I have some big questions on a couple of the decisions that were made.
First, here are the seeds again:
REGIONAL SEEDS
WEST EAST
&Colorado College (31-4-4) 1 &Boston University (29-6-3)
*Michigan (30-7-2) 2 &Vermont (25-6-4)
*Minnesota (29-9-2) 3 &Lake Superior (29-7-2)
Mass Lowell (25-9-4) 4 Western Michigan (25-10-3)
Michigan State (28-12-1) 5 Clarkson (23-9-3)
*Providence (21-14-3) 6 *Cornell (21-8-4)
*-received automatic bids by virtue of winning conference tournaments.
&-received "semi-automatic" bids by virtue of winning conference
regular season titles.
NOTES: Records count NCAA DivI games only.
Q1: Why was Lowell sent West over Clarkson?
Rick Comley said that one of Clarkson, Lowell, or Cornell should go West
(along with PC). He said that it was decided to keep Cornell East because
of their fan base. So the decision came down to Lowell or Clarkson. Rick
said that fan base was determined to be even. To make the decision, Rick
said that they went to the criteria, and that Clarkson edged Lowell on
criteria, and thus Clarkson goes to Albany and Lowell goes to East Lansing.
But I am not sure where the edge to Clarkson lies. First, in the PWR,
Lowell wins 10 comparisons and Clarkson wins 8. That seems to give the nod
to Lowell. Did they use only the head-to-head comparison for this
decision? Here's how that looks (from Tim's file of comparison results):
Clarkson Mass Lowell
RPI .5763 1 .5689 0
L20 14- 5- 1 0 15- 4- 1 1
TUC 7- 9- 2 0 7- 5- 1 1
H2H 0 0
COP 14- 3- 3 1 13- 6- 1 0
============================================
PTS 2 2
============================================
Clarkson would win the comparison based on the tiebreaker, RPI.
But why not use the number of comparisons won? Lowell wins that by two and
it takes into account much more than simply a head-to-head comparison,
which Clarkson wins on a tiebreaker with a .0074 difference in RPI - VERY
close.
Now, first Rick said that the criteria were used to choose whether Clarkson
or Lowell stayed East. Then he said in response to a question by Jon
Barkan on the conference call that the underlying factors were 1)
attendance 2) a desire to minimize matchups between conference teams before
Cincinnati.
It is true that sending Lowell West instead of Clarkson removes a possible
HE matchup in the regionals. But why was this possible matchup removed
while allowing a possible Cornell-Vermont ECAC matchup in Albany? There,
it seems that the difference was attendance, not criteria. Lowell also
wins out over Cornell both in number of comparisons won and head-to-head
comparison.
Thus, it seems that for the second time in three years, Lowell is a victim
of the attendance factor - at least in part. Cornell is the big winner
this year, as RPI was in 1994. Maybe Bruce should try to make sure his
team excels only in years in which the tourney is not held in Albany. :-(
I could be wrong, but I did not think he looked too happy when interviewed
on tv.
Q2: Why was LSSU sent East instead of Minnesota?
LSSU wins 15 comparisons to Minnesota's 14, and they also win the head-to-head:
Lake Superior Minnesota
RPI .6051 1 .6027 0
L20 15- 3- 2 1 14- 6- 0 0
TUC 9- 6- 1 0 13- 5- 1 1
H2H 0 0
COP 8- 5- 0 0 7- 1- 0 1
============================================
PTS 2 2
============================================
LSSU gets the nod based on a difference of .0024 in RPI, the tiebreaker.
It seems that LSSU should have been 3W and not Minnesota. However, this
sets up a possible LSSU-Michigan matchup in the West second round. It
appears that the decision was based solely on an attempt to prevent a
possible CCHA matchup here.
ANALYSIS
I can only surmise that the real reason for making these decisions was to
minimize the conference matchups in the second round. That by itself
explains why Minnesota stays West over LSSU and Clarkson stays East over
Lowell. But then why did Rick say that the Clarkson-Lowell decision was
made on criteria? And if it was, what criteria was it - head-to-head
comparison, won barely by Clarkson on the RPI tiebreaker, rather than
overall comparisons, won easily by Lowell?
It appears that a precedent was set this year in terms of the committee's
atempt to bend over backwards to prevent second round matchups between
teams from the same conference. In the past, they had tried to avoid these
matchups in the first round, but not so much in the second round. Is this
the right way to go? Is it better than working harder to keep the teams in
the regions where they seem to belong and then shuffle the matchups as best
as is possible?
MSU STAYING WEST
I found it interesting that Rick said on tv that MSU stayed West because of
the desire to encourage teams to bid for regionals. He said that not
enough teams were making bids and that they wanted to encourage this,
presumably by guaranteeing that they would stay home. But then why did he
say last Monday on the conference call that MSU could be sent East? Are
the host teams guaranteed to always stay home or not?
And after what has happened in 1994 and 1996, what are the chances that
Lowell will bid for the East once their new rink opens? It may be their
only chance, short of earning a top two East seed, to ever play near their
home fans.
CONFERENCE CALL
I waited to listen in until just about 10:00 (ET) after the tv show ended,
since last year, they simulcast the tv show on the phone call from 9 till
10 and then went to the Q&A session. But the call ended about ten minutes
after 10:00 following just a handful of questions. Was the call really
that short, or did the Q&A actually begin before 10:00 this year? In the
past, Q&A has taken upwards of 45 mins or an hour.
BTW, Rick said on the call that the basic procedure was as follows:
1) Choose the 12 teams and rank them within their own regions (E-W).
2) Decide who gets shifted to the other region - go back to the criteria.
(use attendance too?)
3) Re-seed within regions.
Also BTW, John Painter said that the times for the semifinals would be
determined Sunday night after they know who the teams going to Cincinnati
will be. Thus we do not know yet which bracket winners will meet in the
afternoon game March 28 and which winners will meet in the evening game. I
do not know how they will decide this.
--- ---
Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] *HMM* 11/13/93
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