It's still rather early to expect meaningful results (and besides, I still
have to tidy up the presentation), but I thought it would be interesting
to show how KRACH has handled the differing schedule strengths amongst
teams.
The "executive summary": Minnesota #13, Quinnipiac #44, but Niagara #17.
In the results below, "RRWP" stands for "round-robin winning percentage":
the winning percentage KRACH thinks each team would get if they played all
the other teams once. (A large RRWP relative to actual winning percentage
means that the team has had a tough schedule.) Calculations are based on
games through Sunday.
Rank Team Pct RRWP Rating Group
1 Colgate (7-2) 0.778 0.900 877 1
2 Harvard (4-1) 0.800 0.879 678 1
3 North Dakota (8-1-1) 0.850 0.877 664 1
4 Rensselaer (8-2) 0.800 0.873 633 1
5 St Lawrence (7-2) 0.778 0.868 605 1
6 Maine (9-0-2) 0.909 0.846 479 1
7 Colorado College (8-3) 0.727 0.835 431 1
8 Cornell (4-2) 0.667 0.827 397 1
9 Wisconsin (10-2) 0.833 0.824 387 1
10 MSU-Mankato (4-2) 0.667 0.799 310 1
11 New Hampshire (8-2-1) 0.773 0.766 235 1
12 Minnesota-Duluth (4-4) 0.500 0.750 207 1
13 Minnesota (4-7-1) 0.375 0.726 171 1
14 Michigan State (10-3) 0.769 0.669 113 1
15 Boston University (6-3-2) 0.636 0.667 111 1
16 Michigan (10-3) 0.769 0.660 106 1
17 Niagara (4-2) 0.667 0.647 96 1
18 Miami (7-4-2) 0.615 0.626 83 1
19 Lake Superior (5-5) 0.500 0.595 67 1
20 Yale (3-3-1) 0.500 0.594 66 1
21 Merrimack (5-5-1) 0.500 0.585 63 1
22 Boston College (5-5) 0.500 0.582 61 1
23 Alaska-Anchorage (6-6) 0.500 0.580 60 1
24 St Cloud (3-7) 0.300 0.574 58 1
25 Denver (5-7) 0.417 0.571 57 1
26 Providence (4-6) 0.400 0.568 56 1
27 Northern Michigan (10-3-1) 0.750 0.551 49 1
28 Ferris State (6-6) 0.500 0.540 46 1
29 Clarkson (2-6-2) 0.300 0.537 45 1
30 Northeastern (3-5-2) 0.400 0.512 37 1
31 Vermont (3-5-1) 0.389 0.480 30 1
32 Western Michigan (5-5-2) 0.500 0.477 29 1
33 Princeton (1-3-2) 0.333 0.466 27 1
34 Notre Dame (4-6-2) 0.417 0.459 25 1
35 Union (3-7) 0.300 0.437 21 1
36 Nebraska-Omaha (2-4-4) 0.400 0.429 20 1
37 Dartmouth (1-2-2) 0.400 0.414 17 1
38 Mass Lowell (2-8-1) 0.227 0.410 17 1
39 Bowling Green (3-8) 0.273 0.380 13 1
40 Alaska-Fairbanks (3-9) 0.250 0.346 9.1 1
41 Ohio State (2-11-1) 0.179 0.334 7.9 1
42 Mass Amherst (2-5-1) 0.312 0.297 4.8 1
43 Air Force (4-2) 0.667 0.189 100 2
44 Quinnipiac (8-2-1) 0.773 0.157 686 3
45 Holy Cross (2-4-1) 0.357 0.139 272 3
46 Sacred Heart (3-1-2) 0.667 0.112 100 3
47 Brown (0-6) 0.000 0.104 100 4
48 Michigan Tech (0-12) 0.000 0.104 100 5
49 Canisius (3-4) 0.429 0.102 73 3
50 Iona (3-4-1) 0.438 0.092 53 3
51 American Int'l (2-3-2) 0.429 0.082 39 3
52 Army (2-5-1) 0.312 0.067 24 3
53 Fairfield (0-7-2) 0.111 0.052 14 3
54 Connecticut (1-6) 0.143 0.047 12 3
(The details of the "Rating" and "Group" columns will be explained next
week.)
Minnesota, 4-7-1, nonetheless get ranked 13th because of a strong
schedule so far (consisting of teams ranked 3, 6, 7, 9, 12 and 22). A .500
record against that kind of schedule would be good enough for top 10.
Quinnipiac, 8-2-1, get ranked 44th. This is because of a much weaker
schedule: losses against #4 and #17, then a bunch of games against teams
ranked below 44th, all of which were won except for a tie against Iona.
In fact, the teams in the ranking above split into three groups: the top
42, Air Force and the rest (including Quinnipiac); the upshot of this is
that Quinnipiac can win all they like against MAAC opposition, but they
won't rise above #44 until a MAAC team defeats someone from out of
conference (and not Army!).
I'm not picking on Quinnipiac especially; it's just that even a large
number of wins against weak opposition doesn't make a strong team.
Compare Niagara, for instance: this team is ranked #17, on a schedule
consisting of losses to #5 and #23, and wins against #15, #33, #43 amd
#44. If you think of the win against BU and the loss against UAA
"balancing out", #17 seems to be a fair ranking.
--
Ken Butler, Dept. of Mathematics & Statistics, Dalhousie University
[log in to unmask] / http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~butler
Tants caps, tants barrets.
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