An as yet unanswered question this season is whether games against Air
Force will be included in the NCAA tournament selection procedure this
season, since AFA has only 19 regular-season games scheduled against
Division I teams. This means that unless they play Niagara or Army in
the College Hockey America playoffs, they will not meet the usual
20-game minimum for tournament consideration.
Air Force is not expected to do well enough to get an at-large bid
this year, but whether or not games against them "count" for selection
purposes could have an effect on other teams' Ratings Percentage Index
and other criteria used to determine Pairwise Comparisons. In fact,
the status of AFA games could have a substantial impact on Niagara.
Using all Division I games to date, Niagara has an RPI of .575, which
is 6th best in the nation, as are their 18 pairwise comparisons won
out of a possible 25. On the other hand, if games involving Air Force
are left out, Niagara's RPI drops to a 17th-best .535 and they only
win comparisons with 6 of the othr 25 "teams under consideration"
(i.e., teams with overall records at or above .500).
But it gets better (or worse, depending on your perspective); Air
Force is currently 5-6-1; their remaining D1 opponents are Sacred
Heart (2 games), Colorado College, Niagara, Denver and Army (2 games).
If the Falcons sweep Army and SH, and lose to the other three, they
finish the regular season at 9-9-1, and would be a "team under
consideration". They wouldn't get an at-large berth themselves, but
they would do wonders for Niagara's pairwise comparisons, contributing
an extra 4-0 to their record vs TUCs. Note that it's also conceivable
for AFA to end up in this position as well as having 20+ D1 games, if
they beat Army and lose to Niagara in the CHA playoffs.
The reason why Air Force has such a large impact on Niagara's status
has a lot to do with the Purple Eagles benefitting from a milder
version of the RPI-inflation that occurred with Quinnipiac last year.
Niagara has currently got a record of 3-0 against Air Force and 6-5
against the rest of Division I. RPI is supposed to take into account
the strength of Niagara's schedule, but this is done primarily by
looking at the average winning percentage of their opponents. Air
Force's contribution to that winning percentage is as a 5-3-1 team
(leaving out their three losses to Niagara). But that 5-3-1 record
breaks down to 4-1-1 vs MAAC teams, none of which has a winning
record, and 1-2 vs teams from established D1 conferences. The average
winning percentage of Air Force's opponents also contributes to
Niagara's RPI, but it's a 15% contribution compared to the 50%
contribution made by Air Force's winning percentage, and it also
includes Niagara as one (actually three) of their opponents, so
playing Niagara contributes positively to Air Force's contribution to
Niagara's RPI, but losing to them does not contribute negatively.
Now, the fractional impact of the Air Force games to Niagara's RPI
(and other selection Criteria) will lessen as the season goes on (it
will be 4 games out of 28 rather than 3 out of 12, not including the
playoffs), but this effect may very well remain, along with those of
Niagara's games against Quinnipiac and other MAAC teams. On the other
hand, the Bradley-Terry ratings used to assemble KRACH take into
consideration Air Force's weak schedule and do not value wins against
them so highly. Niagara is currently #23 in the KRACH ratings
including Air Force and #25 if AFA is left out of the calculations.
John Whelan, Cornell '91
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http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/
Lots more at http://www.slack.net/~whelan/cgi-bin/tbrw.cgi?rankings
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