Well I'm kind of a math guy being an engineer and all, and IMHO I suspect
that we are likely to benefit more if  BC beats a team that we have a chance
of passing rather than if  BC wins giving them a better rating and thereby
giving us a better rating when we beat BC.

Shouldn't we want our closest competition above us to loose particularly
those in Hockey East?

I especially want UNH and BU to loose but I don't know if that's much of a
"math" related thing.  :o)

Clair



-----Original Message-----
From: The Maine Hockey Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Wayne T Smith
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2005 2:05 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Reality Check

No squaks or squeeks from me! ;-)

james acheson wrote, in part,  on 2/9/2005 12:07 PM:

> so... let me ask this, though... why do we want BC to lose to Harvard???


I have no idea, but my sense is that we "want" BC to win..

At this point in the season, given the way the NCAA places teams in its
regionals, there is nothing specific to do to help staying East rather
than traveling to a West regional.  See Jayson Moy's "Bracketology" at
USCHO.com for the details.

So the question may be thought of in terms of "How is Maine's ranking
affected by the result of the upcoming BC vs Harvard (Beanpot *losers*
bracket next Monday)?".  I don't know the real answer, but will guess:

   * Since we don't have a win over Harvard, we don't care who wins.

   * Since we will play BC 2 or 3 more times, we may well have wins over
them and wish for them to be as highly ranked as possible.

Finally, there's a real chance this season, IMHO, for all four top seeds
coming from the West, making for increased odds of an all-West Frozen
Four.  That might be OK for you land-locked folks, but for this mariner
who'd rather talk submarines than corn at the Frozen Four in a couple of
months ... this would not be a pretty sight! ;-)

So this part of "we" mildly wants BC to beat Harvard!

cheers, wayne