the top four seeds in the quarterfinal round of the Big Ten women’s lacrosse tournament lost.
Rutgers, a team which came into last evening’s game at Maryland with a sub-.500 record, came away with a 9-8 win. And a quality Michigan team, which may be having its best season in program history, were repelled by Johns Hopkins 10-9 in overtime.
Now, today, the first AQ for the 2024 Division I tournament will be determined when Boston College meets Syracuse in Charlotte, N.C. There will be 14 more automatic selections for conference champions in tournament play this week, and there will be another 14 at-large bids.
We’re pretty sure that the lion’s share of at-large bids will be taken by three conferences: the Big Ten, the ACC, and the Ivy League.
But how will this week’s losses, on the part of some of the sides we expected to do well this season, affect the bracket? I still think that there will be some unexpected teams on the bubble, including North Carolina, an improved Brown side, the Naval Academy, and Florida if it doesn’t win the American.
We’ll keep tabs on the conference tournaments and we’re likely going to have a wild Final Third on Instagram Live this weekend.