Here are the Nationals pools!
December 8, 2021 by in News with 0 comments
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The seeding and pools for both the D-I and D-III College Championships have been released. With the first-ever combined championship event set for Dec 17-20 in Norco, CA, there was a lot of uncertainty about how seeding would be handled given that there was no regular season or intra-regional competition. While USA Ultimate’s guidelines stated that seeding would be randomized while accounting for geographic diversity and regional finish, the final seedings appear to lack much randomization.
“Teams were placed into buckets to account for competitive balance and randomly drawn into seeds,” said USAU Marketing Director Andy Lee. “If a randomly drawn bucket yielded multiple teams from the same region into the same pool, the bucket was randomly redrawn until all pools had inter-regional matchups.”
Here are the pools and schedules for pool play at the 2021 College Championships!
D-I Women’s Division
Notes
- Carleton got the no. 1 seed over North Carolina, two teams regarded very similarly. Perhaps it was Carleton’s regular season head to head in 2020 or stronger showing versus eventual champion UC San Diego that swayed seeding. Or perhaps it was just drawn from a bucket.
- The Southwest teams did not get much credit, with the region’s second representative, UC San Diego, getting no. 8, and UC Davis pulling no. 14 seed.
D-I Men’s Division
Notes
- No surprise to see North Carolina at the top as the no. 1 seed, given their history, reputation, and another title in a strong region. It is their second consecutive top seed at Nationals.
- No. 2 seed Colorado and no. 7 seed Cal Poly-SLO sit together in Pool B, both having been to the semifinals in 2019 after SLO won Pool D over Colorado, winning their matchup 13-10. They are joined by no. 11 Georgia, who Colorado knocked out in prequarters that same year.
- Wisconsin and Texas, as well as Washington and Ohio State, also reprise prequarters matchups, which were won by Wisconsin and Ohio State, respectively.
D-III Women’s Division
Notes
- Having been the no. 2 seed at three previous Championships, Truman State was awarded their first ever Nationals no. 1 seed. The top seeded D-III women’s team has not won the title since Rice did it in 2015.
- While the top six seeds are exact same order as Ultiworld’s Power Rankings, there is a huge deviation after that: no. 14 seed Brandeis, who is at #7 in the Power Rankings.
D-III Men’s Division
Notes
- Richmond got the no. 1 seed, so the reigning Donovan winner, Harris Cannon, and his team enter the tournament as the favorites. They made it to the 2019 semifinal, where they lost on universe to future-champion Middlebury.
- One of the biggest differences in seeding versus our Power Rankings is Brandeis, who are #10 in our rankings the but no. 13 seed. Franciscan also got the no. 5 seed, compare to their #7 ranking.