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How's that for a teaser? Now appearing, as a joint presentation of The Big Red What? and Joe Schlobotnik's Sports Machine ("...if you mean, have I drunk of the essence of the game..."): If the Season Ended Today http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/pframe.html An analysis based on this week's Pairwise Comparisons, (derived from the scores on US College Hockey Online), of how the selection committee might choose and seed the tournament field. The NCAA Selection Procedure http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/pwframe.html PWR? RPI? TUC? What is he talking about?! In this article I define the terms and lay out the selection and seeding procedure as I understand it. (Feedback is heartily encouraged.) (BTW, Don't let the file names scare you; there's an alternate menu on those pages for non-frame browsers.) This week's analysis is actually pretty straightforward, except for one interesting aspect regarding the second bye in the East. A quick glance at the comparison chart Team PWR RPI Comparisons Won 1 Mich State 24 .589 BUNHNDMiMmYaSCPvCgWiBCCCNMPnMeNELSCrNtMDRPCkMLMT 2 Boston Univ 23 .624 NHNDMiMmYaSCPvCgWiBCCCNMPnMeNELSCrNtMDRPCkMLMT 3 New Hampshire 21 .629 NDMiMm SCPvCgWiBCCCNMPnMeNELSCrNtMDRPCkMLMT 4 North Dakota 21 .609 MiMmYaSCPvCgWiBCCCNMPnMeNELSCrNtMDRPCkMLMT 5 Michigan 20 .602 MmYaSCPvCgWiBCCCNMPnMeNELSCrNtMDRPCkMLMT 6 Miami 19 .581 YaSCPvCgWiBCCCNMPnMeNELSCrNtMDRPCkMLMT 7 Yale 19 .577 NH SCPvCgWiBCCCNMPnMeNELSCrNtMDRPCkMLMT would seem to indicate BU and New Hampshire as the top teams in the East. However, looking closely at it we see that while BU beats out all of the other Eastern teams for the first bye, it is Yale who wins comparisons with all Eastern teams except BU to claim the second one. No matter that New Hampshire wins more total comparisons, it is the individual comparison between UNH and Yale that matters. (Note also that in a three-way comparison involving those two teams plus Michigan or Miami, UNH would win because they have the highest RPI. Thus it is also significant that the NCAA doesn't consider giving Eastern byes to Western teams, since it means UNH's pairwise wins over the CCHA schools are not relevant to the awarding of the 2E seed.) A curious situation, and one that underscores the differences between seeding by total number of comparisons won (as in 1996) and by individual comparisons (introduced in 1997). John Whelan, Cornell '91 <[log in to unmask]> <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/joe.html> Cornell Men's Ice Hockey: Back-to-back ECAC and Ivy League Champions HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.