Dave Wang writes:
>back to the strength of schedule issue discussed a while back (harvard in
>some year a few back, and cc vs msu or whomever last year):
>imho... i wonder why a team (like cc or perhaps du) should be 'punished'
>for scheduling air force. or why should an ecac team have playing army
>held against them?
 
This is one of the bones of contention when you start to consider
strength of schedule in selecting teams for the NC$$ tourney.  The
idea is a good one IMO - otherwise you could potentially schedule
teams who you believe will give you easy DivI wins and run up your
record.
 
But there is the danger with the current system that teams will be
discouraged from playing NC opponents who seem destined to adversely
affect your SOS.  I agree that this is not a good thing either.  I
have also heard some coaches - Shawn Walsh being one - who have spoken
out about how it makes it difficult for teams to try to both boost
their rating and at the same time, help out the weaker teams by
playing them.  No one wants to see the teams like Army and USAFA hurt
if teams are afraid to schedule them and hurt their ratings.
 
However, there is also the question of just how much it hurt CC to
schedule Air Force, for example.  I seem to recall Erik did a
comparison between the final rating and the rating that would have
resulted had CC never played USAFA, and that the ratings did not
change all that much.  But I honestly do not remember the specifics.
 
In the grand scheme of things, one or two of these games may not
matter much (unless you lose them) when you are playing 34 games a
season.
 
As to why teams may schedule weaker DivI teams or DivIII teams, I come
back to what Merrimack coach Ron Anderson said after MC beat up on AIC
one night a few years ago.  He said that no matter who you play, the
atmosphere around the locker room is always better when you win.  And
so it makes sense for teams to schedule some "easy" games to boost the
morale, especially if you are a team that is struggling to establish
itself.
 
And of course, the so-called "weaker" teams, even if they lose,
benefit from playing against a better team.  I have long felt that you
only get better by playing better opponents.
 
>and why would cc's conference schedule be compared to minnesota's? cc
>doesn't get to pick whom they play in their unbalanced schedule, do they?
>isn't it the wcha league office that sets the conference schedules for
>all their members?
 
The unbalanced portion of the WCHA schedule rotates from year to year,
and I do not know that the teams have any say in who they will play
only twice.  Perhaps it is already set in stone for years in advance.
 
The problem with any kind of unbalanced schedule is that it opens the
door for all sorts of questions like the ones that came up this year.
 
>if people were disrespecting cc's regular season
>conference title because 'they played a weaker conference schedule than
>some other team,'...
 
I don't think I would call it disrespect for CC to question what
happened.  But if a team wins a regular season title in a conference
with an unbalanced schedule, it seems valid to examine the part of the
schedule that differed between the two teams, and to ask if the
results may have gone the other way if the schedule was balanced.  I
only raised this point because it was suggested that simply by virtue
of winning the WCHA reg season, CC deserved an NC$$ bid.
 
Also, I think it is important to realize that a number of factors all
contributed to CC having a poorer SOS than the teams it was competing
against for bids.  NC opponents, WCHA unbalanced schedule, playing the
last place team 3x in the playoffs and losing twice - then not getting
to move on and boost the SOS by playing higher ranked teams...by
themselves, each one of these factors may not have hurt CC all that
much, but add them all up and you get what happened to keep them out.
 
Chances are that if CC had won its first round series vs MTU, no
matter what happened to them the rest of the way in the WCHA playoffs,
they would have received a bid.
 
I have often wondered what the sentiment would have been had CC lost
the WCHA reg season by a point instead of winning it by a point and
gone on to not receive a bid.  Is it perceived that winning the reg
season really should count for that much?  Then the answer would seem
to be to award an automatic bid to the reg season champ.  But the
conferences have had this option open to them for years, yet they
consistently prefer to give the bid to the tourney champ.  I would
rather see *no* auto bids given out, but they are, and at least the
conferences get to decide who they go to.
 
>has the investigation into the situation at maine been resolved? is there
>any on-going stuff up in orono?
 
Still apparently ongoing.  No idea yet what may come down or how
serious it may be; the NC$$ can tend to take their time on these
things.
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                                            [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                    *HMM* 11/13/93
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