On Sunday Northwestern destroyed North Carolina, 21-7, to clinch its fifth-straight NCAA title. They’re still two titles away from tying Maryland’s streak from 1995-2001. The game saw a record for margin of victory in a championship game, as well as a tie for most total goals. Katrina Dowd finished with four goals for Northwestern, pushing her record for most goals in a tournament to 22.

Here’s a very interesting write up of the game by Michael Wilbon. For those that don’t know, the Washington Post writer and ESPN personality is a Northwestern alum and has a cousin/goddaughter on the Wildcats lacrosse team. For him, seeing NU win the national championship Sunday was the first time he’d ever seen his alma mater win a championship in any sport.

As for Penn, they earned two All-Tournament selections, Katie Mazer and Ali DeLuca. It should be noted, that in each of the previous two years senior defense Hilary Renna was an All-Tournament selection. However, this year she was declared ineligible for the Final Four.

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In case you haven’t heard, there’s a big game today at 6 p.m. at Johnny Unitas Stadium in Towson, Md.

So here is  a bevy of preview material before No. 4 Penn (15-2) faces No. 1 Northwestern (21-0) in the Division I Women’s Lacrosse Final Four. First, here is my own preview article. The Daily Northwestern does not have a normal preview of the match, but it does have a good profile of Hilary Bowen, who injured her anterior cruciate ligament in early April, yet recovered to play against Princeton last Saturday and will get some playing time today.

Here is The Philadelphia Daily News’ preview, focusing on Penn seniors Becca Edwards and Kaitlyn Lombardo. Meanwhile Philip Hersh, of the The Chicago Tribune, continues his adoration of NU’s Hannah Nielsen, asking if the Australian is the greatest women’s lacrosse player of all time.

Here are some basic breakdowns of both the Penn-NU matchup and the second semifinal between No. 2 Maryland and No. 3 North Carolina: Inside Lacrosse, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post.

Of course, both Athletic Departments have their own preview materials. Penn’s standard preview is here, and there are a lot of other good items on the W. Lax homepage. Northwestern has a standard preview.

In terms of following the game, you have several options. First, I’ll have a live blog here on The Buzz (note: that link won’t be live until later today). For a look back at last year’s two Final Four live blogs, here’s the semifinal against Duke (gets pretty crazy towards the end of the game) as well as the more somber Northwestern National Championship game. Also,  the game will be televised on CBS College Sports for those that get it. Finally, Brian Seltzer and Mike Mahoney will have a live audio stream on Penn Athletics‘ website.

Seven weeks ago I wrote about (M. Hoops)  Selection Sunday and how awesome it is. Well today’s another Selection Sunday, albeit one with significantly less hype: Both the men’s and women’s lacrosse NCAA Tournament brackets will be revealed this evening.

On the men’s side, it looks like Ivy League will have three teams, as Inside Lacrosse predicts Princeton will get the four seed, Cornell the eight, and Brown will face No. 7 Notre Dame. The official bracket will be released at 9 p.m. on ESPNU.

(For those that don’t know, the men’s and women’s tournament don’t seed all 16 teams. Instead, the top eight are seeded and then the rest are normally paired up based on convenience of travel, as the NCAA tries to limit teams that must fly to games in the first two rounds.)

But of course the more important bracket for Penn is the women’s one (in fact, for the last two years this Selection Sunday has been more relevant to the University than the March Madness version).  The bracket will be released on CBS College Sports at 10 p.m. For those of you that don’t get CBS College Sports (which I assume is most of you), tonight around 9:45 or so I’ll have a live blog detailing the Selection Show. But as for now, join me after the jump for some predictions on what seed Penn will get.

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Although Penn basketball has historically dominated Penn State and in fact holds a 31-13 all-time record against its larger in-state rival with a similar name, the Nittany Lions had a resurgent season in the Big Ten this year. That includes a dominating performance against the Quakers in the first half that led to a 85-73 victory at the Palestra earlier this season.

While Penn State didn’t survive the NCAA tournament bubble, tonight the Nittany Lions defeated Baylor, 69-63, to win the NIT championship.

With 36 busloads of students as well as Joe Paterno — claiming that basketball is his second favorite sport — in the crowd, the Nittany Lions came back after being down four at halftime.

Meanwhile, Penn also played earlier this season against two of the four teams still alive in postseason play — North Carolina and Villanova, which square off in the Final Four.  The Quakers lost by 15 to the Tarheels on the road in the season opener, while Big 5 rival Villanova drubbed the Red and Blue by 22 in early December.

