John T. Whelan wrote:
> b) Lowell:
>
> Team lPWR RPI Comps | Team lPWR RPI Comps
> 1 CO College (W) 1 .615 Mi | 1 Boston Univ (H) 1 .621 Vt
> 2 Michigan (C) 0 .615 | 2 Vermont (E) 0 .581
>
> 3 Minnesota (W) 3 .603 MLMSPv | 3 Lake Superior (C) 3 .605 WMCkCr
> 4 Mass-Lowell (H) 2 .569 MSPv | 4 Western Mich (C) 2 .582 CkCr
> 5 Mich State (C) 1 .582 __ Pv | 5 Clarkson (E) 1 .576 __ Cr
> 6 Providence (H) 0 .549 ____ | 6 Cornell (E) 0 .558 ____
>
> This was the option the NCAA chose. The natural brackets gave
> one potential ECAC matchup, but with all three ECAC teams in one
> regional, that's unavoidable; at least it required an upset (which as
> we know didn't happen):
>
> 5W Mich State (C) 6E Cornell (E)
> 4W Mass-Lowell (H) 3E Lake Superior (C)
> 1W CO College (W) --+--2E Vermont (E)
> |
> 2W Michigan (C) --+--1E Boston Univ (H)
> 3W Minnesota (W) 4E Western Mich (C)
> 6W Providence (H) 5E Clarkson (E)
This is the beginning of all my problems, and John should have reminded me of
Bode's Law two years ago. By sheer coincidence, these brackets produce a
tournament that is perfectly seeded 1-12 by the ranking system we were
discussing on the list at the time (I can't remember whether that was RPI or
PWR). Given my own bias that this is the most important part of seeding the
tournament, I naturally assumed that this was what the committee intended.
It turns out that that wasn't what they were getting at at all, but it
colored all of my thinking since.
> c) Clarkson:
>
> Team lPWR RPI Comps | Team lPWR RPI Comps
> 1 CO College (W) 1 .615 Mi | 1 Boston Univ (H) 1 .621 Vt
> 2 Michigan (C) 0 .615 | 2 Vermont (E) 0 .581
>
> 3 Minnesota (W) 3 .603 MSCkPv | 3 Lake Superior (C) 3 .605 MLWMCr
> 4 Mich State (C) 2 .582 CkPv | 4 Mass-Lowell (H) 2 .569 WMCr
> 5 Clarkson (E) 1 .576 __ Pv | 5 Western Mich (C) 1 .582 __ Cr
> 6 Providence (H) 0 .549 ____ | 6 Cornell (E) 0 .558 ____
>
> This gives two possible second-round conference matchups
> (Cornell-UVM and Lowell-BU) under the natural seeding, but if you swap
> LSSU with UML and WMU with Cornell (thus preserving the first-round
> pairings) you have no intraconference games in either regional:
>
> 5W Clarkson (E) 6E Western Mich (C)
> 4W Mich State (C) 3E Mass-Lowell (H)
> 1W CO College (W) --+--2E Vermont (E)
> |
> 2W Michigan (C) --+--1E Boston Univ (H)
> 3W Minnesota (W) 4E Lake Superior (C)
> 6W Providence (H) 5E Cornell (E)
>
> The fact that they didn't do this is one reason I was surprised by the
> idea of re-arranging seeds within regions in 1997.
I believe I remember the NCAA saying that BOTH Cornell and Clarkson were
chosen over Mass-Lowell for attendance reasons.
> What I think happened is that the committee decided to start
> with MSU as the nominal East team, knowing they wanted them in the
> West ultimately, and thus went with regions (a) to start with. The
> other posssibility is that they broke the tie between the 6th and 7th
> West teams based on RPI rather than the individual comparison, but
> this would seem to go against the usual procedure of looking at the
> individual comparisons. Ultimately, it doesn't matter; the committee
> has discretion to choose which two Western teams go East, and they
> decided it would be the two Colorado teams (positions 4-7 in the West
> were plagued by non-transitive comparisons anyway). The regions after
> swapping were thus:
It doesn't matter if the end result of the 1997 seedings is the only question
at hand, but it does matter if the seeding committee ever wants us to take
its explanations of the process seriously. Either they went with RPI instead
of the individual comparison or MSU wasn't really the lowest seeded team. In
the first case, it's hard to put much credence in their explanations if they
can't keep it straight which rating system they're using. In the second,
then the information contained within the Marsh interview is flat out
incorrect. Joe Marsh may simply have misspoken about how the process went;
if this is the case, my problem is with the article, not the committee; I'd
just like to see a correction explaining how it really works.
> EAST | WEST
> 1 Michigan (C) 1 .628 ND | 1 Clarkson (E) 1 .600 BU
> 2 North Dakota (W) 0 .588 | 2 Boston Univ (H) 0 .577
>
> 3 Minnesota (W) 3 .581 MmCrMS | 3 Vermont (E) 3 .579 NHCCDU
> 4 Miami (C) 2 .577 CrMS | 4 New Hampshire (H) 2 .591 CCDU
> 5 Cornell (E) 1 .570 __ MS | 5 CO College (W) 1 .560 __ DU
> 6 Mich State (C) 0 .547 ____ | 6 Denver U (W) 0 .554 ____
>
> Then, in a move very unpopular in Minneapolis but obvious given their
> priorities, the committee switched the Minnesota/MSU pairing with the
> Miami/Cornell one to minimize the number of intraconference games at
> one:
>
> 5W Mich State (C) 6E Denver U (W)
> 4W Minnesota (W) 3E Vermont (E)
> 1W Michigan (C) --+--2E Boston Univ (H)
> |
> 2W North Dakota (W) --+--1E Clarkson (E)
> 3W Miami (C) 4E New Hampshire (H)
> 6W Cornell (E) 5E CO College (W)
To keep it short (hey, no snickering back there in the corner), I won't
rehash any of last year's arguments other than to say that when you're done
with the process and have an obvious absurdity, revisit some of the early
assumptions.
J. Michael Neal
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