Just back from Lake Placid and with 40 minutes to spare...
The season ended today, 2000 March 19
(C) 2000, Joe Schlobotnik (archives)
URL for this frameset:
http://www.slack.net/~whelan/cgi-bin/tbrw.cgi?pairwise.000319.shtml
Game results taken from US College Hockey Online's Division I composite
schedule
With the completion of the conference tournaments, the NCAA's regular season
has come to an end, and the selection committee is meeting to decide the
seedings for the national tournament. While we wait for their decisions,
let's take one last guess at how those might turn out, given the complete
set of results.
First, the automatic bids; Wisconsin, Michigan, St. Lawrence, and Boston
University receive invitations for winning the regular season championships
of the four established conferences. Additionally, North Dakota, Michigan
State, and Maine get auto bids for winning their conference tournaments.
(The ECAC tournament was won by SLU, the only team to pull off the double
this year.) That leaves five berths in the tournament to be filled with
at-large bids, chosen on the basis of pairwise comparisons among the 26
teams who finished the season with records of .500 or better in Division I
competition:
Pairwise Comparisons
Rk Team PWR RPI Comparisons Won
1 Wisconsin 25 .609 MeNDSLNiCgNHBCBUQnMSMiSCMkRPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
2 Maine 24 .608 NDSLNiCgNHBCBUQnMSMiSCMkRPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
3 North Dakota 23 .598 __ SLNiCgNHBCBUQnMSMiSCMkRPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
4 St Lawrence 22 .589 ____ NiCgNHBCBUQnMSMiSCMkRPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
5 Niagara 20 .572 ______ Cg__BCBUQnMSMiSCMkRPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
6 Colgate 19 .570 ________ NHBC__QnMSMiSCMkRPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
7 New Hampshire 19 .592 ______Ni__ BC__QnMSMiSCMkRPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
8 Boston Coll 18 .584 ____________ BUQnMSMiSCMkRPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
9 Boston Univ 18 .583 ________CgNH__ Qn__MiSCMkRPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
10 Quinnipiac 16 .566 ________________ MSMiSCMkRPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
11 Mich State 16 .563 ______________BU__ MiSCMkRPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
12 Michigan 14 .568 ____________________ SCMkRPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
13 St Cloud 12 .546 ______________________ MkRPCCMnCkCr__FSIoSHNMPvCa
14 MSU-Mankato 12 .525 ________________________ RPCCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
15 RPI 11 .543 __________________________ CCMnCkCrLSFSIoSHNMPvCa
16 CO College 8 .524 ____________________________ __CkCrLSFSIoSH__PvCa
17 Minnesota 7 .544 ____________________________CC Ck__LSFS____NMPvCa
18 Clarkson 7 .521 ________________________________ CrLS__IoSHNMPvCa
19 Cornell 6 .510 ______________________________Mn__ LS____SHNMPvCa
20 Lake Superior 6 .495 ______________________SC____________ FSIoSHNM__Ca
21 Ferris State 5 .518 ________________________________CkCr__ Io____PvCa
22 Iona 5 .495 ______________________________Mn__Cr____ SHNM__Ca
23 Sacred Heart 4 .486 ______________________________Mn______FS__ NMPv__
24 Northern Mich 4 .512 ____________________________CC________FS____ PvCa
25 Providence 3 .508 ____________________________________LS__Io____ Ca
26 Canisius 1 .507 __________________________________________SH____
As ws the case last year, the members of the Metro-Atlantic Athletic
Conference are overrated by the NCAA's criteria. The selection committee's
remedy to this is to consider the overall strength of a team's conference as
well; the table below shows the head-to-head performances among the various
conferences, along with the average Ratings Percentage Index of the teams:
Conference Avg vs HE vs WCHA vs CCHA vs CHAvs ECAC vs Leader Opp
RPI MAAC RPI
Hockey East
(H) .532 13-6 10-7 3-2-1 26-15-3 5-0 Me .522
WCHA (W) .514 6-13 15-12-1 3-1 10-2-1 0-0 Wi .503
CCHA (C) .490 7-10 12-15-1 1-2-1 11-10-2 0-0 Mi .483
CHA (A) .489 2-3-1 1-3 2-1-1 5-8-1 15-5-2 Ni .448
ECAC (E) .489 15-26-3 2-10-1 10-11-2 8-5-1 4-0 SL .479
MAAC (M) .453 0-5 0-0 0-0 5-15-20-4 Qn .437
It's easy to see that the MAAC is considerably weaker than the other five
conferences, and reasonable to expect the NCAA will leave Quinnipiac out of
the field just as they did last year. This is also consistent with the
results of more robust ratings systems such as KRACH, in which the Braves
finished 44th out of 54 teams.
