Regarding the "big" non-league games the ECAC's best had before the nc$$'s
began...
 
Harvard split 2 with BU, didn't face Maine (or any top western teams).
 
Clarkson - the only team in the world to have gone 0.250 with Maine (0-1-1).
(BU went 0.200, Providence went 0.166, all others 0.000)  Did they face BU or
the West?
 
Brown - didn't face BU, lost to Maine but did beat Lake Superior State.
 
RPI tied BU in their one meeting early this season, didn't face Maine or the
West.
 
So the ECAC's best weren't a bunch of hapless schleps in their meetings with
some of the nation's elite (as has sorta been implied)...  Additionally, the
ECAC's top four teams all fared about .500 versus each other: none swept any
other; and their overall records were well over 0.500.  (how many sentences use
that many different grammatical marks?  :-)
 
UMass-Lowell went 0-7 vs Maine and BU, UNH went about 1-6; both ended the
season 2-3 games over 0.500.  If this, as suggested, is the evidence at hand,
neither UMass-Lowell nor New Hampshire deserved a bid over Brown, or even RPI,
the latter's late-season losses notwithstanding.
 
there's always next season to look forward to.  :-)
 
Ross
---
Congrats Engineers!  20-11-4 ain't nothing to sneeze at... Go RPI!