John Whelen wrote (regarding Jayson Moy's post):
 
> I think it's more likely that given the need to choose two teams out
> of the five-team bubble you listed, they dropped Princeton (who are
> farther below the cutoff than NMU are above it) and re-evaluated,
> which put NMU and OSU in with two comparisons each.
 
I have to go with John on this one.  Jayson's .5's and stuff just confused
the heck out of me (not really but...) and didn't seem to jive with anything
I had seen previously about tournament selection (and I have a bias against
saying that PWR is used in the selection process... because it isn't).
 
After getting home to NJ at 2:30am after the MAAC tournament, I was
disappointed to see that the two verbose items (from Keith and John) on
selection ended with "time will tell".
 
So, I looked up TBRW info and went to work.
 
I elimintated Princeton from the bubble teams because there was no possible
way to justify that Princeton could make the tournament (after reading all
the possibilities that John listed out).  Since there was no way to justify
Princeton being in the tournament, they were not included in my bubble (I
realized this was a very rough way of doing it but I think in this roughness
there is some approximation of what the committee did... but I took 5
minutes on this and the committee probably took at least an hour or two).
 
My analysis led to me saying:
 
>Plus 2 bubble teams:
>
>Ohio State, Northern Michigan
 
I got the seeds all wrong (it should be noted that Keith floated the idea of
swapping the #4 seeds even if he thought it wasn't going to happen).  I
thought attendance considerations would have been more of a factor in the
seeding and east/west stuff than it was.
 
And it should be noted that in my prediction, there was no Quinnipiac.  The
Hart Center was buzzing with will Quinnipiac get a bid talk on Friday.  Both
Rich Ensor (MAAC Commissioner) and Jack McDonald (Quinnipiac AD) stated on
the MAAC tournament radio coverage that the MAAC was just happy for the fact
that Quinnipiac was being considered for a bid (and there was a genuineness
about the way they said this).
 
My criteria for advising the selection committee to extend a bid to a MAAC
team was a team that A) won the regular season title, B) won the tournament
and C) finished in the top 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12 teams in the country per the
selection committee's criteria (excluding the MAAC exception).
 
When Quinnipiac lost to Canisius, I was fine with not extending a bid to the
MAAC (even though John thinks the fact that the MAAC didn't win their
tourney neither hurt nor helped Quinnipiac's case).
 
As someone who was in Worcester for the MAAC tournament, my opinion is that
there was a serious change in Quinnipiac's case if they won the tourney vs.
if they didn't.  I don't know how to express this properly but on Saturday,
no one was expecting Quinnipiac to receive a bid (even though they were
still amongst the top 12 teams in the country).
 
I agree with the comment that the MAAC was a winner with the way this
selection process went (just because they were so prominently mentioned as a
part of the selection consideration).
 
-jp
        _______   ______
       |__   __| |  __  |  Jason Patton        http://www.gojp.com/jp/
 ____     | |    | |__| |      Following College Hockey Since 1991
|____|    | |    |  ____|  Boston U. 1991-1995     Princeton 1995-1998
        __| |    | |       1995 NCAA Champions     1998 ECAC Champions
       |____|    |_|        MAAC Hockey League Inaugural Season 1998-
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