Anthony Frolik writes: >Mike Machnik writes: >>had a stronger schedule and performed better against it >>proportionally, but that CC benefited from a weaker conference >>schedule than some of its opponents (Minnesota) which allowed it to >>capture the conference title. > >I would like to know how CC had a weaker conference schedule than Minnesota. >Take out head to head games and they should have had the same strength of >schedule in the conference. Well, minus the pair of head to head games, CC played UMD twice and everybody else 4x. Minnesota played MTU twice and everybody else 4x. So the difference is as follows (WCHA reg season only): CC: UMD 2x, MTU 4x Minn: UMD 4x, MTU 2x First, it is certainly interesting to note that if you consider just these games, since after throwing out the CC-Minn head-to-head matchups all else is equal in terms of numbers of games vs each other WCHA opp, then here are the records: CC: vs UMD (both road) 1-1-0, vs MTU 2-0-2. TOT 3-1-2 = 8 pts Minn: vs UMD 2-1-1, vs MTU (both home) 2-0-0. TOT 4-1-1 = 9 pts So in that group of games, Minnesota comes out ahead a point, yet CC won the reg season title by one point. Doesn't seem to have made a difference yet. But, Minnesota also had to play its two games vs CC on the road while CC got to host Minnesota twice and did not have to play at the Gophers because of the way the schedule worked out. CC won both games (+4 pts) and won the title by one point. BTW, that's a separate issue from whether the unbalanced WCHA reg season schedule in and of itself played a big part in CC being ranked 13th in the RPI. Of course, I say it did. RPI doesn't care about site of a game, so that is irrelevant here. UMD had a win% of .4079 and MTU's was .3444. But CC played the weaker of the two teams 4x to Minnesota's twice, and Minnesota played the stronger of the two teams 4x to CC's twice. Win% gets counted once in OppWin% for each time you play an opponent. And, while 2 of the three numbers that make up RPI were somewhat close between CC & Minnesota (Win%, OppOppWin%), one gave a huge edge to the Gophers - OppWin%. Here is a look at those numbers. * G W L T Win% Win% Win% RPICH 4 Minnesota 40 24-11- 5 .6625 .5236 .5144 .5560 13 Colorado College 39 23-11- 5 .6538 .4721 .5187 .5292 Yet, the real question isn't CC's comparison to Minnesota in the RPI, it is CC's comparison to the team that beat it out, MSU (12th). And here, although CC has the edge in Win% and OppOppWin%, MSU's edge in OppWin% carried it to an edge in RPI. * G W L T Win% Win% Win% RPICH 12 Michigan State 39 22-12- 5 .6282 .4963 .5037 .5311 13 Colorado College 39 23-11- 5 .6538 .4721 .5187 .5292 And again, going back to the process that was followed, these two teams were close enough (difference < .01) that other factors could be looked at in doing the comparison. MSU won those factors, 3-1. MSU got one point each for RPI, record in last 20 and common opponents. CC got one point for record vs teams under consideration, and there were no head-to-head games between the two. The difference was so slight, only .0019 by RPICH...yet if the two teams' positions were reversed, CC would have gotten the nod. That's because the factors would have been even 2-2, and the tiebreaker, RPI, would have gone to CC. I believe that once the committee decides to go to other factors - because RPI is deemed too close to call - then RPI should NOT be one of the factors that are looked at. This is my major beef with the process, second being a tie between allowing lower seeded teams to stay at home and preventing matchups between teams from the same conference in the first round. I say, let the chips fall where they may. * - Numbers are from the RPICH produced by Erik Biever on 3/20/94. These numbers are close enough to the actual RPI used by the committee that we can refer to them. --- --- Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] Cabletron Systems, Inc. *HMM* 11/13/93 <<<<< Color Voice of the Merrimack Warriors (station TBA for 94-95) >>>>>