Men's NCAA Tournament Explanation & Thoughts

The month of May, in College Tennis is virtually 100% post-season play. Conference Tournaments which determine Automatic Qualifiers for the NCAA Tournament, are then followed by the opening three rounds of the 64 draw NCAA tournament. The season then concludes with the final three rounds of NCAA Team play, followed by the Individual NCAA Tennis Championships. The singles consists of 32 total players, eight from each of the four regions, and the doubles is even more select, only 16 total pairs from across the country, again four from each region.

A Conference must have a minimum of seven teams to receive a qualifying bid. There are 29 conferences that receive AQ slots. There are seven bids that are awarded to Independents(schools without conference affiliation, or schools whose conferences have six or fewer members), and finally, six At-Large bids, for a total of 42 schools. The Iowa Conference, with its nine member base, receives an AQ slot. The IIAC will contest its combined IIAC Team Championship/NCAA AQ Tourney this May 6-7th with six teams competing.

The NCAA Committee will meet Sunday to select the 42 Team field. I would suspect that three schools from the Central Region will serve as host schools(8 NCAA Regional sites overall). WashU in St Louis, Kenyon College in Ohio, and University of Chicago are all in line to host as they are all top 10 ranked teams. The NCAA has a rule that places teams in regional sites within 500 miles of their campus. The IIAC Champion would then likely go to either Chicago or St Louis, as Gambier, Ohio is well over 500 miles from the nearest IIAC school.

On Tuesday the NCAA Committee will again convene, this time to select the Individual participants based on the recommendations of the Regional Advisory Committees(RAC). All year long the RACs have been meeting to announce rankings, and now, at the conclusion of this weekend's play they will select the 8 singles players, and 4 doubles pairs from each region.
It is interesting to note that going into the final weekend of play, players from schools in the state of Iowa(not known as a hotbed for junior tennis play) are in line to receive four of the twelve Central Region spots. Grinnell's Juan Carlos Perez-Borga, Dubuque's Nick Garcia, and Luther's Scott Sundstrom have all been ranked within the top eight all season. Grinnell's doubles pair of Perez-Borga and Dmitriy Glumov have been in the top four doubles pairs all season long.

The eight schools that advance from Regional play will meet at the NCAA Championship site. For the first time in history(The NCAA III has contested tennis since 1976), the Event will be a joint Men's & Women's championship. The Finals will be held at the tennis complexes at Claremont-McKenna-Scripps Colleges and the Pomona-Pitzer Colleges in Claremont, California May 24-29th.

Amherst College is the top ranked Women's team going into this weekend, and Emory College is the top-ranked Men's squad. Emory, Williams, Chicago, and Tufts round out the top five on the Women's side. Claremont, Santa Cruz, Amherst, and Middlebury fill out the top five on the Men's side. Luther College will represent the IIAC in Women's play. Luther is ranked #35. Luther is also the highest ranked IIAC Men's team at #41, while Coe College is the only other IIAC Men's team ranked, #46.