So using margins of victory over Penn as a barometer — and the fallacious transitive property of sports — Villanova > UNC > Penn State.  Perhaps the Wildcats will win tomorrow then?

In fact, if Villanova were to beat UNC and then beat the winner of No. 1 Connecticut and No. 2 Michigan State in the championship game, it would be the first time since 2003 that the NIT and NCAA Champion were from the same state. That year St. John’s and Syracuse won those titles, respecitvely. That’s the only time this coincidence has happened since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

I’ll admit I didn’t watch too much of the games today, though I caught the finish of most games. So my thoughts will be short.

What I liked

• Sienna giving Louisville all it could handle. Fran McCaffery — the former Penn point guard — coached the Saints to 63-62 lead with 5:07 to go. But the Cardinals pushed on the gas, finishing the game on a 17-9 run.
• My bracket. After the first two rounds, I got 12/16 Sweet 16 teams correct (Arizona, Syracuse, Purdue and Duke being the exceptions) and more importantly all of my Elite Eight and Final Four teams are still alive.

What I didn’t like

• How the Missouri Marquette game ended. It looked like Marquette would have a great chance to get the tournament’s first true buzzer beater. But imbounding the ball with 5.5 seconds left, Lazar Hayward stepped over the out-of-bounds line, giving Missouri back the ball. In short, it cheapened the end to what otherwise was a thrilling game.

1) Dartmouth played in the opening round of the NCAA Women’s Tournament, and it wasn’t pretty. No. 1 Maryland destroyed them, winning 83-52. Not helping the Big Green, the game was played at Maryland’s Comcast Center. Here’s a more humorous look at the game.

2) The women’s basketball team participated in the “Pink Zone” campaign to raise money/awareness for breast cancer research this season. Today Penn athletics announced that the team raised over $8,000 this year from “Pink Zone” t-shirts, individual contributions and ticket sales from the game against Yale which was designated the “Pink Zone” game of the year for Penn.

3) Alex Grendi, who was a key contributor to the men’s soccer team’s Ivy League Championship, was signed to a developmental contract by the Columbus Crew earlier this month after being drafted in January. Well last night the Crew tied the Houston Dyanmo, and Grendi got an assist — according to Penn Athletics.  However, ESPN didn’t give him the assist. I guess the world wide leader only counts the pass immediately preceding the goal.

Sorry this is a little late, but I wasn’t by my computer last night. And just a disclaimer: as you can see from my Day 1 and Day 2 entries, these thoughts are my opinions. As such they’re inherently biased, which I realize isn’t exactly in line with journalism objectivity. So if any Duke fans are reading this, sorry.

Continue after the jump.

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Yesterday, my colleague Andrew Scurria questioned why, politically, President Obama would fill out a bracket. Stats guru Nate Silver offers one answer: Obama’s picks — which, as of this writing, have the Leader of the Free World ranked at No. 3,337,106 on ESPN.com — tend to favor schools in swing states.

Jay Leno asked Obama about this 36-plus minutes into his Tonight Show appearance:

MR. LENO: Like, do you look at the whole picture when you do that? For example, isn’t that a swing state? (Laughter and applause.) I’m just saying, are you looking at the whole picture when you pick?

MR. OBAMA: I mean, the fact that teams from North Carolina, Indiana, Iowa, all seem to do well in my bracket –- (laughter) –- I think is a complete coincidence. Absolutely.

Silver’s findings were statistically significant (at the 90% level), but probably not significant in any real sense, with 2012 still three years away.

Yet there have been some more meaningful studies to get you through March Madness, and Penn has been at the forefront. In last Sunday’s New York Times, two Wharton professors wrote that NCAA hoops teams trailing by one at half are actually more likely to win than teams up by one. More after the jump.

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From a political perspective, I don’t see why President Obama’s advisers thought it was smart for him to fill out an NCAA bracket. If he does poorly, he looks like a sports dunce. If he does well, he looks like a man who should be spending less time filling out brackets and more time saving Citigroup or crucifying A.I.G. And no matter how well Obama does, someone who wasn’t happy with a Presidential snub was bound to mouth off at some point.

For Penn president Amy Gutmann, on the other hand, making picks in public is a good move. She has nothing to lose in the court of public opinion. If her bracket gets busted, who will notice?

Wouldn’t you know it, Obama’s picks are falterning already, while Gutmann’s are doing quite well. Penn’s fearless leader gue- I mean, picked the correct team in 23 of 32 first-round games. Obama’s bracket — the one issue he’s been conservative on — was right on just 19 of 32 games, and he lost two of his Sweet Sixteen teams (Florida State and Wake Forest), while Gutmann lost one (also Wake Forest).