The D3 women’s hockey bracket has been revealed! If you enjoy surprises, we’ve got plenty of them this time around.
As a reminder, the D3 bracket has 13 berths this year, mandated by the D3 access ratio of one berth for every six teams playing. Of those, six are automatic qualifiers (AQs); the other seven are the top teams in the NCAA Power Index (NPI) that did not get an AQ, either because they lost in their conference tournament or their conference is ineligible for one. With a 13-team bracket, three teams will get first-round byes.
Constructing the Bracket
Here’s a table showing the top 17 teams in the final NPI, published by the NCAA on 9 March. (Why 17 teams? That gets us to the lowest-ranked school in the bracket.) The AQ teams are indicated in boldface. The at-large selections are indicated in italics. Schools left out have a shaded background. And the rightmost column shows the school’s location, which will become important in bracket construction.
| Team | Conference | NPI Rank | NPI | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UW-River Falls | WIAC | 1 | 69.089 | River Falls, WI |
| Norwich | Little East | 2 | 63.725 | Northfield, VT |
| Nazareth | UCHC | 3 | 61.907 | Rochester, NY |
| Amherst | NESCAC | 4 | 61.889 | Amherst, MA |
| Augsburg | MIAC | 5 | 61.337 | Minneapolis, MN |
| Wilkes | Middle Atlantic | 6 | 61.208 | Wilkes-Barre, PA |
| Hamline | MIAC | 7 | 59.904 | St. Paul, MN |
| Williams | NESCAC | 8 | 59.831 | Williamstown, MA |
| Middlebury | NESCAC | 9 | 59.644 | Middlebury, VT |
| Colby | NESCAC | 10 | 59.155 | Waterville, ME |
| Plattsburgh St. | SUNYAC | 11 | 59.013 | Plattsburgh, NY |
| Endicott | CNE | 12 | 58.865 | Beverly, MA |
| Adrian | NCHA | 13 | 58.816 | Adrian, MI |
| Wis.-Eau Claire | WIAC | 14 | 58.601 | Eau Claire, WI |
| Concordia Wisconsin | NCHA | 15 | 57.667 | Mequon, WI |
| Elmira | UCHC | 16 | 57.209 | Elmira, NY |
| Saint Benedict | MIAC | 17 | 57.184 | St. Joseph, MN |
Based on this, we can seed the 13 tournament teams based on their NPI, the only criteria the committee uses for seeding:
| (1) | UW-River Falls, WIAC (River Falls, WI) |
| (2) | Norwich, LEC (Northfield, VT) |
| (3) | Nazareth, UCHC (Rochester, NY) |
| (4) | Amherst, NESCAC (Amherst, MA) |
| (5) | Augsburg, MIAC (Minneapolis, MN) |
| (6) | Wilkes, MAC (Wilkes-Barre, PA) |
| (7) | Hamline, MIAC (St. Paul, MN) |
| (8) | Williams, NESCAC (Williamstown, MA) |
| (9) | Plattsburgh, SUNYAC (Plattsburgh, NY) |
| (10) | Endicott, CNE (Beverly, MA) |
| (11) | Adrian, NCHA (Adrian, MI) |
| (12) | Elmira, UCHC (Elmira, NY) |
| (13) | St. Benedict, MIAC (St. Joseph, MN) |
St. Benedict is making their tournament debut, and eight of the 13 teams were in last year’s tournament.
How the NCAA decides on the bracket
On page 15 of the prechampionship manual, the bracketing principles are laid out. The manual explicitly states that the top priority is “protection of the top four teams in the bracket” and amplifies that principle further by directing that “once selected, teams 1–3 will receive the bye and host the quarterfinal round.” In the past, geographic considerations sometimes meant that a team with a high seed would be forced to play a first-round game, and it’s nice to know that won’t happen.
