On Sun, 23 Mar 2003, Patrick Abegg wrote:

> Why does Maine go west, rather than BC? This is the key question I have
> based on the analysis that I think we've all done.

The only reasonoble explanation I can see is to put Cornell in the
bracket with #8 BC instead of #6 Maine or #5 BU.  This is presumably
also why Cornell was sent to Providence even though Worcester was
closer.  Looking at the brackets, it seems to me that every other
decision they had to make was designed to make the Northeast bracket
easier and make up for the imbalance of putting a WCHA team in with
Cornell.

> On the TV broadcast, the "expert" has no idea why this bracketing is done,
> after saying "it's all done by the numbers." He's hinting that it's Maine
> choke at the end - which is explicitly not a criterion to be used. The only
> criterion that could work is the attendance issue (BC is closer to
> Providence than Maine).

The expert was longtime HOCKEY-Ler and USCHO columnist Adam Wodon.
Trust me, he has a pretty good idea how it's done, there was only just
so much he could say in 2 minutes.

> Actually, their expert is hinting that the whole system is messed up. (He
> used the code phrase "a few adjustments are necessary.")

The point was that because of the MAAC and CHA autobids and the loss
of the byes, there's suddenly a huge difference between the #15/#16
teams in the tournamant and the #13/#14.  So having a combination of
inflexible bands and an inflexible policy about not pairing certain
teams that are stuck in those bands can lead to some pretty unfair
overall seeding.  I think Adam's point was that the whole reason to
have a committee is to make judgement calls like this to tinker with
the seedings.

The really unfortunate thing is that the committee missed their way
out of this situation.  St. Cloud is #13 in the PWR after bonus points
have been added to the RPI, but if the committee had just confined
attention to comparisons among tournament teams the ranking would have
been #11 Harvard, #12 SCSU, #13 Ohio State, with one WCHA team as a
4-seed, and they could have bracketed the tournament reasonably.
Apparently they have forgotten all about the individual comparisons
used by previous committees and really do just rank the teams 1-16
according to the overall PWR.  It sounds like this subtlety didn't
even occur to them, which is pretty frustrating, since it means people
like me and Adam and Jayson Moy have thought more about the seeding
than the committee in charge of it.
                                          John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                                 [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/

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