the C-springs Gazette telegraph (quoted without permission and manually
typed...) sports editorial by Ralph Routon discussed CC not being in
the tournament and said (in part) the following...
 
[ deletia ]
 
Inexplicably, the computerized "rating performance index" listed the
Tigers 13th, leaving the WCHA's regular season champions out of the
tournament.
 
It was a terrible mistake.  CC had 23 wins and was ranked fifth
nationally in the last computer-based power rankings.  But the tigers
were shunned in favor of such fourth place teams as Western Michigan
and Northeasrtern.
 
[ deletia ]
 
He [Lucia] talked again Thursday with Rick Comley, the Northern
Michigan Coach who headed the selection committee.  Comley was
sympathetic.  It didn't help.
 
"I think changes will definitely come out of this," Lucia said.
"Unfortunately, it'll be too late for our players, especially the
seniors.  For them there's no tomorrow.  They'll just be sacrificial
lambs."
 
Lucia believes the rating index, while unbiased, was incorrectly
programmed.  It was based on 25% performance, 50% strength of schedule
and 25% opponents' strength of schedule.
 
"So in effect, the schedule was 75%," Lucia said.  "It's the same
model they use in basketball, which has a lot of nonconference games.
Hockey East has fewer teams, so they have up to 10 nonleague games.
We had only four, so in effect we were penalized for playing more
conference games because some WCHA teams' records weren't as good."
 
For instance, CC faced Michigan Tech seven times.  Tech finised last
in the WCHA, but the computer wasn't equipped to realize Tech lost
many one-goal games and gave up the second fewest goals in the lrague.
If the tigers had lost in the playoffs to the eighth-place team
instead of the 10th-place finisher, Comley told Lucia, they would have
made the NCAA tournament.
 
[ deletia of suggested alternates (regular and tourney with committee
filling out field or each conference selects 3 and the committee just
brackets) ]
 
Either plan would work far better than the present method which
assures only one berth per league.  Given the evident parity (all 4
leagues have had an NCAA champion in the past five years), legislated
balance makes enormous sense.
 
"I'm sure whatever is decided will be called the CC Rule, since it
happened because of us," Lucia said.  "But that won't make us feel any
better."
 
[ deletia ]
 
"I don't know if we could have won it all," Lucia said, "but we
deserved the chance.  I know we were one of the top five or six teams,
and we were still playing well at the end.
 
"If we had bombed out against Tech in the playoffs, I wouldn't feel so
bad now.  We played well, but we just couldn't score against maybe the
nation's best goalie (Jamie Ram).  The computer didn't know all that,
and that's what bothers me.  There has to be a better way."
 
------ end quoted material
 
charlie shub
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