The punchline of this message, in case you don't make it, is that
Cornell will probably go West if Vermont and Clarkson get the top two
seeds in the East, regardless of their ranking relative to UNH.
 
Greg Berge writes:
 
>The posts predicting the seeds seem to be operating under the assumption
>that the NC$$ tries to avoid intraconference matchups in the QF round.  I
>have doubts that this is NC$$ policy.
 
>Admittedly, for once I don't have the data in front of me, :-) though
>annecdotally I offer last year's East bracket where a Cornell win would
>have put them in a matchup with Vermont, as one contrary example.
 
>I am pretty sure that the NC$$ has publically stated they do try to avoid
>first round intraconference matchups.
 
        I'm basing this assumption on one of the reasons Rick Comley
gave for sending Lowell West instead of Clarkson last year.  To quote
Mike Machnik:
 
>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?
 
Clarkson did win the individual comparison with Lowell.  This is
perhaps something we keep in mind when trying to guess which teams get
favor; the seeding may be based on individual comparisons rather than
overall PWR ranking.  However, my guess is that that was just a
rationalization for their other reason.  Back to Mike:
 
>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.
 
        So it did seem a bit foggy; looking at the teams in the East
regional, (1) BU and (7) UVM had the byes.  The two western
crossovers, (4) LSSU and (6) WMU were ranked above all the other
eastern teams.  The NC$$ needed to send one of the following three
teams West along with (17) Providence:
 
 8 Lowell
10 Clarkson
11 Cornell
 
As far as second-round conference matchups go, there are three
possibilities:
 
a) Send Lowell West
b) Send one of the ECAC teams West and make Lowell 5E
c) Send one of the ECAC teams West and make Lowell 6E
 
        The NC$$ chose a), which led to one potential second-round
ECAC matchup.  Option b) leads to potential second-round matchups of
both ECAC and HE teams.  Thus they chose a) over b) to reduce the
second round matchups.  The strange thing is that they ignored option
c), choosing to send Lowell west rather than seed them below a
lower-ranked ECAC team in the East.  The latter option seems less
disruptive, and is the kind of thing I've been doing in these
simulations.
 
Back to Mike:
 
>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
[...]
>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.
 
        So I think the question of second-round matchups is an issue
that the selection commitee does consider (although they seem to have
started last year), but perhaps my response to it is not what the NC$$
would do.  They seem more willing to switch which teams are in which
regions than to shuffle teams within regions.  In particular, I think
the answer to my hypothetical question about whether Cornell would be
sent west if both eastern byes go to ECAC teams, regardless of their
seeding relative to UNH is yes, at least going by past behavior.
 
                                        John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                        <[log in to unmask]>
        <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/jshock.html>
 
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