J. Michael Neal wrote:
> It looks as if the WCHA is only going to get three teams into the
> tournament. Frankly, that's a joke.
Not nearly as much of a joke as it appears at first glance.
> While the top of the WCHA may or
> may not be any better than the other conferences, I don't think that
> it's even questionable that the bottom of the WCHA is much, much tougher
> than is the bottom of any other conference.
The bottom of the conference isn't going to get into the NCAA tournament.
> I've been saying for years
> that the Pairwise is badly flawed, and this is the year that its biggest
> problem really rears its head. That KRACH is better than RPI is pretty
> obvious, but this isn't the biggest problem. The biggest is the Record
> vs. Teams Under Consideration criterion. That this comparison has no
> correction for strength of schedule is a travesty.
The lack of SofS on TUC is the least of the problems with that
criterion. I'd start with the TUCliff and the completely arbitrary
nature of a cutoff at 25.
Anyway, correct for SofS by using c-RRWP if you'd like -- the resulting
field is still exactly the same. Miami still wins the comparison with
Wisconsin. (I used 2 fictitious games in KRACH, which John suggested in
a discussion on USCHO.)
> It's also pretty telling that, after the top 14 teams are invited to the
> tournament, with a .003 bonus for road nonconference wins, the 15th,
> 16th, 17th and 18th ranked teams are all from the WCHA. The perfect
> storm of PWR flaws showed up this year.
It's more the perfect storm of WCHA flaws, where the conference was,
top-to-bottom, the best in college hockey, but that was due to having
seven teams in the 15-30 range (three in the top ten) rather than having
four or five in the top ten.
Personally, if I were a basketball-style committee, I'd make one change
to the field, putting Wisconsin in and Miami out. You can barely
justify Denver for St. Lawrence, but given a) the respective way the two
teams ended the season and b) variety, I prefer to leave SLU in the field.
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