Two things are still unknown as far as this year's selection criteria:
the weight of the "quality win" bonuses and the outcome of the MAAC
championship game. Playing around a little with You Are The Committee
<http://uscho.com/rankings/yatc.php> shows that the pairwise
comparisons are not terribly sensitive to the former, and that the
outcome of the Mercyhurst/Quinnipiac game doesn't change any
comparisons except that between MAAC champion with Wayne State. So
let's go with quality win bonuses of .004 on the road, .002 on neutral
ice, and .001 at home. (With these bonuses, the only relevant
comparison affected is SCSU and Mankato.) Let's also assume for
concreteness that Mercyhurst wins the MAAC title game.
The pairwise comparisons are then
Rk Team PWR RPI Comparisons Won
1 [AQ] Cornell (Cr) 28 .6018 CCMnNHBUMeFSBCMiNDOSHaSCMkPvMSNMDaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
2 Colorado College (CC) 27 .5933 MnNHBUMeFSBCMiNDOSHaSCMkPvMSNMDaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
3t [AQ] Minnesota (Mn) 25 .5940 NH MeFSBCMiNDOSHaSCMkPvMSNMDaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
3t [AQ] New Hampshire (NH) 25 .5904 BUMeFSBCMiNDOSHaSCMkPvMSNMDaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
5 Boston University (BU) 24 .5904 Mn FSBCMiNDOSHaSCMkPvMSNMDaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
6 Maine (Me) 23 .5837 BU BCMiNDOSHaSCMkPvMSNMDaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
7 Ferris State (FS) 22 .5670 Me BC NDOSHaSCMkPvMSNMDaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
8t Boston College (BC) 21 .5802 MiNDOSHaSCMkPvMSNMDaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
8t [AQ] Michigan (Mi) 21 .5729 FS NDOSHaSCMkPvMSNMDaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
10 North Dakota (ND) 18 .5594 OSHaSCMk MSNMDaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
11 Ohio State (OS) 17 .5517 Ha MkPvMSNMDaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
12tHarvard (Ha) 16 .5583 SCMkPvMS DaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
12tSt. Cloud State (SC) 16 .5547 OS MkPvMSNM DUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
14 MSU-Mankato (Mk) 15 .5528 PvMSNMDaDUMAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
15 Providence (Pv) 14 .5464 ND MSNMDa MAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
16tMichigan State (MS) 12 .5423 NMDa MAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
16tNorthern Michigan (NM) 12 .5346 Ha Da MAMDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
18tDartmouth (Da) 11 .5262 SC DU MDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
18tDenver (DU) 11 .5500 PvMSNM MA MrYaWMMLMmMhWS
20 Massachusetts (MA) 10 .5306 Da MDNtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
21 Minnesota-Duluth (MD) 9 .5275 DU NtMrYaWMMLMmMhWS
22 Notre Dame (Nt) 8 .5185 DU MrYaWMMLMmMhWS
23tMerrimack (Mr) 5 .5151 YaWMML MhWS
23tYale (Ya) 5 .5114 WMMLMmMhWS
25 Western Michigan (WM) 4 .5106 MLMmMhWS
26tMass.-Lowell (ML) 3 .5086 MmMhWS
26tMiami (Mm) 3 .5058 Mr MhWS
28 [AQ] Mercyhurst (Mh) 1 .4960 WS
29 [AQ] Wayne State (WS) 0 .4828
The field is straightforward, since it's easy to see the at-large bids
go to CC, BU, Maine. Ferris, BC, NoDak, OSU, Harvard, and SCSU. The
first few "bands" are pretty obvious, a few out-of-place comparison
wins notwithstanding:
#1 Seeds: Cornell, CC, Minnesota, UNH
#2 Seeds: BU, Maine, Ferris, BC
It's clear that Michigan and North Dakota are #3 seeds and that
Mankato, Mercyhurst, and Wayne State are #4 seeds. But we still need
to sort out OSU, Harvard, and SCSU for the last two #3 seeds. OSU is
higher in overall PWR, but that's because Harvard and St. Cloud lose
comparisons to teams not in the tournament. If the committee makes
their ranking based on pairwise comparisons among tournament teams
(and in the past, individual comparisons have been more important than
overal PWR), these three are all tied up. Since the comparisons among
the three are also split, we need to go to the RPI as a tiebreaker,
and OSU has the lowest of the three. So I get these bands:
#1 Seeds: Cornell, CC, Minnesota, UNH
#2 Seeds: BU, Maine, Ferris, BC
#3 Seeds: Michigan, North Dakota, Harvard, St. Cloud
#4 Seeds: Ohio State, MSU-Mankato, Mercyhurst, Wayne State
The host schools Minnesota, BU, and Michigan have to play in their own
regionals. After that, we put the #1 seeds in the closest regionals
left, which is Northeast (Worcester) for Cornell, Midwest (Ann Arbor)
for Colorado College, and East (Providence) for New Hampshire. So the
brackets look like this so far:
__West__ __Midwest__ __East__ __Northeast__
#1 Minnesota CC UNH Cornell
#2 BU
#3 Michigan
#4
The other #2 seeds are Maine, Ferris, and BC. Ferris can't play in
Ann Arbor because of the CCHA matchup with Michigan, but we can put
them in West Regional. Either BC or Maine has to go to the Midwest,
and we choose BC because they lose the comparison to Maine:
__West__ __Midwest__ __East__ __Northeast__
#1 Minnesota CC UNH Cornell
#2 Ferris St BC Maine BU
#3 Michigan
#4
The remaining #3 seeds are NoDak, SCSU, and Harvard; no danger of a
first-round conference matchup, but we have to choose a WCHA team to
send East. SCSU gets shipped because they're below NoDak in the
criteria. We choose to send them to play BU because SCSU is the worst
3-seed and BU is the best 2-seed. Also, this prevents Harvard from
playing BU for the third time this season in the first round, and also
ensures we'll see no rematches of conference championship games in the
regionals.
__West__ __Midwest__ __East__ __Northeast__
#1 Minnesota CC UNH Cornell
#2 Ferris St BC Maine BU
#3 NoDak Michigan Harvard SCSU
#4
Finally, the 4-seeds. We need to keep Mankato away from Minnesota and
Colorado College, but otherwise we can pair off the worst 4-seeds with
the best 1-seeds to balance the bracket and reward Cornell and CC with
weaker first-round opponents:
__West__ __Midwest__ __East__ __Northeast__
#1 Minnesota CC UNH Cornell
#2 Ferris St BC Maine BU
#3 NoDak Michigan Harvard SCSU
#4 OSU Mercyhurst Mankato Wayne State
We bracket the Frozen Four so that #1 Cornell would play #4 UNH, which
means the East and Northeast regional champions play in one semi and
the West and Midwest in the other.
If Quinnipiac wins the MAAC, everything plays out more or less as
before, but with the Q in place of Wayne State and Wayne State in
place of Mercyhurst.
John Whelan, Cornell '91
[log in to unmask]
http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/
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