March Madness Hits Salt Lake City

The Utes are on spring break this week, so not much team activity to write about...Howver, March is here and that means NCAA Hoops tournaments...and the madness has certainly spread to the U...

Both the men's and women's basketball teams won both the regular season and Mountain West Conference tournament titles...WOW!

So both teams were happy to find out their tournament sight and opponent.
First, on Sunday, the men's team gathered to watch the selection show on CBS...their name came up early and they will be the #5 seed in the Midwest Regional...they will play the #12 seed University of Arizona on Friday evening (5:00 PM Mountain time) in Miami! If they win, they will face the winner of the Wake Forest-Cleveland State game on Sunday.

The women's team found out their fate this evening...they got a #9 seed and will face #8 Villanova on Sunday (March 22) at 10 AM Mountain Time in Raleigh, North Carolina. The winner will face either #1 Maryland or #16 Dartmouth on Tuesday.

Another Big Soccer Week

Okay, fans of women's soccer, there are some tremendous games being played this week...Be sure to make some time and see some of the world's best female soccer players in action...

First, the U.S. under-20 National Team is in the semi-finals of the World Cup in Chile...they face Germany in a "clash of the titans"! (The other semi-final is Brazil vs. North Korea, another awesome battle).

Thursday
U.S. vs. Germany
Temuco, Chile
3 p.m. MT, ESPNU


Then, the NCAA College Cup takes place this weekend in North Carolina...and all four #1 seeds have made it to the semi-finals...It should be a dramatic weekend...Be sure to watch!

Friday
Stanford vs. Notre Dame
2:30 PM MT, ESPNU, ESPN360
UCLA vs. North Carolina
5:00 PM MT, ESPNU, ESPN360

Sunday
NCAA College Cup Final
12:00 PM MT, ESPN2, ESPN360

NCAA Selections Revealed Today

The Utes won't be going "dancing" this year. We probably fell about 2 or 3 wins short of an at large bid to the NCAA tournament. Many of the teams we played this year will be in the tournament....Wake Forest, Long Beach State, Washington, BYU are definitely in and UNC Greensboro, Georgia and TCU have a shot to be invited.

The tournament brackets will be revealed this evening on ESPNews between 6:00 and 6:30 PM Mountain Time.

The NCAA women' s soccer tournament is a 64-team bracket. Teams are grouped in "pods" of 4 for the first weekend. So there will be 16 hosts beginning this weekend...

This will be the first year that two teams from the same conference won't be matched up against each other until the 3rd round. Hopefully, that will help mix up the matchups a bit.

Check it out this evening...

NCAA Releases RPI

The RPI (Ratings Percentage Index) has become an important, and controversial, statistic for all college soccer teams to follow. It was designed to try to measure how tough of a schedule a team is playing. A simple explanation is that it measures your record, your opponents' record and your opponents' opponents record...(try digesting that once or twice!).

The RPI is one of several criteria used by the NCAA tournament committee to select and seed teams. Other criteria would include head-to-head results, common opponents and a team's last 8 results.

The NCAA women's soccer tournament is a 64-team deal. There are 30 conferences that get automatic bids to the "show". And then the committee selects the other 34 "at-large" bids by using the RPI and the other criteria.

All but 3 conferences select their automatic qualifier by a conference tournament. (The Pac-10, Ivy League and West Coast Conference each give their automatic bid to the regular season champion). So the Mountain West Conference representative will be determined at the MWC tournament in Las Vegas in November.

The RPI is pretty controversial as it is almost impossible to compare over 330 teams that haven't all played each other. And soccer only plays 20 games...so for you "math geeks"...you'll know that 20 is a very small sample size to try to use to compare all of these teams. A sport like basketball (30-35 games) or baseball (60-75 games) will have a much more accurate RPI...Nevertheless it is used.

The NCAA released the first RPI yesterday. Now with only 11-13 games per team...it is even less accurate...but it might give you an idea about how some teams are doing. The Utes are at 109...low do to our sub-500 record at this point. Updates will be released every two weeks or so...

See the current RPI by clicking here.
You can also check out the Wikipedia explanation for RPI and see if that helps!