Mountain West Tournament Bracket
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The Mountain West has announced a change in the 2017 Women’s Tennis Bracket, and that change does affect The University of New Mexico. The Lobos, (7-13, 4-1 MW) will now be the 11-seed in the 11-team tournament and take on the No. 6 seed the Boise State Broncos (13-8, 2-4 MW). That match will take place at 3 p.m. Mountain Time at the Fertitta Tennis Complex on the campus of UNLV in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Originally, New Mexico was the No. 10 seed playing No. 7 Air Force, but due to incomplete results reported to the ITA the rankings that were used to seed the entire tournament weren’t complete. The issue was rectified on Tuesday by the schools and re-seeding took place Tuesday night.
In reality, the order of the 11 teams didn’t change, but UNM was originally awarded the No. 10 seed due to a rule in the seeding provision that states if a team is within 10 spots of another Mountain West team that they defeated during the year, then those two teams switch spots. With the completed results, UNM was not within 10 spots of Colorado State, so the Rams remain the 10-seed, and UNM the 11-seed.
Since all teams don’t play each other during the regular season, with the teams staying mostly within their time zones for conference matches, the league uses the national rankings to determine seeding, meaning New Mexico’s 4-1 record, which was the second-best mark in the league, was basically rendered meaningless. Ironically, the Lobos are seeded behind two teams in that combined to go 0-10 in Mountain West matches.
The opening round will feature three matches with No. 8 Utah State (12-10, 2-3) facing off with No. 9 San Diego State (5-17, 0-5) at 11 a.m. Mountain Time. While UNM takes on Boise State at 3 p.m. Mountain Time, No. 7 Air Force (16-9, 2-3 MW) will battle No. 11 Colorado State (9-13, 0-5) at the same time.
Should UNM win, it would set up a 3 p.m. Mountain Time matchup with the No. 3 San José State (11-7, 2-2) on Friday on Friday. The AFA/CSU winner will also play at 3 p.m. in the quarterfinals against No. 2 seed Fresno State (14-8, 3-1) . In the other half of the bracket, host and No. 1 seed UNLV (16-7, 3-1) will face the winner of the USU/SDSU match at 11 p.m., while No. 4 Wyoming (17-3, 5-0 MW) takes on Nevada (8-9, 2-2).
TheMW.com Link: http://www.themw.com/news/mountain-west-announces-2017-women-s-tennis-championship-bracket