On Monday afternoon, the Georgetown men’s soccer team (10-5-4, 5-3-1 Big East) experienced yet another heartbreak when they missed out on a bid to enter the NCAA tournament this year. The squad gathered hopefully to hear the selection committee’s picks, but the announcement brought the Hoyas’ successful season to an abrupt end.

“We’re obviously disappointed. … But by Sunday it was pretty clear that it went from our chances being pretty good to pretty poor because of the number of conference upsets over the weekend,” Head Coach Brian Wiese said.

“There are just a lot of things beyond our control that take over how these tournaments go and how your opponents do as the season goes on,” Wiese continued. “And all that factored into the funny [Rating Percentage Index] number. And the selection committee uses that number heavily — too heavily, in my opinion.”

The exclusion from this year’s tournament was not too big of a surprise, even though the team was ranked in the top 20 for almost the entire season. Wiese speculated last week that the Hoyas’ lack of RPI wins and notable victories over highly-ranked opponents would keep the team out of the tournament.

“I think we had a good sense going in that we weren’t going to be picked,” Wiese said. “We would have been very surprised, happily so, just because of how the process works.”

Last year, the Hoyas earned their first tournament berth since 1997, largely because they were the Blue Division regular season champions and had earned a bye to the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament. This year, Georgetown entered the Big East tournament as the sixth seed and fell to third-seeded St. John’s. The Red Storm went on to capture the Big East Championship with a 1-0 victory over Connecticut.

St. John’s enters the NCAA tournament as the ninth seed after earning a bye to the second round. Six other teams from the Big East conference clinched tournament berths this year, including Connecticut, University of South Florida, Louisville, Providence, Rutgers and West Virginia.

Despite their lack of an at-large bid this year, the Hoyas finished the season with several individuals recognized by the Big East conference. Sophomore forward Steve Neumann earned a spot on the All-Big East first team after leading Hoyas in points for the second consecutive season, recording 11 goals and seven assists.

Junior midfielder Ian Christianson also earned a spot on the All-Big East second team while classmate and defender Jimmy Nealis earned All-Big East third team honors. Freshman goalkeeper Tomas Gomez was named to the Big East All-Rookie team after his impressive first year in net.

The decision marks the end of a successful season — one that included a ten-game unbeaten streak, seven shutouts and notable victories over teams like Marquette, who went on to capture the Blue Division regular season championship this year.

The Hoyas will graduate three seniors this year — defender Ben Slingerland, midfielder Ibu Otegbeye and forward Uche Onyeador. While the loss of the seniors is significant for the team, Georgetown will return with a strong squad eager to avenge this season’s disappointment.

“This is the kind of group that will use the fact that we didn’t get selected, even though we had the quality to get picked, as motivation moving forward,” Wiese said. “It’s a very resilient group. I have expectations and hopes of the best season since I’ve been at Georgetown coming up next year.”