STANDISH, Maine - The 2018-19 NCAA DIII Women's Basketball Tournament field has been released and Saint Joseph's College (27-1, 12-0 GNAC) has earned an at-large berth and will play MIT (21-7, 12-4 NEWMAC) in a first-round contest at Ithaca College on Friday evening.
Game times and ticket information will be released on gomonks.com at some point on Tuesday following a conference call with NCAA officials. COMPLETE BRACKET
Saint Joseph's – ranked eighth and 10th nationally in last week's D3Hoops.com and WBCA polls, respectively - is one of 20 teams in the nation to earn an at-large (Pool C) berth. The Monks join Amherst, Bowdoin, Middlebury, and Smith among the five New England Region programs to gain entrance into the national tournament after failing to win their respective conference championship.
The at-large berth is the just the third in SJC Athletics history. The Saint Joseph's men's basketball team, which claimed an at-large bid after playing as an NCAA DIII Independent during the 2002-03 season, was the first and the Monks' baseball team earned an at-large into the 2006 NCAA Tournament.
A national selection committee, featuring representatives from each region, build the tournament brackets and decide which institutions will host each weekend. For more information on the selection process, CLICK HERE
Led by 27th-year Head Coach Mike McDevitt '83, the Monks will be making an appearance in the national tournament for the fourth-consecutive season - and fifth time in the last six years – despite suffering a heartbreaking 65-64 setback to Emmanuel College in the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) Championship at the Harold Alfond Center on Saturday.
With the GNAC title triumph, Emmanuel earned the conference's automatic national tournament qualifier and will face Hartwick College at SUNY-New Paltz in a first-round matchup on Friday.
As the #4 seed in the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Tournament, MIT knocked off top-seeded Babson College in a semifinal matchup on Thursday and defeated #3 Springfield College, 66-50, on Saturday to claim the program's second-consecutive NEWMAC Championship.
Friday's NCAA Tournament bout will be the third meeting between the Saint Joseph's and MIT women's basketball programs and first since November 15th, 2014 when the Monks topped the Engineers by a 73-50 margin at the Curry College Tip-Off Tournament. The Engineers won the first matchup, 78-56, at MIT on November 18th, 2005.
The other Friday night game in the four-team pod at Ithaca will feature the host Bombers (22-5, 15-3 Liberty) and SUNY-Poly (23-5, 15-1 NEAC), with the winner taking on the SJC/MIT victor at Ben Light Gymnasium on Saturday, tip-off TBD. Ithaca and SUNY-Poly received automatic qualifiers into the NCAA Tournament after winning conference championships over the weekend.
NCAA RELEASE:
INDIANAPOLIS — The NCAA Division III Women's Basketball Committee announced Monday the field of 64 teams for the 2019 championship.
CHAMPIONSHIP INFO: View the 2019 interactive bracket | Full winter champs selection show schedule
Forty-three conferences have been awarded automatic qualification for the 2019 championship. There is one berth reserved for Pool B and the final 20 berths are reserved for Pool C, which includes institutions from automatic-qualifying conferences that are not the conference champion and any remaining Pool B teams.
Sixteen first/second-round sites will be conducted March 1-2. Second-round winners will advance to one of four sectional sites March 8-9. Winners of the four sectional sites will advance to the national semifinals and final March 15-16. All games, except the semifinals/final, will be played on the campuses of competing institutions. The semifinals/final will be conducted at Cregger Center on the campus of Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, hosted by the Old Dominion Athletic Conference and the City of Salem.