The Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs surprised many this year by finishing 4th in the regular season standings. They’ve continued to surprise in the post season as they beat the #3 seed, St. Cloud State, on Thursday and beat the #2 seed, Winona State, today by a score of 8-5. Bulldogs Advance in Tourney If they win 2 more games they will qualify for the NCAA Tourney.
On the day that Minnesota State’s Blake Schwartz was named NSIC Pitcher of the Year, St. Cloud State was able to pound him for 8 runs and stay alive in the Tourney by winning 9-4. Huskies Beat Mavericks 9-4
Tomorrow will kick off with 2 elimination games as the top 2 seeds, Minnesota State and Winona State square off at Noon with the loser eliminated. That game is followed by another elimination game featuring St. Cloud State and Southwest Minnesota State. The winner of Friday’s first game will try to stay alive by beating Minnesota Duluth at 7pm. NSIC Tourney Site
This tourney has some strange goings on.
First thing is they don’t use a standard in every year end tourney I recall.
That is that the higher seed is home team.
Yesterday Duluth the 4 seed was home vs. Winona the 2 seed???? WHy play the regular season/rank teams? Top 6 are equal and go in?
Now they have decided to make the undefeated team Duluth play the winner of WSU and MSU while allowing arbitrarily the winner of SCSU and SMSU have a bye basially and play the winner of the Duluth /MSU-WSU game.
Shouldn’t it be WSU plays MSU and the winner of that plays the winner of SCSU SMSU and that winner than plays Duluth.
What advantage did Duluth get by winning two games? Why does SCSU and SMU get to skip a game? They both have a loss just like MSU and WSU.
I am totally confused!
Sounds strange tome. Most oturnaments I played in many years ago you played through the “Losers Bracket” to play the undefeated team.
Home team issue might have been through the losers bracket seedings. Where the expected teams would have allowed the higher seed to be home.
this tournament is run like the NCAA regional. That is how you do home team. It has been that way for years.
As for the bracket, basically, once you lose, it equals out. Your right, UMD losing on Saturday at 4 pm, they still have to win two games to win the title. So starting 2-0 does help, but if you lose, then they are 2-1, just like Mankato/Winona winner and SMSU/SCSU winner. The NSIC is doing just what the NCAA does. I like the system I guess.
Baseball;
How do they do home team? You never explained the method?
I do see the Rocky tourney is running like this as well, but I still think its funky.
2-0 should have an advantage by being 2-0 and the other msic 1-1 teams should be treated equally as well and not favor 2 of the 4 by playing less games – don’t make sense!
The problem is trying to do double elimination with 6 teams – the brackets just don’t line up that well.
They try to line it up for the #1 team by giving them the #6 team to start with and then the #3/#4 winner but if #1 loses one of those they are stuck in the loser bracket and don’t get any benefit after that.
You get strange brackets when you have double elimination with 6 teams. That is why they need 3 different brackets depending on who wins what games. The easier option would be an 8 team tournament, but I guess that creates to many games with the regional following up the next week.
since Winona was home team in game 1 and Duluth wasn’t, then Duluth gets to be home team in game 2. if both teams are home in a game, then it goes to some system I don’t know. NCAA handbook again I believe.
Apparently it is ok to run over the catcher in the NSIC tournament. Didn’t know that.
It’s not. What gave you that Idea?
Let me clarify that. Depends on the circumstances. A runner cannot run into the catcher or any other fielder covering a base for that matter with the intent to dislodge the ball. The runner does however have the right to tag the base/plate if being blocked by fielder even if that means going thru him. Hate to sound like a lawyer but it all centers around “intent” as determined by they men in blue. Check out the NCAA Rule Book Section 7 Page 99.