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[QUOTE="fieldystick, post: 4261503, member: 8152"]
And why does this matter? At no point in the selection/seeding/bracketing criteria and instructions is this mentioned as a criterion or something that is considered.

Rutgers and UVA evaluate almost identically per stated criteria (RU evaluates slightly more positively imo, but it's close). You are going to be hard-pressed to convince me that, given:

RU / UVA = look more or less the same per stated criteria

Cornell / Brown = look more or less the same, except in a very different way than the above two, per stated criteria
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The two Ivy League teams [I]just so happen [/I]to split them for reasons other than that wonderful bracket integrity.

If you have alternatives for a representative 8/9 matchup given the composition of this field (that feeds into playing #1 UMCP) that isn't UVA vs. Ivy, I'd love to hear it. (Because there's not one!)

A) it's not outright forbidden, but they're clearly trying to avoid Rutgers and [I]especially @[/I]OSU - they'd never hear the end of @ for two years in a row.
B) it's [I]very strongly[/I] discouraged to have conference games in the first round. This all but eliminates the possibility of Ivy vs. Ivy at 8/9
C) at this point, if it's not UVA, we've already all but eliminated their effective 6 (RU), 9 (UVA), 10 (OSU), 11 (Harvard). Leaving us with one of: Richmond/BU for this spot. And by this point/strength of teams, I'd begin to argue that these teams are no longer of representative strength to maintain bracket integrity for an 8/9-type game.

And that's why I was willing to strongly state that an ACC team almost surely had to be in the 8/9 game. I just didn't expect there to be only one choice!
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