NCAA Men’s Soccer Tournament: At-Large Bid and Seeding Projections

Ahead of the NCAA Men’s Soccer Tournament brackets being released, there’s no secret after Sunday who the 23 teams who will pick up the automatic bids to men’s college soccer’s version of the Big Dance.

However, the NCAA Division I tournament selection committee has the difficult task of adding an additional 25 at-large teams from a very competitive field as this year’s Men’s Soccer appears to be as wide open as it has ever been.

NCAA Men’s Soccer Tournament: A pretty wide-open field expected again as Pitt awaits bracket release Monday

By taking into account overall records and the most recent Ratings Percent Index (RPI) rankings, we’re taking a crack at our projected NCAA tournament field entrants by conference and also our projections for the top 16 teams, which will recieve first-round byes.

The automatic bid winners are in Bold, while the teams projected to earn at-large bids are below each conference champion.

Projected NCAA Men’s National Soccer Tournament Field (2021)  

Conference | Automatic Qualifier (in Bold) | Teams Projected to earn at-large bid (Italics) along with last RPI ranking in parenthesis

• ACC: Notre Dame (14); Pitt (4), Duke (6), Clemson (5), Virginia Tech (22), North Carolina (20), Wake Forest (34) 
• America East:  Vermont, New Hampshire (7)
• American Athletic:  Tulsa (8)
• Atlantic 10: Saint Louis (11); Rhode Island (32); 
• Atlantic Sun;  Lipscomb (52);
• Big East: Georgetown (3); Providence (19), Villanova (26), Creighton (23); St. John’s (30)  
• Big South:  Campbell (54)
• Big Ten; Penn State (25); Indiana (16), Maryland (21), Michigan (33) 
• Big West: UC Santa Barbara (88) 
• Colonial: Hofstra (9);
• Conference USA: Kentucky (12); Marshall (10), FIU (18); Charlotte (31) 
• Horizon: Oakland (92)
• Ivy: Princeton (70); Cornell (28) 
• MAAC: Marist (66) 
• Mid-American: Northern Illinois (39); West Virginia (13), Akron (24)
• Missouri Valley:  Missouri State (15) 
• Northeast:  LIU (93) 
• Pac-12;  Oregon State (2); Washington (1); UCLA (27)
• Patriot: Loyola, MD (86) 
• Southern:  Mercer (116); 
• Summit: Denver (76) 
• WCC:  Santa Clara; Portland (29); 
• WAC:  Seattle (43); Grand Canyon (17) 

Last Three Out:  

Northeastern (CAA), Stanford (Pac-12); Butler (Big East)

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TOP 16 SEEDING PROJECTIONS 

1. Oregon State
2. Georgetown
3. Washington
4. Notre Dame
5. Tulsa
6. Pitt
7. St. Louis
8. Marshall
9. Duke
10. Penn Sate
11. Clemson
12. Missouri St
13. Kentucky
14. Hofstra
15. West Virginia
16. Indiana

West Bracket:

1. Oregon State
2. Tulsa
3. Duke
4. Kentucky

East Bracket

1. Georgetown
2. Pitt
3. Penn State
4. Hofstra

South Bracket

1. Notre Dame
2. Marshall
3. Missouri State
4. Indiana

Midwest Bracket

1. Washington
2. Saint Louis
3. Clemson
4. West Virginia

TOP 52 RPI (prior to conference tournaments) 

