Pairings Are Bittersweet for Cal Lutheran Soccer
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The announcement of the NCAA Division III championship soccer pairings late Sunday brought bittersweet news to the Cal Lutheran campus.
Despite the end of its school-record 14-game winning streak earlier in the day, the women’s team received a berth in the West Regionals wild-card round and will play at UC San Diego at 1 p.m. Wednesday. But the men’s team, with an almost identical record, was left out of the playoffs.
With only one of the eight regionals encompassing the North-Central/Far West, bids from the area were at a premium. As a result, only one team from the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference was selected.
SCIAC Western Division champion Cal Lutheran (14-4-2) and SCIAC Eastern Division champion Claremont (13-2-4) each finished 9-0-2 in conference play and played to two ties. But Claremont won the overall SCIAC championship Saturday by defeating the Kingsmen in a shootout, 4-1, after two overtime periods and two sudden-death overtimes failed to break a 1-1 tie.
That difference apparently was enough to include the Stags and exclude Cal Lutheran, even though the Kingsmen ended the season with a 2-1 victory over Cal State Northridge on Sunday.
The women’s team (14-4) lost to Cal State San Bernardino on Sunday, 4-1.
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