Lady Bulldogs Make NCAA Tournament While Gophers Are Snubbed
The University of Minnesota Duluth Women's Hockey team has earned their first NCAA selection in the last 4 years. They learned the news on Sunday night during the NCAA women's hockey selection show. They are going into the tournament as the number five seed and they will face number 4 seed Colgate University.
The game will take place on Monday, March 15 at the Erie Insurance Arena in Erie, Pennsylvania, according to our news partners WDIO.
Other quarterfinal matchups will feature Northeastern (number 1) versus Robert Morris (number 8), Ohio State (number 3) will play Boston College (number 6), and Providence (number 7) will play Wisconsin (number 2).
UMD Women's Hockey posted the reaction from the team when they learned they would be heading to the tournament.
Meanwhile, in a rather surprising turn of events, the University of Minnesota Gophers were not selected to be in this year's NCAA tournament. According to BringMeTheNews, this is quite a shock and some people are claiming it was a biased, especially because Josh Berlo - UMD's Athletic Director was on the selection committee.
Back on March 1 the gophers were ranked ahead of many teams and fourth overall in the March 1 USCHO poll. UMD was ranked fifth in that poll. The gophers also beat the Bulldogs twice in November. A game that was scheduled to be played at Ridder Arena in Minneapolis was postponed due to health and safety protocols.
The way teams are selected for the tournaments is that 4 of the teams are automatically put in the tournament. those are the champions of the College Hockey America which was Robert Morris, the Hockey East Association (Northeastern), ECAC (Colgate), and WCHA (Wisconsin.) The other teams then are picked by the committee.