The question of Niagara and the CHA is a little trickier; clearly the Purple
Eagles benefit from playing Air Force, a weak team with a deceptively high
winning percentage, four times in the regular season and once in the
playoffs. If those four wins were replaced with wins (at the beginning of
the season so as not to dominate the "record in last 16 games criterion)
over the last-place teams in the four established conferences, Niagara would
drop from their present position of fifth to thirteenth (so twelfth, leaving
out Quinnipiac) in the pairwise rankings. With the actual results, Niagara
are the 18th team in the nation in terms of KRACH and #16 in terms of the
KRACH-modified pairwise rankings. So, while it's anyone's guess what the
committee to decide, a reasonable move would be to grant Niagara an at-large
bid, but override their pairwise comparisons in the seeding process.
In that case, the first four at-large bids would go to New Hampshire,
Niagara, Colgate, and Boston College. Skipping over Quinnipiac, St. Cloud
State wins comparisons with all the other teams under consideration except
Lake Superior State, so the Huskies would get the final at-large bid. (Next
in line for a bid if Niagara were also left out would be Minnesota
State-Mankato, meaning that the question will come down to Niagara or a
fourth WCHA team.)
To organize the regions, we have three teams from the WCHA, two from the
CCHA, one from College Hockey America, two from the ECAC, and four from
Hockey East. The easiest way to achieve a starting point of six Western and
six Eastern teams is simply to consider Niagara as coming from the West.
Given that we plan to override the comparisons and consider them the low
seed, they would end up starting as an honorary Western team even if we
nominally called them Easterners in the first place. Thus the regions are:
West East
Wisconsin (W) 5 .609 NDMSMiSCNi 1 Maine (H) 5 .608 SLBUCgNHBC
North Dakota (W)4 .598 MSMiSCNi 2 St Lawrence (E) 4 .589 BUCgNHBC
Mich State (C) 2 .563 MiSC 3 Boston Univ (H) 2 .583 CgNH
Michigan (C) 1 .568 SC 4 Colgate (E) 2 .570 NHBC
St Cloud (W) 0 .546 5 New Hampshire (H) 1 .592 BC
Niagara (A) 3 .572 MSMiSC 6 Boston Coll (H) 1 .584 BU
Next comes the awarding of first-round byes. St. Lawrence receives one
automatically for winning their both the regular season and the playoffs of
the ECAC; the others are awarded on the basis of pairwise comparisons to
Maine in the East and Wisconsin and North Dakota in the West.
Now we switch two Eastern teams to the the West regional, and two Westerners
into the East. Looking at the pairwise comparisons, we see that UNH and BC
are the two lowest-ranked teams in the East, while SCSU is at the bottom of
the West, along with Niagara, provided that the committee overrides their
pairwise comparisons on the grounds of conference strength. This gives the
following teams in the two regionals:
West East
Wisconsin (W) 1 .609 ND 1 Maine (H) 1.608 SL
North Dakota (W) 0 .598 2 St Lawrence (E) 0.589
New Hampshire (H)3 .592 BCMSMi 3 Boston Univ (H) 2.583 CgSC
Boston Coll (H) 2 .584 MSMi 4 Colgate (E) 1.570 SC
Mich State (C) 1 .563 Mi 5 St Cloud (W) 0.546
Michigan (C) 0 .568 6 Niagara (A) 3.572 BUCgSC
The natural seedings (making Niagara a sixth seed based on the weakness of
their conference schedule) give the following tournament brackets:
5W Mich State (C) 6E Niagara (A)
4W Boston Coll (H) 3E Boston Univ (H)
1W Wisconsin (W) --+--2E St Lawrence (E)
|
2W North Dakota (W) --+--1E Maine (H)
3W New Hampshire (H) 4E Colgate (E)
6W Michigan (C) 5E St Cloud (W)
These contain no possible intraconference matchups in the regionals, so the
only reason to arrange the teams differently would be to increase the
expected attendance at the regionals. However, with Minnesota's WCHA rivals
Wisconsin and North Dakota, plus Big Ten rivals Michigan and Michigan State,
in the West Regional, attendance in Minneapolis should not be a problem.
Likewise, both Colgate and SLU are ECAC teams who should do reasonably well,
attendance-wise, in Albany, especially with a couple of Hockey East schools
and Niagara also in that regional.
Of course, there are various judgment calls to be made along the way,
notably the treatment of Niagara. As for the committee's actual decisions,
all will become clear by 2pm (EST) this afternoon.
The Gory Details
If you want to have a look at why each pairwise comparison turned out the
way it did, you can go to the table of comparisons on the rankings page, and
click on the individual comparisons for a breakdown of criteria.
Last Modified: 2000 March 19
Joe Schlobotnik / [log in to unmask]
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