I know that games against Alabama in Huntsville were not included in the
"numbers".  John has YELLED at me about that previously (even though I was
well aware of that without his input).  Mankato went 0-1-1 against UAH at
Mankato.  However, Niagara dominated both games against UAH when UAH
visited them.  This is a relevant piece of information that should have
been used in tournament selection.  Even though John's numbers tell him
that Mankato should have been selected over Niagara, competition on the ice
indicated otherwise.  And even though Niagara's tournament performance
jusitified their PWR position and contradicted John's system, it is MHO
that removing discretion from the selection process is totally illogical.
 
Hockey is played by teams on ice, not by mathematicians on computers.  When
all was said and done, Niagara went to the tournament and proved that they
were a Top 10 team, not just a Top 20 team.  Or, at least they proved it to
sportsmen and the casual observer who does know that Niagara is
mathematically inferior.
 
 
>I thought it might be worthwhile to reiterate my position on Niagara's
>inclusion in the NCAA tournament.  I think that, given the NCAA's
>current way of doing things, i.e., using a system that doesn't judge
>strength of schedule entirely accurately and overriding that system
>when they judge that a team's conference schedule is overly weak, it
>was perfectly reasonable to give Niagara an at-large bid.  It would
>also have been perfectly reasonable to give that bid instead to
>Minnesota State-Mankato.  (It would not have been reasonable to extend
>a bid either to Quinnipiac or to Rensselaer.)
>
>That said, I think it would be preferable to use a system which judges
>all teams accurately.  I've developed one that I feel does that while
>sticking as much as possible to the ideas behind the present selection
>criteria.  IMHO it would be fairer for the NCAA to use this system and
>not need to make a special judgement of teams based on the strength of
>their conferences.  If this system had been in place this year,
>Quinnipiac would have been left out of the tournament based solely on
>pairwise comparisons, and Mankato would have received an at-large
>berth instead of Niagara.  Note that if Niagara's loss to Canisius and
>tie against Brown were changed to wins, the Purple Eagles would also
>have qualified for the tournament based on their pairwise comparisons
>in the modified system.
>
>So my position is that while the committee was acting within the
>bounds of their stated procedure to give a bid to Niagara, Mankato
>"deserved" to be in the tournament more than Niagara in that they are
>more highly rated by measures which pay better attention to strength
>of schedule.  (I think this is also borne out by a consideration of
>the games which went into the PWC between the two in the current
>system.)  Niagara was certainly among the top 20 teams in the nation,
>however, and they were of the same approximate caliber of any of the
>bubble teams.
>                                          John Whelan, Cornell '91
>                                                 [log in to unmask]
>                                     http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/
 
T. N. Long
TN Tech. Phi Delta Theta #102
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