1	Washington	Pac-12	14-1-1	8-0-0	0-0-0	6-1-1	0-0-0
2	Oregon St.	Pac-12	12-2-2	5-1-1	0-0-0	7-1-1	0-0-0
3	Georgetown	Big East	14-2-0	4-2-0	0-0-0	10-0-0	0-0-0
4	Pittsburgh	ACC	11-4-1	2-4-1	0-0-0	9-0-0	0-0-0
5	Clemson	ACC	13-4-0	4-2-0	0-0-0	9-2-0	0-0-0
6	Duke	ACC	12-3-1	4-1-1	0-0-0	8-2-0	0-0-0
7	New Hampshire	America East	15-0-2	8-0-0	0-0-0	7-0-2	0-0-0
8	Tulsa	AAC	13-1-1	5-1-1	0-0-0	8-0-0	0-0-0
9	Hofstra	CAA	14-1-2	6-1-1	0-0-0	8-0-1	0-0-0
10	Marshall	C-USA	11-2-3	6-1-0	0-1-0	5-0-3	0-0-0
11	Saint Louis	Atlantic 10	13-0-3	5-0-1	0-0-0	8-0-2	0-0-0
12	Kentucky	C-USA	11-1-4	3-1-2	0-0-0	8-0-2	0-0-0
13	West Virginia	MAC	11-2-4	3-2-2	0-0-0	8-0-2	0-0-0
14	Notre Dame	ACC	9-5-3	2-3-2	0-0-0	7-2-1	1-0-0
15	Missouri St.	MVC	14-1-0	5-1-0	0-0-0	9-0-0	1-0-0
16	Indiana	Big Ten	12-4-1	4-1-1	0-0-0	8-3-0	1-0-0
17	Grand Canyon	WAC	14-3-0	6-3-0	0-0-0	8-0-0	0-0-0
18	FIU	C-USA	12-2-2	5-2-2	0-0-0	7-0-0	0-0-0
19	Providence	Big East	9-3-4	3-3-2	0-0-0	6-0-2	0-0-0
20	North Carolina	ACC	11-6-1	3-4-0	0-0-0	8-2-1	0-0-0
21	Maryland	Big Ten	12-3-2	3-3-0	1-0-0	8-0-2	0-0-0
22	Virginia Tech	ACC	10-5-3	1-4-1	2-0-2	7-1-0	0-0-0
23	Creighton	Big East	8-7-2	3-3-1	0-0-1	5-4-0	0-0-0
24	Akron	MAC	9-5-3	1-4-1	0-0-0	8-1-2	0-0-0
25	Penn St.	Big Ten	11-6-1	4-4-0	0-0-0	7-2-1	0-0-0
26	Villanova	Big East	11-6-1	6-2-1	0-0-0	5-4-0	0-0-0
27	UCLA	Pac-12	9-6-1	1-3-1	0-0-0	8-3-0	0-0-0
28	Cornell	Ivy League	11-3-1	5-3-0	0-0-0	6-0-1	0-0-0
29	Portland	WCC	9-6-1	2-3-0	0-0-0	7-3-1	0-0-0
30	St. John’s (NY)	Big East	10-5-3	4-2-1	0-0-0	6-3-2	0-0-0
31	Charlotte	C-USA	10-5-0	3-3-0	0-0-0	7-2-0	0-0-0
32	Rhode Island	Atlantic 10	10-4-2	3-3-1	0-0-0	7-1-1	0-0-0
33	Michigan	Big Ten	8-6-3	2-3-1	0-0-0	6-3-2	0-0-0
34	Wake Forest	ACC	11-6-1	2-3-1	0-0-0	9-3-0	0-0-0
35	Northeastern	CAA	11-5-2	6-3-1	0-0-0	5-2-1	0-0-0
36	Stanford	Pac-12	6-6-5	2-4-2	0-0-0	4-2-3	0-0-0
37	Butler	Big East	7-8-3	2-6-2	0-0-0	5-2-1	0-0-0
38	Louisville	ACC	10-6-1	1-4-0	0-0-0	9-2-1	0-0-0
39	Northern Ill.	MAC	12-2-2	6-2-1	0-0-0	6-0-1	0-0-0
40	Central Ark.	ASUN	11-5-0	4-4-0	1-0-0	6-1-0	0-0-0
41	LMU (CA)	WCC	12-4-1	8-3-0	0-0-0	4-1-1	0-0-0
42	VCU	Atlantic 10	9-7-2	5-5-2	0-0-0	4-2-0	0-0-0
43	Seattle U	WAC	12-7-0	3-5-0	0-0-0	9-2-0	0-0-0
44	Bowling Green	MAC	10-4-3	5-3-1	0-0-0	5-1-2	0-0-0
45	UNC Greensboro	SoCon	13-4-1	5-1-1	0-0-0	8-3-0	0-0-0
46	SMU	AAC	8-4-3	3-2-0	0-0-0	5-2-3	0-0-0
47	UNCW	CAA	9-6-2	3-4-2	0-0-0	6-2-0	0-0-0
48	Syracuse	ACC	8-8-2	2-5-1	0-0-0	6-3-1	0-0-0
49	Michigan St.	Big Ten	6-9-2	2-4-2	0-0-0	4-5-0	0-0-0
50	San Diego St.	Pac-12	7-6-2	1-4-2	0-0-0	6-2-0	1-0-0
51	Georgia St.	MAC	11-5-0	6-3-0	0-0-0	5-2-0	0-0-0
52	Lipscomb	ASUN	11-3-2	5-2-1	0-0-0	6-1-1	0-0-0