Rich writes:
>        There should be a set formula to be stuck by. For example, Top two
>teams in each division, plus top two third place teams according to highest
>win percentage + top two independents. I'm a vicious opponent of VOTING for
>team selection. It's like rolling craps off the rink!!
 
Outside of the automatic bids for the four conference winners, there IS a
set formula for selecting and seeding NC$$ tournament teams.  The committee
reviews the teams' Division I records, strength of schedule (exactly how
they compute that is a bit of a mystery), head-to-head results, and so
forth.  They consider the teams' *overall* record, not just the individual
conference standings, which would unfairly penalize those teams which
happened to play in tougher leagues (ECAC vs. CCHA, for example).  From what
I've seen, the NC$$ hockey tournament (since they went to 12 teams, at
least) is far more sensible as far as how teams are selected than the NC$$
basketball tourna-ment, or for that matter, the football bowl bid system.
 
Since there are a limited number of spots available in the tournament, there
are always going to be people upset that "their" team wasn't picked. (even
last year, there were some folks here at Cornell who felt that the 14-11-4
Big Red should have gone because they beat Clarkson in the ECAC semis -- now
come on!)  Apparently, the only way to make everybody happy would be to
expand the tournament to 44 teams so they all could go... and even then,
you'd have a lot of griping about how the seeds were determined.  But that
won't ever happen, and for the 12-team tournament, the NC$$ Hockey Selection
Committee's methods seem to work pretty well.  Over the past few years, I
don't recall a team being denied an at-large bid (recall there was also an
automatic bid reserved for the top independent team -- that's been done away
with this year) when the numbers supported them over some other team that
did get a bid.  And that includes RPI '90, St. Lawrence '91, and Harvard
last year.
--
Bill Fenwick                        |  Send your HOCKEY-L poll responses to:
Cornell '86 and probably '94        |  [log in to unmask]
LET'S GO RED!!
"Come on, you've known me long enough to know how to spell my name."
-- Yogi Berra, to a television interviewer after being paid for an interview
   with a check made out to "Bearer"