NCAA Tournament Bracket

Elmira, NY -- A record-setting 2014-15 regular season resulted in home ice throughout the ECAC West Tournament and yet another trip to the ECAC West Championship game for the Elmira College women's ice hockey team. Unfortunately the Soaring Eagles suffered just their second defeat of the season in the conference title game to second-seeded Plattsburgh State, but EC was nonetheless rewarded for their 23-1-1 regular season with an at-large bid to this year's NCAA Division III Women's Ice Hockey Tournament.
 
Monday's selection show kept Elmira's dream of winning an NCAA-record fourth national championship alive and well as it was revealed that EC would be the number two seed in this year's eight-team field. With that seed comes a home quarterfinal game in which the Soaring Eagles welcome surprise NESCAC Tournament Champion Trinity College to the Murray Athletic Center on Saturday, March 14th.
 
The Bantams successfully conquered the gauntlet that is the NESCAC Tournament, winning a trio of one-goal games against Williams College, then-No. 8 Amherst College, and then-No. 3 Middlebury College to secure just their second trip to the NCAA Tournament. Their run was not without excitement, as Trinity needed overtime to take down the NESCAC's top two teams, Amherst and Middlebury, in the semifinals and finals, respectively, in back-to-back days. Cheeky Herr, Trinity's top goal-scorer, played the hero in both overtime victories, carrying the third-seeded Bantams to the program's first NESCAC Tournament title.
 
EC and Trinity have met one other time in the programs' respective histories, that matchup coming in the quarterfinals of the 2010 NCAA Tournament. That meeting also took place at the Murray Athletic Center and was a game that Elmira came away with a 2-1 victory. The Soaring Eagles would very much like to duplicate that result as they look to make it back to Championship Weekend for the second time in three years.
 
The Purple and Gold appear to be the odds-on favorite to advance, and they also have the benefit of playing at home, but this team, as evidenced by their run in 2013, knows anything can happen in the postseason. The Bantams have been playing their best hockey down the stretch, entering Saturday's contest on a six-game winning streak and an eight-game unbeaten streak, but the stats point towards the Soaring Eagles moving on this weekend.
 
Elmira boasts the number two scoring offense (4.93 goals per game) and the number six scoring defense (1.63 goals per game) in the nation. They have two of the top three scorers in the country in Ashley Ryan '15 and Ashton Hogan '15, the top scoring defenseman in Brooke Wilgosh '15, and have been deadly on the power play behind new NCAA record holder Cassidy Delainey '15. The Purple and Gold have converted 30.1 percent of their power-play chances into goals (40-out-of-133) with Delainey scoring 17 of those.
 
The Bantams, on the other hand, score more than one goal per game less (3.38) than EC, and although they rank seventh in the nation in scoring defense, they still come in behind the Soaring Eagles, allowing 1.81 goals per game. Trinity's top scorers, Cheeky Herr and Lucy Robinson, each have 35 points on the season, tying for 12th in the country in points per game (1.35), but are two of just six players to reach double-digit points. One thing the Bantams do have going for them is a goaltender who is heating up at the perfect time in Sydney Belinskas. Belinskas has allowed just 10 goals on 268 shots during Trinity's eight-game run, improving her save percentage to a nation-leading .950 and lowering her goals against average to an eighth-best 1.48.
 
The stats can help point to who should win, but they are just numbers on a sheet of paper. The eight teams in this year's tournament are now all 0-0 and vying for one thing, to raise the NCAA Championship Trophy on March 21st.
 
So will it be the Soaring Eagles or the Bantams who advance to Championship Weekend? That question will be answered on Saturday, March 14th starting at 3:00 p.m. at the Murray Athletic Center.
 
Ticket prices for Saturday's Quarterfinal are $6.00 for adults, $4.00 for students, and $3.00 for children under 12 years of age. Tickets must be purchased in person at the Murray Athletic Center on Saturday, March 14th with sales starting at 1:30 p.m. Additionally, thanks to the Student Association Finance Board, the first 100 EC Students with ID will be admitted for free with those tickets starting to be distributed at 2:25 p.m. Saturday afternoon.