yes, i know it is late, but i've gotten my son off on his way back to school, watched the tape of the selection show, read my non-hockey email and think the committee has done a fine job. That's any way you cut it. There are NO repeat NO intra conference matchups The top 4 teams are in the 4 different brackets The top two teams in each conference but the ECAC stay in their own regions In terms of bracketing, if you sum up the finishing order of the three teams in the brackets, you get 18 19 20 and 21. That seems close to me. The committee seems to have placed the teams where the competition dictates, not where the fan base dictates. The committee has dealt with several serious issues this year (as many folk have pointed out) They made a decision on the Quinnipiac issue. They wrestled with the interpretation of "on the bubble" They made some great matchups. Did they have any alternatives?? of course they did. They could have gone strictly by the numbers (col 1 below) and gotten possibly 3 intra confrence intra-conference matchups and violating the so called "clarkson" rule They could have evened the regions and just moved the two bottom teams yielding (col 2) again yielding up to 3 intra conference matchups They could have observed observed that swapping DU and BC eliminates the two "favorite" intra conference matchups and swapped them. (col 3) Actually, once they do that, if they then reseed the west regional they invert CC and BC (col 4) but that adds two second rounders so the final step is to swap 1 & 2 (done by inverting the other pairs) yielding what we got. By numbers by whatif swap reseed invert script du-bc west 1 1w UND UND UND UND UND 16 bye bye bye bye bye 8 4w DU DU bc cc bc 9 5w St Law St Law St Law St Law No.M 4 2e maine Clarkson Clarkson Clarkson Clarkson 13 bye bye bye bye bye 5 3e BC Maine Maine Maine Maine 12 6e No.M OSU OSU OSU OSU 3 2w MSU MSU MSU MSU MSU 14 bye bye bye bye bye 6 3w clarkson CC CC BC CC 11 6w OSU No.M No.M No.M St Law 2 1e UNH UNH UNH UNH UNH 15 bye bye bye bye bye 7 4e cc bc DU DU DU 10 5e mich mich mich mich mich Well done, committee. charlie shub University of Colorado at Colorado Springs [log in to unmask] -or- [log in to unmask] -or- [log in to unmask] (719) 262-3492 (fax) 262-3369 http://www.cs.uccs.edu/~cdash HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.