lacrosse bracketology, updated

Given that half my weekend predictions didn't pan out, I thought I'd update this sucker:

Some things remain the same:

- No change to the top eight seeds, thanks largely to the two Ivy favorites taking care of business.

- Siena, Army, and Loyola stay in the same place in the bracket. I think UVA will now almost certainly get the winner of today's game between Siena and Mount St. Mary's.

- This is based on Cornell beating Princeton today, but if Princeton wins, just flip-flop them in the 6 and 7 seeds. The matchups stay the same too; i.e., Hopkins still plays Princeton and Hofstra still goes to Cornell. Geography.

- Stony Brook still gets shipped to Duke since they're still hosting that quarterfinal game and can't play on that side of the bracket. Sorry, Seawolves.

The shuffle happens in the matchups for the #3 through #7-seed games. Hopkins is the big culprit, but Delaware caused nearly as big a shakeup by winning the CAA and earning an autobid.

- Towson went from the CAA top seed to no longer even eligible, so they have to be gone. Delaware basically takes their place.

- Denver got screwed a little bit between Friday and today because better geographical matchups showed up in the bracket. Unless Notre Dame or Ohio State or someone ever host a tournament game, Denver is so far west that they'll basically get flexed to whatever matchup is most convenient for everyone else. It also definitely didn't help that Hopkins and their phony high RPI horned in on the tournament.

- The real SOB is now deciding between Hopkins, Notre Dame, Hofstra, and Drexel for the last two slots. JHU and Hofstra win out. This is my attempt to get inside the heads of the committee, see, not what I think "should" happen. Therefore Hopkins is in, and then Hofstra too. Both have a better RPI and perform better in the RPI-based metrics than the hard-luck losers ND and Drexel. Plus, I doubt the committee wants to run a Hopkins-less tournament.

If I were the King of Lacrosse, Hopkins wouldn't get in because all their pretty metrics, RPI and such, are the result of losing to basically every good team they faced, except for the season-saving win over Loyola on Saturday. Of the four, Hopkins is the least deserving. But they're also Hopkins.

As for Hofstra and Drexel, Drexel won that matchup earlier in the season and Hofstra didn't even make the CAA tournament. So in my ideal world, it wouldn't be Hofstra. But again, they way outperform Drexel on the numbers sheets, and numbers sheets are what the committee will have in front of them. So that's how I think it'll shake out. I guess this bracketology here is the result of me having not very much faith in the NCAA to make good decisions.