Well I'm kind of a math guy being an engineer and all, and IMHO I suspect that we are likely to benefit more if BC beats a team that we have a chance of passing rather than if BC wins giving them a better rating and thereby giving us a better rating when we beat BC. Shouldn't we want our closest competition above us to loose particularly those in Hockey East? I especially want UNH and BU to loose but I don't know if that's much of a "math" related thing. :o) Clair -----Original Message----- From: The Maine Hockey Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Wayne T Smith Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2005 2:05 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Reality Check No squaks or squeeks from me! ;-) james acheson wrote, in part, on 2/9/2005 12:07 PM: > so... let me ask this, though... why do we want BC to lose to Harvard??? I have no idea, but my sense is that we "want" BC to win.. At this point in the season, given the way the NCAA places teams in its regionals, there is nothing specific to do to help staying East rather than traveling to a West regional. See Jayson Moy's "Bracketology" at USCHO.com for the details. So the question may be thought of in terms of "How is Maine's ranking affected by the result of the upcoming BC vs Harvard (Beanpot *losers* bracket next Monday)?". I don't know the real answer, but will guess: * Since we don't have a win over Harvard, we don't care who wins. * Since we will play BC 2 or 3 more times, we may well have wins over them and wish for them to be as highly ranked as possible. Finally, there's a real chance this season, IMHO, for all four top seeds coming from the West, making for increased odds of an all-West Frozen Four. That might be OK for you land-locked folks, but for this mariner who'd rather talk submarines than corn at the Frozen Four in a couple of months ... this would not be a pretty sight! ;-) So this part of "we" mildly wants BC to beat Harvard! cheers, wayne