{"id":151972,"date":"2025-03-15T21:33:57","date_gmt":"2025-03-16T02:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/?p=151972"},"modified":"2025-03-15T21:33:57","modified_gmt":"2025-03-16T02:33:57","slug":"why-minnesota-state-is-already-locked-in-for-the-cchas-autobid-to-the-ncaa-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2025\/03\/15\/why-minnesota-state-is-already-locked-in-for-the-cchas-autobid-to-the-ncaa-tournament\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Minnesota State is already locked in for the CCHA&#8217;s autobid to the NCAA tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Minnesota State earned the first automatic bid to the 2025 NCAA men&#8217;s hockey tournament Saturday, six days before the CCHA playoff championship will be decided.<\/p>\n<p>The Mavericks are the only team left in the CCHA tournament that&#8217;s eligible to compete in the NCAA tournament this season.<\/p>\n<p>Minnesota State&#8217;s 4-0 win over Bemidji State in the CCHA semifinals on Saturday, coupled with St. Thomas&#8217; 3-1 win over Bowling Green earlier in the day, meant the Mavericks and the Tommies will play for the championship in Mankato on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>St. Thomas isn&#8217;t eligible for the NCAA tournament until 2026 because it&#8217;s still in a transition period from Division III to Division I. That was moved up from 2027 because of an NCAA rule change in January changing the delay in tournament eligibility from five years after the program&#8217;s move to Division I to four years.<\/p>\n<p>The Tommies can win the CCHA championship by defeating Minnesota State but the Mavericks are going to get the league&#8217;s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament either way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Mavericks will host St. Thomas in the CCHA championship game but the league&#8217;s automatic qualifier is already decided.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":150176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[812],"coauthors":[901],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why 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