Seawolves Fans

Stony Brook. Stony Brook. Stony Brook.

It’s becoming a theme, everyone.

For a second straight year, the Seawolves feel maligned by the operation of the NCAA Selection Committee. Stony Brook is the No. 5 seed despite being a unanimous No. 1 in all human polls because objective analysis of the selection criteria dictates it so. Even committee chair Janna Blais agrees.

“[The Seawolves] are truly an outstanding team,” Blais said. “I expect them to go very far in the tournament. We couldn’t get them higher when we looked at the criteria.”

Stony Brook. Stony Brook. Stony Brook.

It’s becoming a theme, everyone.

For a second straight year, the Seawolves feel maligned by the operation of the NCAA Selection Committee. Stony Brook is the No. 5 seed despite being a unanimous No. 1 in all human polls because objective analysis of the selection criteria dictates it so. Even committee chair Janna Blais agrees.

“[The Seawolves] are truly an outstanding team,” Blais said. “I expect them to go very far in the tournament. We couldn’t get them higher when we looked at the criteria.”

“That’s a really difficult piece of our process — we can’t take into consideration the eye test,” Blais continued. “It’s not part of the criteria. We don’t look at when a win occurred in the season. We don’t take into consideration injuries at a particular game or when they lost to or another team. We end up splitting hairs over significant wins and what is considered a significant loss.”

PLAYERS TO WATCH
Kylie Ohlmiller, Stony Brook

The senior out of Islip, N.Y., has been terrorizing opposing defenses all year. Ohlmiller has 145 points this season on 81 goals and 64 assists. Included in that are five games with at least 10 points.

It was always going to be hard to slot Stony Brook because of its lack of comparable schedule with the other teams and its conference schedule is so poor. Nevertheless, the Seawolves did nothing wrong. This probably speaks more to the procedure than this committee, but it seems like the criteria might need some tweaking to allow for the Stony Brooks of the world to exist and succeed. (For example, introduce a winning percentage component for the significant win criteria.)