Some comments of mine about recent posts:
1) Thanks to Chris Morgan for giving his insights on "my" realignment of the
CCHA with UAF added. It's going to be tough (if the CCHA adopts such
a format) to have even divisions at the moment. That was one of the
reasons I thought that LSSU should be in a different division than MSU
or UM. If you look at this year's seedings, the East(South) would have
the #1, #3, #5, #6, #11, and #12 seeds while the West(North) has the
#2, #4, #7, #8, #9, and #10 seeds. And given that UAF's seeding was
determined by who wanted to play them, these numbers are slightly off.
UAF competing with a full CCHA schedule, IMO, could be expected to be
one of the top 6 in the league, which would put 3 of the top 6 in each
division. My playoff would be:
E1 vs. W6 W1 vs. E6
E2 vs. W5 W2 vs. E5
E3 vs. W4 W3 vs. E4
(in three game sets at site of higher seed)
Quarterfinals
Highest East seed remaining vs. lowest West seed
Highest West seed remaining vs. lowest
(wait, scratch that)
Highest East and West seeds left get byes
2nd higest East vs. lowest West left
2nd highest West vs. lowest East left
(in the event of an unbalance, e.g. E1, E2, E3, E4,
W1, and W2 advance, then quarters
would be:
E2 vs. E3
W2 vs. E4)
Semifinals: Highest East seed vs. 2HW-LE winner
Highest West seed vs. 2HE-LW winner
This would become really problematic, if for instance, 5 East seeds and
only one West advanced. But I haven't worked ALL the bugs out yet.
2) I would agree that the NC$$ Tournament field should be expanded to 16 teams.
I don't agree with mandating that four teams from each conference should
get bids. Used this year, that would mean that NMU gets excluded while
Brown gets invited (odds are that neither will make it this year, bar-
ring some upsets in the conference tournaments). In addition, not all
conferences are the same size. Taking 4 of the (what will be) 9 HE
teams gets almost half the conference, while taking 4 of the 12 CCHA
teams gets only 1/3. If there were more non-conference games, then
this could be used. But when most teams play no more than 3 or 4 games
outside their conference (and some of those are against teams in the
conference that don't count in the conference standings), there's no
real judge of which conference is stronger and deserves more teams.
3) If college hockey wants to make it so that more of the common folk are
interested in the sport and will watch it, PLEASE MOVE THE TIME OF
THE DAMN FINAL!! Nobody in their right mind would schedule a major
sporting event at THE SAME TIME as the second National Semifinal of
the NC$$ Basketball Tournament (esp. last year when that game involved
two of the best teams in college basketn
ball, Kentucky and Michigan).
How about moving it to Friday night? Or Sunday afternoon (I'm sure
we could outdraw the Women's Final)? Anytime but Saturday night
opposite the Semis!!!!!!! Then we might get it on a major network
and we wouldn't have to listen to Tom Mees butcher the sport!
I'm done venting now. Now to return you to the main(e) topic. (Thanks, who-
ever came up with that!)
G. M. Finniss
Michigan State University
WVU (going NIT) '87, UTenn (going home) '92, MSU (going to the Dance) who the
hell knows when?
TA UNIONS STILL SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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