Cascade Conference president Amanda Quiles confirmed that Eastern Washington has forfeited its at-large berth to the first round of the DII College Spring Championship. EWU is the only active DII college in the Pacific Northwest, as fellow 2017 regional playoff rep Western Washington moved to DI this season.
On March 23, Quiles wrote:
EWU has submitted an at-large bid. My understanding is that there is no reason the bid would not be accepted as we have received paperwork for them for Stanford. However, there could always be a curveball.
Turns out, the curve ball was EWU itself. On April 8, Quiles responded:
The rumor is true. They’ve had trouble with leadership which has caused an issue with numbers leading them to retract their bid.
There were already two first-round byes for the western portion of the regional championships, and six teams, including EWU, were to convene at Stanford April 21-22. (Two groups of four teams will compete at Life University and East Carolina in the east). One adjustment is to just have the finalists from Gold Coast (Claremont, Long Beach State) and West Coast (Fresno State, UN Reno) fill out a pool of four in Stanford – rather than scramble for replacements – but that leaves the question of how to fashion a final four out of three pools.
But if replacements are necessary, then UC Irvine only lost to Long Beach State by three points in yesterday’s second-place match, so they’d be a good option to further build out the pool. St. Mary’s and Sacramento State are also options from West Coast.