“It’s not a situation where we’ve gone out and we didn’t show up to play,” Wheaton said. “I don’t think that happened this year.”

A couple of tournament upsets played a key role in keeping Harvard out of the NCAA tournament. Richmond, an unlikely at-large NCAA qualifier, upset Rhode Island in the Atlantic 10 championship. Had Rhode Island won its conference to qualify automatically, it would have freed up an at-large berth that could have gone to Harvard.

Also, Ohio St. came back from a three-goal deficit to stun Penn St. and win the Big Ten conference tournament for an NCAA berth despite an overall losing record. Harvard could have fit nicely into a Midwestern bracket at Notre Dame had Ohio St. not made the tournament.

The tournament snub came as a huge surprise to Harvard because it had been ranked ahead of Rhode Island in both the NSCAA and Soccer Buzz regional polls for the past several weeks, and ahead of Yale in the Soccer Buzz poll.

Harvard also finished a game ahead of Yale in the Ivy standings. But Ivy standings don’t directly matter in NCAA selection. Yale had a head-to-head victory over the Crimson, a better overall record, the same record against common opponents as Harvard and just as many wins over NCAA-qualifying teams, so Yale was an easy pick over Harvard by the NCAA’s criteria.

Harvard’s lack of bad losses compared to Rhode Island’s losses to teams well off the NCAA radar—Brown, St. Bonaventure and New Hampshire—led to a majority of rational human voters ranking Harvard ahead of the Rams in both polls. But the NCAA selection criteria led to a different result than voter opinion.

Both the Rams and the Crimson had the same number of wins over NCAA qualifying teams. Harvard had beaten Princeton and Central Connecticut. Rhode Island had beaten Dayton and Richmond, both teams in its conference.

Harvard would have been helped out significantly had the women’s selection criteria been more like the men’s. Unlike the women’s committee, the men’s committee uses as the main selection criteria an adjusted rating-percentage-index that additionally rewards good wins and penalizes bad losses. Since Harvard had no bad losses and Rhode Island had several, Harvard would have been clearly helped by that format.

Also, unlike the women’s committee, the men’s committee doesn’t use records against teams in the tournament and records against teams under selection consideration as selection criteria. Because of these two criteria, it’s actually possible for a team to be penalized more for a loss against a team above .500 than a loss against a sub-500 team.

The NCAA also happened to save money by selecting Rhode Island over Harvard, too. Had Harvard been selected, it would have had to have been shipped out of region, and another team would have been shipped to the region to avoid an intraconference in the first round.

While history doesn’t matter in NCAA selections, Harvard had won all four of its last NCAA first-round matches in its last four first-round appearances. When given a chance, Harvard has traditionally done well in the NCAA tournament. But there will be no chance this season.

“We had a great team this year, and for one reason or another, we didn’t pull of the wins we should have,” Butler said.

—Staff writer David R. De Remer can be reached at remer@fas.harvard.edu.