John W.:
 
>         Right now Colgate and Clarkson are on the right and wrong
> sides of the bubble, respectively, but if they both finish strong and
> a fourth team wins the ECACs, it could happen, although there could
> also be upsets in the other tourneys.  OTOH, if they both tank, we
> could be back to the dark days of 1995.
 
The best bet for the ECAC is probably for Yale to tank their final matchups
against league contenders and just eek out the RS title; have the league #2
finish strongly and wind up beating Yale in the Consy (question: umm... is
there a consy at Placid this year?); have the league #3 finish strongly and
lose the final; and then have a darkhorse, but still a TUC, win the whole
enchilada and snag the other auto-bid.  Assuming for argument's sake this
gave us the current top four as ECAC contenders for bids, we'd wind up with
Yale and RPI as auto bids (and both in Albany, and both East byes going to
HE), Clarkson and Colgate sneaking in under the PWR wire.  What makes that
interesting?  Both CLK and COL are close to Albany and are natural draws
for the regional.  I am pretty sure one would be shifted to the West -- and
I'd guess it would be Clarkson simply because they have a larger and more
geographically-diverse following.
 
For the same reason, I think no matter what permutations of events would
result in Cornell making the field (actually, there's only one chance, and
that's a Plaid three-peat), the Big Red would wind up in the west regional,
simply on the strength of their road following.  Considering the strong
Cornell contingent at VanAndel last year, the Faithful may do some odd
things to the Big Red chances.
 
(Note that whatever happens, CU going west would be just fine with me.
I'll be overjoyed just to make the field, especially since it will almost
certainly mean Cornell will have a record 10th ECAC conference championship
flag flying from the Lynah rafters next year).
 
We'll see... it will be a marvelous March.
 
> comparisons among the remaining ECAC teams.  Remember that the
> committee no longer just uses the total PWR; they look at individual
> comparisons among teams competing for a slot, seed or whatever.
 
Um... really???  Let's say Yale sweeps the RS/PS and Clarkson and Cornell
wind up, I dunno, 14th and 16th in PWR.  But say further that Cornell swept
Clarkson in the RS and even , for sake of argument, beat em in the Placid
SF to go 3-0.  Clarkson winds up with more total pair wins, Cornell winds
up with a dominant head-to-head pair win.  They'd actually take Cornell as
the #2 ECAC?  That seems to defeat much of the purpose of the PWR for me.
After all, the cusp is where the heavy pissing and ranting happens -- it is
where the NCAA should most rely on the determinism of the PWR.  Just my
20,000 lire...
 
-- Greg
 
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