let me explain something to you.
First, Emporia State (Kansas) was 15th, not 16th, and that was the ESPN poll, not seedings.
Second, this game was the national semifinal. It was not a first round game as you may think.
Third, and most importantly, the seeding in Division II is much different than what you are familiar with:
1. Regions are technically regions. In the South regional, you have teams from the Gulf South Conference (Delta State, UNA, Arkansas Tech, West Georgia, etc.), the Sunshine State Conference (Florida's Division II schools) and the Division II version of the SWAC.
2. Those teams are seeded 1-8 in the region, with the 1 seed normally hosting (occasionally a 2 or 3 seed hosts if the 1 cannot accommodate) and the winner of the region goes to the "Elite Eight," an eight-team neutral site tournament in St. Joseph, Mo.
That being said, Gannon was a pretty good team from the Mid-Atlantic region (a bunch of Pennsylvania and New Jersey schools), but that is a weak region. Consider that they won their three regional games by 27, 20, and 17, and got to the Elite Eight and faced Tusculum, a 22-9 team from a very competitive South Atlantic region (Peach Belt Conference), and won a 70-66 nailbiter.
Then here comes Emporia State, a 26-5 team that won the ultra competitive, Big East of Division II women'a basketball, the South Central region. In fact, they had to beat the #9 team in the nation and the #3 team in the nation just to get out of their regional. An untested Gannon team had no idea what hit them.
So Gannon equals St. Joseph's a few year ago in DI men's. St. Joseph's went undefeated, but did not play a tough schedule. Did not mean they weren;t good, but they struggled when they got to the second round of the tournament, and eventually bailed out in the Elite Eight.
