Cabrini a lock for at-large bid?
When Cabrini’s 2018 season ended with a NCAA tournament third-round loss to Wesleyan, the Cavaliers returned to campus in Radnor, Pa., and held their year-end exit meetings that Sunday night.
The seniors departed and the returning players stuck around for a bit longer. The message from coach Steve Colfer was clear: The days of the automatic qualifier from winning the Colonial States Athletic Conference were over. Cabrini, at least until 2021, couldn’t get an AQ as a probationary period for joining the Atlantic East Conference.
The path to an 18th straight NCAA tournament appearance would likely require going through Pool B, of which there’s only one selection this spring.
“We wrote up on the board, ‘no guarantees,’” Colfer said. “Every game is going to be magnified that much more because there’s no fallback position for us to stumble along the way and know we can play our way into the tournament through an AQ.”
“We really have emphasized the point of being 1-0 each day that we play,” Colfer continued. “You hear that a lot in sports, but really for us it took on a new significance because it wasn’t trying to string together enough wins in conference.”
So with Selection Sunday nearing, where does Cabrini stand? The Cavaliers are 16-2 going into Saturday’s AEC championship game against Gwynedd Mercy, with the only blemishes being losses to top-five programs Salisbury and York.
Colfer knows they’re in a good place, but even that comes with an asterisk.
“I won’t know if it all comes to fruition until Sunday night when they announce the tournament and we can breathe some that we accomplished what we set out to last May,” Colfer said.
Getting to this point has come with some adversity, too. Attackmen Timmy Brooks and Matt LoParo, both two-time All-Americans, are out with season-ending injuries. Midfielders Tyler Kostack and Nicholas Waligurski, the former an All-American, have also missed serious chunks of time.
Colfer is optimistic that his middies can return at some point, but that many blows takes a toll. Cabrini is still scoring 16.82 goals per game.
“It’s hard to take three offensive All-Americans out of your lineup and feel you don’t need to do different things,” Colfer said. “I would be lying otherwise. Programs like ours just don’t have guys like sitting around we can pluck off a tree and plug in.”
The Cavaliers’ defense has largely remained in tact, though, allowing 6.29 goals per game. That’s the third-fewest in Division III.
And now Cabrini, even with a wounded offense, hopes that at-large spot arrives.
“I think right now we’re in a good position,” Colfer said. “We’ll see.”