----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Peterson" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> On 28 Feb 2003 at 23:25, John T Whelan wrote:
>
> > Maine loses to BU and their RPI drops from .5949 to .5911
> > Cornell beats Princeton and their RPI drops from .5947 to .5895



> This is probably at the heart of the problem with Colorado many years
> back.  They won the conference in the regular season but took an
> early exit in the conference tournament to a much weaker team, which
> also prevented them from playing and beating the stronger teams.
> Combine that with playing Air Force, I believe, four times during the
> year resulted in a sufficiently low RPI that they did not get a bid.

It was actually more interesting than that.  In a preview to later
problems with the MAAC (only in reverse), CC was penalized for a
deceptively strong schedule.  I believe the WCHA that year did well
out-of-conference and then beat each other up in conference games, with
the result that their RPI SofS was deceptively low.  Despite the fact
that the CC incident spawned several changes in tournament selection,
had those changes been in place that year, CC would -still- have gotten
in based only on "the CC rule".