At 1:43 AM 3/20/96, MR ADAM C WODON wrote:
>> Jayson and I talked about this last night.  That UML got
>> sent out west was really no surprise to me (I don't think
>> Jay was shocked either).
>
>I will say this AGAIN -- I agree this shouldn't have been a shock, but
>all of this mental wrangling about why Lowell was sent West, comes down
>to a VERY simple concept, and it has nothing to do with attendance.
>Lowell compared to Clarkson and Cornell is totally and completely
>irrelevant.
>    Lowell and WMU were deemed to be (through whatever process) the 3rd
>and 4th best non-bye teams, and therefore, get #4 seeds. (LSSU and
>Minny being 1st and 2nd best, get #3 seeds, etc...).
 
Meant to answer this before.  This also seems to produce just about the
same seeds in hindsight, but the truth is that this was not how the seeding
was done.  In other words, it was not down to whether Lowell or WMU were in
the East, it was down to Lowell or Clarkson (after Cornell got the nod
based on attendance).  This is taken directly from Rick Comley's
explanation, which is also up on the USAToday web page.
 
One reason is that with a 6-6 split, there have to be two teams from each
region that crossover.  Therefore, there is no way that the decision could
have come down to an East team versus a West team.
 
>    The only time attendance came into play was in the Cornell-
>Providence pair.  And, not to mention, that Cornell was ranked higher.
 
Actually, Rick said that attendance decided that Cornell would stay East
first out of Cornell, Clarkson and Lowell.  He said this in the conference
call.
 
>    This is exactly how Comly explained it, and I don't understand the
>confusion 4 days later.
 
The confusion lies in the fact that Rick gave differing reasons for the
decisions to send LSSU East and Lowell West.  He quoted criteria as working
against Lowell (and in favor of Clarkson), but criteria worked for LSSU
(against Minnesota) yet the same decision was made: send the team away to
avoid a second round conference matchup.  I tend to believe that the
matchups really were what decided both of these, but then I do not
understand why he said criteria was what decided Clarkson over Lowell.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                   [log in to unmask]            *HMM* 11/13/93
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