Today at 3 p.m., the NCAA Division II field hockey tournament committee announces the six teams which will be playing for the D-2 national championship.
Three conference tournaments were decided yesterday, with East Stroudsburg beating Millersville in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, Converse beating Mount Olive in the South Atlantic Conference, and Adelphi beating Pace in the Northeast-10.
However, according to the NCAA bylaws, none of the three tournaments yielded an AQ berth for the winner. Instead, the NCAA Tournament Committee selects three teams from the pool of 21 in the Atlantic Region and three from the pool of 14 in the East Region.
Now, we can try to guess which six teams are going to make it, but it would be only that — a guess. Like in every NCAA Tournament, there will be some teams who are on the outside looking in, and will be upset that they were left out of the bracket.
That being said, who’s going to make it from the Atlantic? Here are the contenders:
East Stroudsburg (18-2)
Converse (17-2)
Millersville (16-5)
Kutztown (15-3)
Shippensburg (15-3)
West Chester (14-4)
Mount Olive (14-4)
From the East Region, these are the six teams with more than 10 wins on the season:
Assumption (14-5)
St. Anselm (14-6)
Adelphi (13-8)
Pace (13-8)
Bentley (11-8)
St. Thomas Aquinas (10-9)
The committee looks at a number of criteria, including strength of schedule, ratings percentage index, and how teams did in their last seven games of the 2022 season.
For me, the team to watch out of the 13 listed is West Chester. Despite its 14-4 record, it has the highest strength of schedule and second-best in ratings percentage index. If they make it, a very good team in the Atlantic pool will be sent home, and it will be a long nine months for the non-selected teams to mull over what they could have done differently.
TopOfTheCircle.com 
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