I do think there is any reason to tamper with the statistical aspects of the
NCAA tournament selection procedure.
 
The one thing you can't take out of the NCAA tournament selection procedure
is how many games a team wins.
 
The fact that Quinnipiac has consistently picked up WINS against its
opponents in the MAAC (both throughout the season and in its last 16 games)
has been the driver behind the fact that they have been peskily amongst the
top 12 teams in the country according to RPI and PWR all season long.
 
In my opinion, it is difficult to create a statistical-based selection
criteria which does a better job than the current one and/or find one which
successful knocks all MAAC teams down a tier in the standings.
 
PERFORMANCE IN YOUR CONFERENCE MAKES UP A BIG CHUNK OF A RATING OF A TEAM.
 
The majority of any team's games are going to be against teams in their own
conference (and the majority of the team's last 16 games are always going to
be against team's from their own conference).
 
Princeton's last 16 games have included 15 from the ECAC plus Army.
Quinnipiac's last 16 games have included 13 MAAC games plus 2 against Air
Force and 1 against Army.
 
The majority of the head-to-head games against Teams Under Consideration are
going to come from games within the conference (whether you are in the MAAC
or not).
 
Princeton has a record of 7-4 against Teams Under Consideration.  10 of the
11 games are from within their conference.  Quinnipiac has a record of 5-3
against Teams Under Consideration.  All 8 games are from within their
conference.
 
John Whelan wrote:
> I decided to modify my pairwise comparison script to calculate the RPI,
> record vs teams under consideration and record in the last 16 games
> with games between MAAC teams omitted.
 
(Disclaimer: before I get to this critical next paragraph about your note
above... I have been following TBRW for weeks and all of your work on this
stuff has been EXTREMELY fantastic).
 
The analysis omitting games between MAAC teams was flawed for many reasons.
I found it very curious that you opted to put Winning %s down (is this
because the analysis would have looked so odd if you had put the seemingly
statistically insignificant records down instead?... both in what you did on
the MAAC and on the ECAC).
_____
 
My overall point is that conference performance drives the rankings.  The
MAAC is a tier below the other 4 leagues at the moment.  But they are a
Division 1 League (they play their 20 D1 games to qualify for the
tournament).  They should be allowed to have the teams which succeed within
their conference play have the right to be in the tournament the same as the
teams which succeed in conference play in one of the 4 established leagues.
 
We knew the MAAC would be a tier below the other 4 leagues and the
conference RPI shows this fact to be true BUT there is something to be said
for WINNING GAMES and that is what the RPI and the PWR focus on and that is
why even the MAAC has teams worthy of tournament consideration.
 
        _______   ______
       |__   __| |  __  |  Jason Patton        http://www.gojp.com/jp/
 ____     | |    | |__| |      Following College Hockey Since 1991
|____|    | |    |  ____|  Boston U. 1991-1995     Princeton 1995-1998
        __| |    | |       1995 NCAA Champions     1998 ECAC Champions
       |____|    |_|        MAAC Hockey League Inaugural Season 1998-
 
 
 
 
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