After his team suffered a difficult 77-70 overtime loss in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Brandeis Friday, Trinity College coach Stanley Ogrodnik echoed what fans of both teams were saying after the tournament bracket was released last Monday."This probably should have been a third-round game," Ogrodnik told reporters after the game.

"The scheduling of this regional was awful," he added.



Ogrodnik may have had a point. According to the Quality of Wins Index, a primitive power ranking used by the NCAA to help choose teams for the tournament, Trinity was the seventh-best team in the country and Brandeis was the 15th best.

But in Division III, unlike Division I, each of the four brackets encompasses a general region, and since many of the top teams in Division III are from the Northeast, unfavorable matchups often occur.

This season, Brandeis' bracket, which featured many Northeast teams wasn't even the most difficult.

One region featured seven of the top 12 teams in the latest d3hoops.com poll, including top-ranked University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point from the UW-Stevens point bracket.

When asked to respond to Ogrodnik's comments at the press conference following Friday's game, Judges coach Brian Meehan acknowledged his opposing coach's sentiment, but disagreed with it.

"I don't care who we're playing along the way, as long as we're the last team standing," Meehan said.

"If you aren't good enough to win the first-round game, you probably weren't going to get to the sixth game.