Pairwise Comparisons and PWR for D1 College Hockey (2003-2004)

© 1999-2004, Joe Schlobotnik (archives)

URL for this frameset: http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?2004/pwr.shtml

Game results taken from US College Hockey Online's Division I composite schedule

Up-to-the-minute PWR On USCHO.com NEW!

If you're looking for the current Pairwise Rankings, calculated from the latest scores, you should go to US College Hockey Online. USCHO also has a form that allows you to examine the effects of the NCAA's "quality wins" fudge factor. For Joe Schlobotnik's geeky analysis of the system, with a table of criteria and comparisons recalculated daily, read on.

Today's Pairwise Comparisons (including games of 2004 March 20)

Explanation of the Table

The table above lists all of the Teams Under Consideration (TUCs) for the NCAA tournament. This includes all tournament-eligible Division 1 teams with a Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) of .500 or above. Each team has been compared to each other team on the basis of the NCAA selection criteria. Those criteria are:

RPI

The Ratings Percentage Index, described in detail on our RPI page.

TUC

Record vs other Teams Under Consideration. Head-to-head games are explicitly excluded from this criterion, which is judged on straight Winning Percentage (with ties as always counting as half a win and half a loss) in the relevant games.

COp

Record vs Common Opponents. Again, this is resolved on the basis of Winning Percentage.

H2H

Head-to-head results. Each win in head-to-head competition carries the same weight as each of the other criteria.

A team gets one point towards the comparison for each of the first three criteria it wins, plus one point for each head-to-head victory. Whichever team has more points according to this method wins the criterion. In case of a tie, the team with the higher RPI wins the criterion.

In each team's row, in the "Comparisons Won" part of the grid, are listed the abbreviations of all the teams with which they win comparisons. Each of these cells is a link to a mini-table (which will appear in a pop-up window under most browser setups) detailing the results of the four criteria. The RPI row of the mini-table contains the overall record and RPI for each team, the TUC, and COp rows contain the record and winning percentage in the games relevant to each criterion, and the H2H row contains the head-to-head record of each team against the other.

The PWR column in the main table gives the total number of comparisons won by each team. The teams are ordered according the their PWR; if two or more teams are tied in the PWR, the tie is broken if possible according to the number of comparisons each wins against the other tied teams; if this fails to resolve the tie (which can be thought of a ro-sham-bo situation: Rock crushes Scissors, Scissors cut Paper, Paper covers Rock), the RPI is used to break the tie.

Breakdown of Criteria

The following table lists, for each Team Under Consideration, the two selection criteria which are more or less the same in each comparison: RPI and record vs TUCs. Each team's name in the table is a link to a rundown of the games contributing to these two criteria.

Note a team's record in the "vs TUCs" column is that against all TUCs; since head-to-head games are left out of this criterion, the record used in an actual comparison will be different if the two teams have played each other.

See also

• A comparison of college hockey ranking systems
• Last year's PWR
• US College Hockey Online's explanation of the PWR.
• A Proposed Modification to the NCAA Selection Criteria