On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 15:59:59 -0800, quakk <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>krach REALLY likes the wcha.  wcha teams own the top 10, literally, in
>sos:
>...
>
>the first non-wcha team?  bc at 11th.  in fact, hockey east has the
>next 5 spots.  following them?  ohio state at 15th, and the ccha owns
>the next three.
>
>just interesting how splotchy the sos ranking is.  is this a function
>of the lack of statistics, lack of interconference games, both?
>neither?  i know the wcha has done very well against non-league
>opponents in all the other leagues, as well.

I suppose it is obvious, but the nature of league play evens things out
over a league schedule, so it is the inter-conference games that allow a
conference to establish a superiority in strength of schedule.  The WCHA
has a significant edge in non-conference play this year, and KRACH and
other systems see that and rate the strength of schedule accordingly.
Similar for Hockey East and CCHA, which are # 2 and 3 in inter-conference
games and thus tend to dominate the next layers of strength-of-schedule
measures.

One thing that these systems don't take into account is the home/away
factor.  Due to scheduling concerns and travel effects, the WCHA has the
fortunate situation of playing something like 57% of their non-conference
games at home, with the rest split between neutral sites and away games.
The result is a bias that almost guarantees them a good non-conference
record overall (to be sure, the conference is strong and would still win a
lot of games in neutral and away sites.)  CCHA also plays around 50% of
their non-conference games at home, helped this year by the College Hockey
Showcase games being played at Michigan and MSU (this counts the GLI as a
neutral site, though it is heavily dominated by Mich/MSU fans.)  Hockey
East is only about 44% at home, with a lot more neutral and away games.  HE
does better in away games than the other conferences, perhaps because they
play many of them against ECAC/AHA opponents, perhaps because the shorter
travel distances make away games less difficult.  The ECAC plays more games
away and at neutral sites; interestingly, when playing non-conference games
at home, the ECAC does quite well.  (Again, there may be a factor here in
who you can get to come to your arena.  But it may show that if they played
as many home games out-of-conference as the WCHA did, they wouldn't be so
far down in the inter-conference comparisons.)  The CHA and Atlantic
leagues, of course, are forced to play almost all of their non-conference
games on the road when playing the "Big 4" conferences, and that makes it
even more difficult to win.

Note that some leagues have more out-of-conference games than others, and
some have more severe travel issues, so scheduling games can be a difficult
thing.  Not many teams want to travel to Michigan Tech or Alaska, and the
Ivy league schools don't play as many games as others.

All this just goes to show that the interconference rankings, while overall
accurate, can provide a bit of a bias into the rating systems that
exaggerate the strength-of-schedule factors.  I believe John Whelan and
others have talked about using the methodology to provide factors to
account for home/away effects, etc., but that is a sophistication that the
NCAA is far away from considering.

Final note: I did find it interesting that Michigan/MSU/Miami all played
their complete inter-conference schedule at home or neutral sites, none at
hostile away sites.  And the Michigan schools never left their home state
for the neutral site games (GLI.)  Michigan won all their non-conference
games against lesser opponents and lost all of them when playing the WCHA
or Hockey East opponents (admittedly, some of the best of those leagues.)
I don't think it will have an impact on their tournament efforts, but is is
possible that not playing away games in hostile arenas out-of-league
affects your resilience when faced with those games?  Is there a value in
playing tough games on the road come tournament time?  (I know that Jerry
York at BC thinks this does help, and that is part of the reason they want
to play the tough out-of-conference schedule.)

-- Rick McAdoo