11:20 p.m.: Creighton’s soccer team meets Monday afternoon to learn its fate when the NCAA announces pairings and seedings for its 48-team soccer tournament.
If I were a betting man, I’d say the Bluejays will head home disappointed. I don’t see how a 7-4-5 record will be deemed good enough to land an at-large bid. But if there is anything we’ve learned in recent seasons about the decisions of NCAA committees in just about every sport, it’s never try to out-guess the guys handing out the coveted at-large berths.
Creighton would have had no chance whatsoever had Evansville won the Missouri Valley Conference tournament championship Sunday, but the Purple Aces fell to Drake 2-1 in the title game. The Bulldogs earned the automatic berth, leaving Creighton and regular-season champion Missouri State as contenders should the committee decide to award an at-large berth to another Valley team.
Creighton was 35th in last week’s NCAA RPI; the Bears were 37th. The Bluejays lost to a Drake team with an RPI of 27 in the tournament semifinals, while Missouri State was beaten by an Evansville team ranked 77th.
The impact of those results could be interesting. If the two teams are within 10 spots of each other in the adjusted RPI used by the committee, then the head-to-head meetings between Creighton and Missouri State would come into play. The Bears would have the advantage, as they beat Creighton in Omaha and tied the Bluejays in Springfield.
But if the combination of the two semifinal results would leave Creighton with more than a 10-spot advantage on the Bears, then the Bluejays might have an edge on Missouri State.
The big key is whether the committee will award an at-large spot to a Valley team. The conference did stand fifth in the league RPIs before this weekend’s action, which could bode well for the league getting more than one team into the tournament.
Creighton also is banking on the committee being impressed with its Oct. 31 win over UCLA, which was ranked No. 2 in the RPI when it lost 1-0 in Omaha and was No. 5 last week.
Will all that be enough to get the Bluejays an 18th straight trip to the NCAA tournament? The fact that Creighton didn’t take care of business during the season has left Monday’s decision out of the Bluejays’ hands. And if things don’t work out in their favor, the Bluejays will have no one to blame but themselves.
--Steven Pivovar
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