Last Modified: 2020 February 1
Joe Schlobotnik / joe@amurgsval.org
URL for this frameset: http://elynah.com/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?2002/pairwise.020129.shtml
Game results taken from US College Hockey Online's Division I composite schedule
In honor of today's second Division I advisory committee teleconference (according to the schedule in the NCAA's Men's Division I Championship Handbook) let's take a look at how the NCAA selection procedure might play out if the season ended today.
Much of the seeding is based on pairwise comparisons carried out according to the selection criteria. Here are how those comparisons look for the 28 tournament-eligible teams with records at or above .500:
The tournament champions from five conferences receive automatic bids. For this exercise we award these to the current leaders in those leagues; of those, Denver (WCHA), Michigan State (CCHA) and New Hampshire (Hockey East) are all currently in the top five according to the pairwise; Cornell (ECAC) is #12, but would still need the auto bid to get in because Mercyhurst (MAAC) would also receive an automatic bid. In awarding the remaining seven bids, three are obvious (St. Cloud, Minnesota, and Maine), since they win all the comparisons with all the other teams in the running for at-large bids. The tricky part comes in awarding the last four bids. Five teams win their comparisons with everyone "below" them; here is that five-team "bubble":
| Team | lPWR | RPI | Comps Won | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northern Mich (C) | 3 | .5778 | ML | Mi | BU | ||
| Mass-Lowell (H) | 3 | .5931 | CC | Mi | BU | ||
| CO College (W) | 2 | .5815 | NM | Mi | |||
| Michigan (C) | 1 | .5695 | BU | ||||
| Boston Univ (H) | 1 | .5923 | CC | ||||
We need to choose four of those five teams. Presumably NMU and UML are in because they each win three out of a possible four comparisons with other bubble teams. But after that there are two possibilties:
Given our current understanding about the selection process, this is actually one of the situations where we can't say with certainty who makes the tournament. A similar situation arose in 1999, but other issues were at play and we never got a full explanation of it. But for the sake of guessing, let's say they go with the second choice and give the last two spots to Boston University and Colorado College. That makes the tournament field:
| Team | lPWR | RPI | Comparisons Won | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Denver U (W) | 11 | .6530 | NH | SC | Mn | MS | Me | NM | ML | BU | CC | Cr | Mh |
| New Hampshire (H) | 10 | .6269 | SC | Mn | MS | Me | NM | ML | BU | CC | Cr | Mh | |
| St Cloud (W) | 9 | .6097 | Mn | MS | Me | NM | ML | BU | CC | Cr | Mh | ||
| Minnesota (W) | 8 | .6188 | MS | Me | NM | ML | BU | CC | Cr | Mh | |||
| Mich State (C) | 7 | .6097 | Me | NM | ML | BU | CC | Cr | Mh | ||||
| Maine (H) | 6 | .5896 | NM | ML | BU | CC | Cr | Mh | |||||
| Northern Mich (C) | 4 | .5778 | ML | BU | Cr | Mh | |||||||
| Mass-Lowell (H) | 4 | .5931 | BU | CC | Cr | Mh | |||||||
| Boston Univ (H) | 3 | .5923 | CC | Cr | Mh | ||||||||
| CO College (W) | 3 | .5815 | NM | Cr | Mh | ||||||||
| Cornell (E) | 1 | .5689 | Mh | ||||||||||
| Mercyhurst (M) | 0 | .5209 | |||||||||||
The top four teams get byes, and #1 Denver should be bracketed to play #4 Minnesota in the national semifinals. This can be accomplished by making Denver the top seed in the West and Minnesota the second seed in the East. The remaining two bye teams can be left in their natural reasons, with #2 New Hampshire taking the top seed in the East and #3 St. Cloud the second seed in the West.
Now the remaning eight teams need to be placed in the regionals. This may be different than in past years, if the NCAA opts to extend the adjusted policies put in place for last fall's championships to reduce air travel in the current climate. Five of the non-bye teams are from the East and three from the West, so we do need to send one of the Eastern teams to the West Regional in Ann Arbor, MI rather than the East regional in Worcester, MA. The logical choice would be Mercyhurst, which is actually located closer to the West Regional site anyway. However, that would leave three non-bye teams from Hockey East in the same regional, and even under the aforementioned guidelines, teams can be moved to a different region to avoid first-round intraconference games. Since Boston University must play in the East Regional as host, Maine or UMass-Lowell would need to be shipped out, and Maine wins the pairwise comparison, so that gives us the following regionals:
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We can't quite seed the regionals according to the pairwise comparisons, since Michigan and Northern Michigan can't meet in the first round. We can fix this by giving the sixth seed in the West to Colorado College instead; in this case the pairings are set, although there's some question as to whether UMass-Lowell would be the fourth seed because they have the best RPI among the three bottom teams, which each win one of two possible comparisons with the others, or whether NMU would be seeded higher than UML (and thus be the official home team for their first-round game) because they win the comparison with UML. Assuming the latter gives the following brackets:
5W Mass-Lowell (H) 6E Mercyhurst (M)
4W Northern Mich (C) 3E Maine (H)
1W Denver U (W) --+--2E Minnesota (W)
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2W St Cloud (W) --+--1E New Hampshire (H)
3W Mich State (C) 4E Boston Univ (H)
6W CO College (W) 5E Cornell (E)
If you want to have a look at why each pairwise comparison turned out the way it did, you can click on the individual comparisons in the table at the top of this article for a breakdown of criteria.