Q: Did Loyola deserve to be in the tournament?

Paul Carcaterra: Loyola doesn’t have any top-10 wins. Brown does. Brown beat a Cornell team that’s very effective and has some of the best midfielders in the country in [Max] Seibald and [John] Glynn and Rocco Romero and great offensive players in [Ryan] Hurley and [Rob] Pannell on the attack. I think they beat an excellent Cornell team, and Loyola doesn’t have that marquee victory. They played a lot of teams tough – Syracuse, Hopkins, Notre Dame – to one-goal games, but at the end of the day, you have to beat some of them. Limiting them to one goal isn’t enough. And Maryland has top-10 wins against North Carolina and Duke. Loyola’s a good team, don’t get me wrong. It’s a shame they don’t an opportunity to continue playing because they have shown that they can play with the best. But at the end of the day, it’s about wins and losses against quality opponents, and playing them to one goal isn’t good enough.

Q: Which top-four seed has the easiest road to the final four?

PC: Personally, I’d rather be a second-seeded Syracuse than a No. 1 Virginia. That first-round game against Villanova, they should win, but it’s not going to be a total joke like some of those others that No. 1 seeds have played in the past. At the end of the day, they should win that game pretty comfortably, but look at who they’re staring at as a potential quarterfinal matchup? Johns Hopkins. That’s a team that’s been to the national championship three times in the past four years. They’re battle-tested, they’ve shown that they can play with Virginia when they lost by one goal. Virginia’s a team that has struggled in the last few weeks. Maybe they put it together and show that they deserve to be a [No.] 1 seed, but I wouldn’t want Hopkins in the quarterfinals. On the other hand, Syracuse has to beat Siena in the [Carrier] Dome. I don’t see them really struggling with Siena, and then they play the winner of Notre Dame and Maryland. Notre Dame has shown that you better put some big boys on your schedule or you’re going to get hurt. They’re undefeated and they’re [seeded] seventh in the tournament. They beat one top-10 team, and only one top-10 team was one their schedule. I think strength of schedule really hurt them in the long run. Or they get a Maryland team that many people thought was on the bubble and hasn’t played to its potential. They certainly have the talent, but what happens come tournament time is another story.

Q: Which top-four seed has the toughest road to the final four?

PC: Virginia. Hopkins, you look at that team, and it seems like they play everyone close. They’re beating teams that they should be beating by a lot only by a little or squeaking out games against teams like Maryland and Loyola. But they’ve also shown that they can play with anyone, losing to Virginia by one. I just think [head] coach [Dave] Pietramala, [associate head] coach [Bill] Dwan and [offensive coordinator Bobby] Benson are just really, really good coaches and adjust extremely well from regular-season match-ups to tournament games. If you look at their win-loss record against teams they lost to in the regular season and played again in the tournament, it’s pretty remarkable. I just wouldn’t want – as a top seed – to have to play Hopkins in the quarterfinals. I just don’t think that’s an easy road to the final four.