Greenie muses, in the wake of the Purple Eagles' 3-1 victory at
Colorado College
 
> ...and I bet there are still quite a few people that think Niagara has no
> business being in Division 1, let alone having the possibility of a
> tournament bid.
 
That was indeed an impressive result, and Niagara is having a very
good season.  The problem with respect to NCAA selection is that
Niagara, unlike Quinnipiac, is subtly rather than blatantly overrated
based on their schedule.  (The average RPI of each conference--if
that's what the committee looks at--is HE: .543, WCHA: .516, CCHA:
.489, CHA: .488, ECAC: .486, MAAC: .443, but 1/3 of the CHA's average
comes from Niagara; the average RPI of their two Division I conference
opponents is .446, compared to .533, .505, .481, and .479 for the
leaders of the establishd conferences and .424 for Quinnipiac.)
Objectively, they are probably a top 20 team, while RPI puts them in
the top 10 and PWR in the top 5.  Given the combination of a
respectable team and a slight overvaluing by RPI, this will be a much
stickier decision for the NCAA (and hopefully a bigger incentive to
fix the underlying problems in RPI and pairwise rather than just
dealing with the symptoms).
                                          John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                                  [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/
 
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