2017 NCAA Tournament

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ST_Lawson
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Well, this is the big day...we get to find out who and where we're playing in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Watch party starts at 5 PM at Western Hall and the show starts at 6 PM on ESPN: http://goleathernecks.com/news/2017/3/1 ... -hall.aspx
If you're not able to watch it live, I'll be updating things here as best I can, both our own situation, as well as maybe a few other "nearby" schools (Green Bay, Missouri, Marquette, DePaul, Iowa State, and Drake should all be in it too, for anyone interested).

Current projections are:
ESPN - #12 facing #5 NC State in Los Angeles (UCLA)
RealTimeRPI - #13 facing #4 Miami (FL) in Miami, FL
CollegeSportsMadness - #13 facing #4 Oklahoma in Norman, OK

For a few reasons, I'd prefer ESPN's projection:
  • Playing a #5 is supposed to be a little easier than a #4
  • Playing a #5 seed means that our first round game is not against the "home team" in the grouping
  • I'll get to go to Los Angeles (although Miami would be nice too) ;)
You can also follow along with any news on the NCAA's Womens Basketball twitter account:
[twit]ncaawbb[/twit]
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leatherface
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Are there any T-Shirts commemorating the success of this year's team anywhere?
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leatherface wrote: Mon Mar 13, 2017 10:25 am Are there any T-Shirts commemorating the success of this year's team anywhere?
Currently just the Summit League Champions shirts (probably the black ones the girls are wearing in the photo in the header bar on this site, and there's also the grey regular season champs shirt). I would imagine that they want to wait a bit...NCAA usually does shirts for all teams in the tournament once the field is officially announced, but also it might be good to wait until we see how far we get, so we know if we can get shirts that say just "participant", "Sweet 16", "Elite 8" or whatever ;)

The men, for example, already have a lot of their shirts available already: http://www.shopncaasports.com/Final_Fou ... west_items
But the women just have their generic "Final Four Logo" shirts available currently. I'd imagine that as long as the NCAA is fine with it, we'll likely also sell them at the Union Bookstore and online.
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leatherface
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Yes, I can't imagine why the bookstore wouldn't have a personalized Western to the "Big Dance" shirt available, and the website lit up with positive pub. When the men beat Wisconsin, you would have thought a National Championship was won.
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leatherface wrote: Mon Mar 13, 2017 2:27 pm Yes, I can't imagine why the bookstore wouldn't have a personalized Western to the "Big Dance" shirt available, and the website lit up with positive pub. When the men beat Wisconsin, you would have thought a National Championship was won.
I imagine they will at some point. Right now there's no students around, so there's no real point in having stuff available at the bookstore or something.

The thing about positive publication as compared to the win over Wisconsin last year is that that game was huge story for all of college basketball....most people were amazed that a team they'd probably almost never heard of beating a team that had been in the previous year's championship game...it was HUGE in the sports world.

The women making it to the NCAA tournament is HUGE....for fans of Western. Outside of that group of people however, it's not really a big deal that a team that hadn't made it in a long time has made it to the tournament. To them, we're just another double-digit seed from a mid-major conference that will go on the road and most likely lose our first game and go home. So, you don't see articles on ESPN, SI, etc. about Western's women's team making the dance like you did with the men beating Wisconsin.

Anyway, I'm sure there'll be merchandise available, and I'll be one of the first "in line" to order my Women's NCAA Tournament t-shirt.
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Live from Western Hall
EDIT - ok, apparently not live now. Video should be available once they archive it, or they might go live with stuff after the selection show as well, so I'll go ahead and leave this here.
EDIT 2 - looks like they finished the live bit, so you can watch the replay if you want.

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Playing at Florida State on Friday (in Tallahassee)

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I'm kinda surprised that we're a 14 seed. Most places were projecting us a 13 or 12.
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The commentators really did not know what to say about the "Necks!" I am going to predict an upset over the Seminoles and then one over Missouri! ;)
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