The other three criteria prioritized for site selection are facility quality, geography, and attendance history, in that order. Geography, for D3, means that the bracket should be set up to minimize flights. A flight is permitted if teams are more than 500 miles apart according to the official NCAA mileage calculator. Unfortunately, the mileage calculator is now behind a password and inaccessible to the public, so any flight determinations will need to be estimated with Google Maps or similar as a proxy. Bracket integrity is not included in this list of criteria, although there is a note that teams in the same conference will not be paired in a first round game.
If we make a bracket based only on seedings, dropping the top three seeds into the quarterfinals and slotting everyone else in as seeds dictate, we get this (home teams in boldface):
And surprise! That’s exactly what the committee did. This is the first time the committee has used straight seeds to set the bracket with perfect integrity since seeding became deregionalized in 2019. In the past, we’ve seen egregious examples of brackets lacking integrity to fit the geographic requirements, such as a #3 vs #2 scheduled quarterfinal in 2020, #2 getting forced into a first-round game vs #10 in 2022, and a #3 vs #1 quarterfinal in 2024. So the first surprise is that the committee actually went with straight seeds, and it’s a breath of fresh air.
Flights Galore
In an even bigger surprise, of the five first-round matchups, three require flights. Elmira to Augsburg, St. Benedict to Amherst, and Endicott to Hamline are all well over 500 miles by any calculation. Three flights in the first round is unprecedented.
How did we get to three flights? It comes about because of another restriction: “Teams from the same conference will not be paired to play each other in the first contest.” Three teams from the MIAC are in this year’s bracket, and they cannot play each other in the first round. Of the other teams in the bracket, only UW-River Falls is close enough to drive—but as the top seed they went directly into a quarterfinal, following the top priority. So each of the three MIAC schools needs to go to a different first-round game, and each of those will require a flight. So as long as the committee was forced into matchups that require flights, they opted to preserve bracket integrity.
But wait, there’s more! Of the quarterfinal games, one (the winner of Plattsburgh vs Williams at River Falls) will require another flight. And two more could also require flights, depending on the first round results: Endicott could drive to Norwich, but Hamline would need to fly; Augsburg and St. Benedict are close enough to drive, as are Amherst and Elmira, but other combinations will require another flight. This is the first year that more than one quarterfinal flight has been a possibility.
Of the quarterfinal pods, the only one guaranteed to be flight-free is Adrian to Wilkes, winner to Nazareth. Adrian’s location in southeastern Michigan has always limited their early round opponents. That, in turn, has often driven the rest of the bracketing process, leading to repeat matchups year after year and higher seeds missing out on byes to accommodate Adrian’s needs. But not this year! In another happy surprise, the perfect bracket integrity aligns this pod with geography.
Where will the championship weekend be held? That will be another surprise! This year, the D3 women’s championship is hosted by the highest seed, so we will all find out when the quarterfinal round is finished. Top seed UW-River Falls is the prohibitive favorite to host for a third year in a row, with an NPI more than 5 points above that of #2 Norwich. They only need to win one game to earn the right to host championship weekend. UWRF hasn’t faced Williams this year, but they defeated Plattsburgh at Thanksgiving, in an opening round game of the Panther-Cardinal Classic. Should UWRF falter, Norwich and Nazareth are next in line. Starting next year, we shouldn’t get any more location surprises, as the championship weekend will be held at a predetermined site and Plattsburgh has already been awarded the 2027 championship.
Final Notes
Congratulations to Worcester State, the 2026 MASCAC champion! Top-seeded Worcester State beat second seed Rivier, 3-2, for the conference championship. The MASCAC does not have an AQ this year. Worcester State is the highest ranked MASCAC school in the NPI, but at #32, they did not make the cut for an at-large berth. So unlike the Little East Conference and the WIAC, the other conferences without AQs, there will be no MASCAC representation in the women’s tournament this year. This was the second season of MASCAC women’s hockey without an AQ. The conference already meets the threshold of six members, so they could get an AQ as early as next season.
