The Creighton men’s soccer team ended its regular season last weekend with a win over Evansville. The Bluejays took home a share of the Missouri Valley Conference regular season championship, splitting the title with Missouri State (the Bears handed the Jays their only MVC loss thus far).
Earlier last week, Creighton came out on top of the updated NCAA college soccer RPI rankings. The selection committee uses the RPI heavily when determining seeding for the NCAA Tournament. And despite beating a Purple Aces squad that doesn’t rate well in the RPI, the Bluejays learned today they retained the #1 spot in the updated rankings.
Unlike other NCAA championship events, the college soccer tournament features higher seeded teams hosting matches until the semifinals of the College Cup. The Bluejays enter their hosting duties for the Valley tournament this weekend knowing they are set up to possibly receive a top four seed in the NCAA Tournament — of huge importance, given Creighton’s home field advantage at Morrison Stadium.
The RPI can be tricky, as it factors in the ranking of opponents along with where the games are played. Creighton faces a Valley league with only one other school in the top 30 of the RPI. Fortunately for CU, the Bluejays may be poised to play that team, the Bradley Braves (RPI #27) in the semifinals Friday if BU can make it past SIU Edwardsville (#140) in Wednesday’s first round. Go Braves! If the Jays can advance to the finals, the best RPI opponent they could hope to face would be Drake (#55). The Bulldogs would need to get past Central Arkansas (#189) in the first round and then beat Missouri State (#81), though.
The casual Creighton soccer fan would say, “Well, if we win these games, it shouldn’t matter, right?” Nope. Win or lose, the quality of opponent as gauged by the RPI is of utmost important. The bottom line, according to Creighton coach Elmar Bolowich is that the difference between getting a top four and a top eight seed may be out of CU’s hands, win or lose.
“Winning out in our conference tournament would give us a good shot at a top four seed in the tournament, but a great shot at a top eight seed. If we are in the top four, we will host up to the semifinals, or College Cup. If we are a top eight seed, we would host up to the quarterfinals.
But even if we win out in the conference tournament, we could still see ourselves fall. For instance, if Maryland and North Carolina were to play each other in the conference finals, they could move up pretty quickly. Also, Connecticut is right at our heels, and should they play a team like St. John’s in the finals, I could see them jumping us as well. We simply need to make sure we do not slip up and hope that we can play the best we can.”