Of the 16 scenarios for the possible seeds in next week's Patriot League tournament, eight would result in Navy earning the No. 1 seed and homefield advantage, six would give Loyola Maryland the top seed and homefield advantage, and two would send those honors to Colgate.
Greyhounds coach Charley Toomey is convinced of one thing.
"I briefly looked at it, and the scenario that I care about is Loyola beating Bucknell on Friday night," he said Tuesday afternoon. "That's the scenario that Loyola needs to worry about. Whether we're the [No.] 1 seed, 2 seed, 3 seed, 5 seed, what we need to do is take care of business. [The seeding scenarios are] for everybody else, that's for the administrators. Right now, Loyola's got to worry about one thing, and that's Loyola."
No. 17 Loyola (7-6 overall and 5-2 league) must defeat the Bison (7-5, 4-3) for a chance to tie No. 19 Navy (8-4, 6-2). Because of a head-to-head tiebreaker via a 17-7 rout of the Midshipmen on April 4, the Greyhounds could capture the top seed and homefield advantage in the Patriot League tournament.
Loyola was the No. 1 seed and hosted last year's conference tournament, meaning that it earned a bye in the first round. There are eight scenarios in which the team could drop to the No. 4 or 5 seed, where it would play on Tuesday in the first round, and that possibility is more concerning to Toomey.
"Now you've got to win three games in less than seven days and that becomes a bigger challenge," he said. "With a league like this, you certainly would like to be the No. 1 or 2 seed because you don't want to play on Tuesday and then turn around to play [the semifinals on] Friday and [the final on] Sunday. That's a lot on these kids."
All four conference games – the Greyhounds at Bucknell, Colgate (7-4, 5-2) at No. 18 Army (8-4, 4-3), Holy Cross (5-7, 2-5) at Boston University (7-5, 4-3), and Lafayette (4-9, 1-6) at Lehigh (6-8, 2-5) – will unfold on Friday at 7 p.m. Toomey said he doesn't mind the games occurring simultaneously so that his players can avoid watching the scoreboard.
"It would be nice to know that we're on the sideline and that as the whistle is blowing, all we can worry about is what we can control and that's our game," he said. "Our kids are probably oblivious to that when it's happening. This week, maybe they will be more tuned in, but hopefully if the guys are listening, they're looking more at the scoreboard at what Loyola has and what Bucknell has versus anything else."