At 4:29 PM 1/31/96, Charlie Shub wrote: >The following teams would (likely) be selected > > Minnesota WCHA > Boston University HE > Western Michigan CCHA > Lake Superior CCHA > Colorado College WCHA > Michigan CCHA > Michigan State CCHA > Denver WCHA > Vermont ECAC > St Lawrence ECAC > Clarkson ECAC > Mass Lowell HE (in other words, the top 12 teams from the RPI not including Maine) >Now if somebody not on the above list wins the season or the >tournament, one would start paring from the bottom, subject to having >at least 2 teams from each conference. I understand where Charlie is coming from, but I fear that this may serve to confuse people who are not aware of the changes in the selection process this year. You can't take the RPI Top 12 anymore and say that those teams would be selected or even have an inside track on being selected. This is because the RPI is no longer used to provide an initial ranking of the teams. For example, just because Minnesota is ranked first in the RPI, even if it is by a large margin, does not mean that Minnesota would get the top seed overall or even the 1W seed. Last year, just winning the RPI by a large enough margin ( > .01) would have been enough to get the top team a #1 seed overall. To get a true idea of where teams stand, you would have to take all of the teams that would be "under consideration" - the teams that have a DivI record over .500 - and do pairwise comparisons between all of those teams from top to bottom. The team that wins the most comparisons would be seeded first, and so on. After this seeding is determined, we'd see if the regular season and tourney champs are in the top 12, as well as at least two teams from each conference, and make adjustments where necessary. Note that this is very different from the example I outlined earlier between Vermont and Brown. The initial ranking of Vermont ahead of Brown simply due to RPI wouldn't matter. Vermont would have to win more comparisons with all teams under consideration than Brown (as well as enough other teams vying for bids). And, note that at first, no consideration is given to making sure that X number of bids are extended to each conference. Once a seeding is determined from the comparisons, then if a conference does not have 2 teams in the top 12, some shifting must be done to account for this and add a second team from that conference. In other words, the committee does not start off and decide that Conference A will get 4 bids and Conference B will get 2 bids, or whatever. I believe I have seen some comments that suggested the reverse was true. Also, it is unclear where Maine falls into all of this. It has been suggested that perhaps Maine will be allowed to be involved in the process - and compared to all of the other teams - and then if Maine ranks in the top 12, the bid would simply be extended to another team. But we do not know right now whether this is true - or if Maine will be involved in the selection process at all. Only the committee can tell us, and I do not know if even they know right now. I have heard arguments on both sides, and both have merit. I strongly encourage everyone to try to understand the process as best as possible. It will help in understanding the decisions that are made at selection time. --- --- Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] *HMM* 11/13/93 >> Co-owner of the College Hockey Lists at University of Maine System << ***** Unofficial Merrimack Hockey home page located at: ***** ***** http://www.tiac.net/users/machnik/MChockey/MChockey.html ***** HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.