Déjà vu in the NCAA Tournament?

The NCAA Division I Women’s Lacrosse Tournament bracket was announced Monday evening. Penn is the No. 2 seed and will face Colgate Sunday at 1pm. Over the next few days I’ll provide some analysis and team reactions to the draw. First was Did the Quakers get shafted? Now up, Will the Quakers see some familiar faces?

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Coaches -- including Penn women's lacrosse skipper Karin Brower -- always preach the sports cliché "let's take it one game at a time." But even Brower sometimes ignores her own advice.

After looking at this year’s NCAA bracket, Brower realized that if the seeds hold -- and judging by last year's two upsets in 15 games, they will -- the Quakers would face the exact same three teams they played in last year's NCAA tournament.

"It's kind of interesting that the bracket is similar in some aspects to last year's," Brower said, "in that we could come across [Boston University] like last year or we could come across Maryland like last year. So that's kind of strange."

The Quakers (14-1, 7-0 Ivy) drew the two seed and will face Colgate Sunday in the first round. The Quakers have only played the Raiders (11-9) twice, tying 1976 and winning in 1978. Clearly the Raiders aren't familiar to Penn. In fact, right after she learned of the draw, Coach Brower admitted as much, saying: "We don't know anything about them. We'll have to prepare for them this week."

The winner of the Penn-Colgate matchup will get the winner of No. 7 Boston University (17-2) and New Hampshire (13-5). And while Penn has never faced the Wildcats, it played the Terriers in the first round of last year's tournament, beating them 11-5. (That was the first ever Penn-BU matchup).

But don't fill in the rematch with the Terriers into your brackets just yet. That UNH team, despite finishing third in the league behind both BU and Vermont, gave BU fits this year. The teams matched up twice, once in the regular season and once in the finals of the America East Conference Tournament. Both times the Terriers only won by a goal. On April 12 the Terriers won 7-6, and then on April 27 they needed overtime to win 9-8. Will the third time be the charm for the Wildcats? By 2 p.m. Sunday we'll know.

If the Quakers make it through the first two rounds unscathed, the top seed they could face would be No. 3 Maryland in the Final Four (played conveniently enough for the Terrapins in Towson, Maryland). And just like the Terriers, the Terrapins lost to the Quakers in the 2007 tournament. (On a side note, if the Quakers do face UMD and BU, they will face the only two D-I women's lacrosse programs whose nicknames start with t-e-r.) Last year, Penn beat the Terrapins in a thrilling 9-7 comeback victory in the second round, despite being down 4-0 early and then 5-3 at the half.

Brower wasn’t the only one to realize the potential repeat matchups. Senior attack Allison Ambrozy also saw the possible rematches and had mixed feelings about it.

“We could essentially be playing the same teams as last year,” she said. “It’s boring a little bit but I also think we have an edge over them since we did beat them last year. We got a sense of their strengths, which is helpful scouting wise. But I personally would rather play some different teams.”

And finally, if the Quakers' seed holds all the way to the National Championship game, and so does the chalk in the top half of the bracket, the team waiting for them will be the Northwestern Wildcats (17-1). The Wildcats and Quakers have faced five times over the last four years. The first four results all were heavily in Northwestern's favor, as the Quakers lost by a combined 55- 20 (including a loss in the Final Four 12-2 last year).

But on April 27 this year Penn pulled off a big upset, beating then-undefeated Northwestern 11-7. If the Quakers and Wildcats were to square off once again in the finals, it'd cement this rivalry as the one of the top inter-conference ones in the nation. Considering by the end of that game four of these teams’ combined six losses over the last two years would've been to the other squad, these two teams are shaping up like the Colts-Patriots. In fact that analogy would be very applicable if the Quakers actually win the championship this year, since the year the Colts won the Superbowl they beat the Patriots in both the regular season and the playoffs.

But enough with football. In addition to teams from last year's tournament, there are three teams in the bracket, in addition to Northwestern, that the Quakers have already played this year: Temple, Princeton and North Carolina. Penn won all of those three games. However, the chances of facing any of the three are unlikely since they'd all involve multiple upsets, and the worst of the three teams, Temple, is the only one in Penn’s half of the bracket.

For the Owls to face Penn, they would have to upset Maryland and the winner of No. 6 Georgetown/Duke. The other two potential rematches, although more likely since they involve better teams, still are unlikely to occur. The No. 8 Tigers or unranked Tar Heels would need Northwestern, No. 4 Virginia and No.5 Syracuse all to lose in order to advance to the championship game.

So while 2008 opponents probably aren’t going show up again, the Quakers might experience some 2007 déjà vu come tournament time.