Well, we seem to have established that Lowell got screwed.  The question is,
was there a better option.  I'm going to follow the analysis with a petty,
narrow-minded tirade, so be prepared.
 
If Lowell is sent to Albany, someone currently slated to be there must get
sent to East Lansing (otherwise the brackets look really funny).
 
Seemingly, it can't be BU or Vermont, since they earned the byes.  Besides,
giving Lowell the bye and sending Vermont (or BU) to Michigan only shifts the
problem to someone else.
 
If you send Lake Superior to East Lansing, you completely destroy the
integrity of the seeding process.  That would leave Western Michigan, the
fifth rated Western team with a #3 East seed and push Minnesota down to the
#4 West seed.  Thus, Minnesota gets underseeded and Colorado College gets
rewarded for it's #1 West ranking by playing the Gophers in the quarters.
 Since the consensus of opinion is that Vermont is the weakest of the four
bye teams, shouldn't a team that finished higher than the #5 West ranking get
to play them?
 
If you switch Lowell and Western, you have two problems: only one team from
each region makes the switch (also a problem above, but the others overshadow
it) and two CCHA teams play in the first round (WMU vs. MSU).  These two sort
of blend together, with a number of people having indicated that they seem to
feel that the second shouldn't come in to play and the first has been
questioned to the point of advocating no cross-over at all.  I find this sort
of odd since the general feeling seems to be that there isn't enough
non-conference play as it is.  Of all the options I'm going to list, this
would be the one most likely to get my vote, but I'd certainly hold my nose
while so doing.
 
Swtiching Lowell and Clarkson: Sure the Lowell people have offered that they
would be willing to take the lower seed and play in the WMU-BU bracket.
 Broncos fans would probably not be quite as thrilled, or at least they
shouldn't be.  They finished ranked ahead of Michigan State, but they get to
play a tougher first round opponent than the Spartans?  Remember folks, the
Riverhawks aren't the only team affected by any of these options.  The
seedings of the other teams are also affected.  There have been some derisive
comments lately about being a slave to a statistical construct.  The
operative question is whether a given abstraction accuratley represents the
relative quality of the teams it measures; I think that RPI/PWR does a pretty
good job of that (and, contrary to one post, they most certainly do measure
concrete results and more than just the four most recent games, like
conference tournaments do).  Western Michigan has a better ranking than the
other teams being discussed, so they deserve an easier draw.  That's what the
whole concept of seeding is about.  How 'bout we imitate the Minnesota High
School tournaments and just construct the brackets by random draw?
 
Replacing Lowell with Cornell creates the same situation as above, except
that it also increases the rank of LSSU's first opponent.  (Cornell vs.
Clarkson. I understand that the cornell fans are claiming that they really
are a better team; I'm just looking at the numbers.)
 
Mike Machnik's suggestion of returning to having the bottom two seeds from
each region shipped out not only creates the situation described in a
Lowell-LSSU switch, (a lot of the problems this year are created by the
uneven distribution of the top ranked teams between the regions) but also
involves moving MSU out of the West Regional.  Perhaps folks in the east are
pretty confident of good attendence without the host's presence.  Those of us
in the west can't be so sanguine about it.  If State goes east, it will
dramatically lessen the ability of the NCAA to get hosts for the future.
 Frankly, I think next year's tournament will be more exciting if there is a
place to play it.
 
In all, I don't really see a good solution in this problem.  Did the Lowell
fans get screwed?  Well, actually, I wouldn't put it this strongly (see the
upcoming tirade), but they have reason to be disappointed that they won't get
to the games.  But after all the time people spend complaining about the NCAA
making decisions based on money, isn't that pretty much what you all are
asking them to do?  It would be "good for hockey" that the Lowell fans get to
go to their team's games.  How?  Well, it would increase the fan base and
create interest in the team.  Yes, this might make it more exciting in the
future in the Boston area, but it sounds to me an awful lot like you are
saying, "Lowell and surrounding teams will sell more tickets and get more
people watching on TV and listening to the radio."
 
Mike, you keep going back to the numbers.  Unfortunately, the numbers say
that Lowell is exactly where they belong.  They ranked below Western Michigan
and above Clarkson.  By the numbers, they have a tougher draw than Western
and an easier draw than Clarkson.  Sounds like the proper seeding to me.  As
I said earlier, everything was knocked completely cock-eyed by the fact that
five western teams ended up with ratings higher than the #2 Eastern team.  No
seeding system that mixes the two regions could have produced an answer more
rational than what we were given.  I know that I said yesterday that
something should have been done differently, but 24 hours of thinking about
it left me with the above answer.
 
Now for the tirade.
 
Why do some of you seem to think that you have the god-given right to have
the games close to home?  A three hour bus ride?  Minnesota got into it's
'local' regional, but East Lansing might as well be on the moon for all my
ability to get there this weekend.  It's a thirteen-hour drive.  Madison last
year was the far edge of what I could do.
 
Don't you people have jobs?  I had enough trouble getting the time off to go
to Cincinnati next week.  In fact, between my budget situation, ticket
availability around here and the fact that my boss and I get along better if
I show up for work, I've managed to get to four games this year (the two days
of the Mariucci Classic).  I bet most of the people complaining have been
able to get to a lot more than that.  It's not that I don't understand that
you're disappointed about not being able to make the regional your team is
in, but the attitude that "We were screwed" because of it isn't one I have a
whole lot of sympathy for.  I'm sorry if having joined the general labor
force has made some of my views hopelessly proletarian, but I think that
there are some rather privileged people doing a lot of whining.
 
End of tirade.
 
Really, I hope everyone enjoys the hockey this weekend.  I won't wish
everyone's team luck, because I'll have a team I'm rooting for in pretty much
every game.  I'll even root for Lowell in the first round, but that's easy
since I grew up in Ann Arbor.  (I was well prepared for the first rule of
Minnesota high school hockey: If it wears green, root against it.)
 
J. Michael Jackson
 
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