HELENA — Thursday evening, the NAIA will unveil the full brackets for its men’s and women’s basketball national tournaments. The Carroll College men and women are hoping to hear their names called.
But fans might be wondering, “How does the national tournament selection process work?”
The Frontier Conference sends two automatic qualifiers to the men’s tournament and two to the women’s tournament. One auto-bid goes to each regular-season champion, and the other auto-bid typically goes to the conference tournament champion. The exception is when the same team wins both the regular-season and postseason titles — like Rocky Mountain College did on the men’s side this season. In that case, the regular-season runner-up claims the Frontier’s second auto-bid to the national tournament.
The Carroll men finished third in the Frontier regular-season standings this season and fell 80-76 to MSU-Northern in the Frontier tournament semifinals. That means in order for the Fighting Saints season to continue, they’ll need to receive an at-large bid to the national tournament.
The NAIA has a national selection committee responsible for making the 30 at-large selections and seeding the entire 64-team field accordingly. As of right now, bracketology experts are predicting the Carroll men to make the field pretty comfortably, earning as high as a No. 9 seed in some projections.
Now for the Carroll women, they also finished third in the Frontier regular-season standings but fell 65-56 to Montana Western in the Frontier tournament quarterfinals. So, the Fighting Saints women will also need to receive an at-large bid from the national selection committee for their season to continue. Most bracketology experts expect the Carroll women to make the national tournament field, but they’re likely more on the bubble than the men are.
The Carroll men and women are hosting selection show watch parties Thursday evening at Ten Mile Creek Brewing Company where they expect to learn their opening-round opponents.
