Charlie wrote:
>
>if one goes strictly by the numbers
>Ft Wayne
> miami/huntsville
> bemidji/yale
>St Paul
> Denver/rit
> cornell/ northern michigan
>albany
> Wisconsin/vermont
> St cloud/new hampshire
>worcester
> BC/alaska
> nodak/michigan
In the bar after the Final Five, I came up with the same thing College Hockey News did:
Assume that "a flight is a flight" when assigning the #1 seeds:
Ft Wayne
Miami/Huntsville
Bemidji/Yale
Albany
Denver/RIT
Cornell/ Northern Michigan
St Paul
Wisconsin/Vermont
St Cloud/New Hampshire
Worcester
BC/Alaska
Nodak/Michigan
This gives a much better attendance picture. It also assumes the committee will continue its recent practices of breaking ties by RPI and not concerning itself with second-round intraconference match-ups (as Charlie did later in his post).
Theoretically there are 4!=24 ways the committee might decide to break the 4-way tie between Vt/UNH/Alaska/Michigan, 12 of them that don't put BC against another HE team in the first round. So it's possible the committee could use one of these as a convenient rationale for swapping Mich into St. Paul and one of Vermont/UNH to Worcester.
-Pam