You have to feel pretty good when a traveler you leave a voicemail with returns your call before he even picks up his bag from the luggage carousel.

It's even better when it's the chairman of a tournament selection committee that wrapped up its work a few hours earlier.

It's getting pretty late --- and I want to have some goodies left over for tomorrow --- but here is Bucknell senior associate AD and lacrosse committee chair Tim Pavlechko's take on the exclusion of Georgetown from this year's field.

"Georgetown had a great year and there were more than 16 teams that deserve to be in this tournament," Pavlechko said. "There was a bundle of teams that we were splitting hairs on. Georgetown was one of the teams we spent a lot of time talking about. We held as firm as we could to the selection criteria, and looking at the one thing that was most difficult for Georgetown was the strength of schedule."

Pavlechko also mentioned the results-driven criteria as well, but this pretty much confirms what seemed to be the best explanation for Georgetown's exclusion: The ECAC was middling at best this season, and the Hoyas were forced to play seven of their 13 games against that competition.

Even after tossing Mount St. Mary's and league opponents Fairfield and St. John's from the strength of schedule equation, Georgetown still had to count Penn State, Rutgers and Massachusetts among its top 10 opponents. And in reality, Loyola, Hobart and Delaware didn't do all that much to help, either.

Compare that with at-large pick Denver, which got to jettison anyone not in the top half of the final RPI from its schedule strength calculation. Or Navy, which just played a larger number of quality teams (Hopkins, Maryland, Ohio State, Georgetown, Cornell, Bucknell, Army, Colgate twice) than the Hoyas did.

OK, that's it for tonight. Expect plenty more fallout tomorrow and the opening of the tournament inches closer.

--- Patrick Stevens