Luiz Valente writes:
>In 1995 regular season champion Clarkson and playoff champion RPI
>participated. Both were automatic picks, and were eliminated in the
>first round. Brown probably would have been picked if it had advanced
>to the ECAC finals in Lake Placid. I know from reliable sources, however,
>that after Brown was eliminated in the semifinals, it was decided that
>if Clarkson also won the ECAC playoffs (as the NC$$ evidently hoped),
>Vermont have been picked despite having finished fifth in the regular
>season, having been eliminated by Colgate in the semifinals, and having
>a worse overall record than second-place Brown (which had defeated
>Vermont twice in the regular season, including a 6-3 pasting in
>Burlington). I guess that for the NC$$ not every school is created
>equal.
As Paul Harvey says, now the rest of the story... :-)
Here's how the comparison between Vermont and Brown worked out last
year. (Note that the RPI is the real final RPI; it would have been
slightly different had Clarkson beaten Princeton in the ECAC
semifinals and gone on to beat RPI in the final. More below.)
1) RPI: Vermont .5175 (14th), Brown .5116 (17th). Difference was less
than .01, so time to look at all factors (step 2). Prior to 1995-96,
teams were ranked by the RPI, and if two teams differed by less than
.01 in the RPI, then they were compared according to five factors
with the RPI being one of those factors.
2) Factor comparison:
a) RPI: Vermont .5175, Brown .5116. Vermont gets +1.
b) Head-to-head: Brown 6 Vermont 3, Brown 4 Vermont 2. Brown gets +2.
(+1 for each win)
c) Last 20 games: Vermont 10-9-1, Brown 8-9-3. Vermont gets +1.
d) Common Opponents: these were the other 10 ECAC opponents plus
Providence and UNH (also, one NC game for Vermont vs Dartmouth).
Vermont 15-9-2, Brown 12-11-2. Vermont gets +1.
e) Record vs Teams Under Consideration: I didn't bother doing this
out because Vermont had already won the entire comparison. Why?
Because even if Brown wins this and gets a +1 here, the teams tie
3-3 in the comparison, and since RPI was the tiebreaker, Vermont
gets the nod.
I went on to check whether Vermont would still have had a higher RPI
even if Clarkson had gone on to win the ECAC. If Clarkson defeated
Princeton in the ECAC semis and RPI in the ECAC Championship, and
Colgate tied Princeton in the consolation, we end up with: Vermont
.5180 (14th), Brown .5107 (17th). There is no effect whatsoever upon
the comparison. Thus it makes perfect sense to me that it could have
been determined ahead of time that Vermont would have received the
second ECAC bid if Clarkson won both the regular season and tournament
titles.
In fact, using the criteria that had been set down ahead of time, I
was able to determine all of this myself quite easily in about ten
minutes - as shown above.
>I guess that for the NC$$ not every school is created
>equal.
I think my analysis speaks for itself, but I'll add that it is plain
wrong to make a baseless charge such as this, when the evidence
overwhelmingly proves that the committee did its job and did not
slight either team. You can criticize the process, but when it is
applied fairly and equally, as it clearly was here, it is wrong to
state that the selection committee) must have slighted the team that
lost out.
I can't say whether the committee "hoped" Clarkson would win the ECAC
title, but note that if Clarkson did, then the two ECAC teams ranked
highest in the RPI (Clarkson & Vermont) would have gone to the
tournament. Instead, the two teams that went were Clarkson and RPI
(18th). 3 ECAC teams and 3 other teams ranked ahead of RPI - and did
not receive bids. It makes sense that some people might have "hoped"
that the conference tournaments would have worked out so that they
could choose the top 12 teams, or as near to the top 12 as they could
get. If you're the committee and you want as little controversy as
possible, you might hope for no upsets in the conference tourneys.
Three other points:
I. One of the biggest mistakes people make when criticizing the
process is to take only the pieces of evidence that support their case
and ignore the other evidence.
* Vermont finished 5th in the ECAC, Brown 2nd
* Vermont was eliminated by Colgate in the ECAC semifinals
* Vermont had a worse overall record than Brown
* Vermont was beaten twice by Brown during the season
Of these four pieces of evidence, only one, the last one, has a
bearing on the head-to-head comparison between the teams, according to
the selection process and criteria that were determined beforehand.
II. Despite Brown (13-7-2) finishing higher in the ECAC standings
than Vermont (11-9-2), Vermont still easily won the common opponents
comparison. How did this happen?
1) Brown went 2-0 vs Vermont, Vermont went 0-2 vs Brown. These games
do not count in the common opponent analysis. Thus, both teams start
off exactly even at 11-7-2 before getting to nonconference games.
2) Both teams went 1-2 in the ECAC playoffs, giving them records of
12-9-2.
3) Here's the key: Vermont went 3-0 (Dartmouth/Auld Lang Syne
Classic, Providence, UNH) and Brown 0-2 (Providence, UNH) in their
remaining NC games that count in the common opponent analysis. That
gives it to Vermont, 15-9-2 vs 12-11-2.
III. Finally, I want to point out that although people often refer to
the selection committee as the "NCAA", I personally draw a distinction
between the committee and the NCAA itself. The committee is made up
of hockey people - people who have been involved with the game for
years and tend to have its best interests in mind. The NCAA is made
up of a large number of people who often have no or little connection
with hockey, and they have on occasion made decisions that seemed to
run counter to the best interests of hockey-playing schools.
IMO, we should draw a definite distinction between the two. It is the
selection committee, made up of hockey people and empowered by the
NCAA, that selects the teams for the NCAA Tournament. They do
represent the NCAA in this matter, but they are not the same NCAA that
some people refer to when they speak of the organization's bureaucracy
or anti-hockey legislation. Jack Parker, for instance, has criticized
the NCAA in the past while serving as a member of the NCAA Division I
Ice Hockey Tournament selection committee. It doesn't make sense to
me to use the same term to refer to the committee he served on and the
organization he criticized.
--- ---
Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc. *HMM* 11/13/93
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