If the season ended today, 2002 February 12

© 2000-2002, Joe Schlobotnik (archives)

URL for this frameset: http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?2002/pairwise.020212.shtml

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

The Beanpot is behind us, the conferences are beginning their home stretch, and according to the NCAA's Men's Division I Championship Handbook, the Division I advisory committee had a teleconference today, so it's time for another dry run of the NCAA selection procedure.

A big part of the procedure are pairwise comparisons carried out according to the selection criteria. Here's a rundown of the pairwise comparisons among the 28 tournament-eligible teams with records at or above .500:

Pairwise Comparisons (including games of 2002 February 11)

Pairwise Comparisons
Rk Team PWR RPI Comparisons Won
1 Denver U  (W) 31 .6288 SC NH Mn BU CC MS Cr Mi Me ML Ak WM NM Mh NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
2 St Cloud  (W) 30 .6164 NH Mn BU CC MS Cr Mi Me ML Ak WM NM Mh NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
3 New Hampshire (H) 29 .6158   Mn BU CC MS Cr Mi Me ML Ak WM NM Mh NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
4 Minnesota  (W) 28 .6141     BU CC MS Cr Mi Me ML Ak WM NM Mh NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
5 Boston Univ  (H) 26 .6043       CC MS Cr   Me ML Ak WM NM Mh NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
6 CO College  (W) 26 .5959         MS Cr Mi Me ML Ak WM NM Mh NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
7 Mich State  (C) 25 .5931           Cr Mi Me ML Ak WM NM Mh NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
8 Cornell  (E) 24 .5810             Mi Me ML Ak WM NM Mh NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
9 Michigan  (C) 24 .5804       BU       Me ML Ak WM NM Mh NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
10 Maine  (H) 22 .5778                 ML Ak WM NM Mh NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
11 Mass-Lowell  (H) 20 .5701                   Ak   NM Mh NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
12 AK-Fairbanks  (C) 19 .5645                     WM NM   NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
13 Western Mich  (C) 19 .5572                   ML   NM Mh   NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
14 Northern Mich (C) 18 .5557                         Mh NO NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
15 Mercyhurst  (M) 17 .5378                     Ak     NO   BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
16 NE-Omaha  (C) 17 .5598                       WM     NE BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
17 NorthEastern  (H) 16 .5498                           Mh   BC OS FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
18 Boston Coll  (H) 13 .5282                                 OS FS Ck Ha RP Da   WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
19 Ohio State  (C) 13 .5265                                   FS Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
20 Ferris State  (C) 12 .5196                                     Ck Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
21 Clarkson  (E) 11 .5052                                       Ha RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
22 Harvard  (E) 10 .4939                                         RP Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
23 RPI  (E) 9 .4869                                           Da Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
24 Dartmouth  (E) 8 .4787                                             Un WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
25 Union  (E) 8 .4819                                 BC             WS Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
26 Wayne State  (A) 6 .4770                                                 Ni Qn SH Ca HC Ct
27 Niagara  (A) 5 .4732                                                   Qn SH Ca HC Ct
28 Quinnipiac  (M) 4 .4705                                                     SH Ca HC Ct
29 Sacred Heart  (M) 3 .4570                                                       Ca HC Ct
30 Canisius  (M) 1 .4485                                                         HC  
31 Holy Cross  (M) 1 .4480                                                           Ct
32 Connecticut  (M) 1 .4333                                                         Ca  

The first five bids go to the winners of the conference tournaments in five conferences. For this dry run, we give those to the leaders in those conferences, which are Denver (WCHA), Michigan or Michigan State (CCHA), New Hampshire (Hockey East), Cornell (ECAC), and Mercyhurst (MAAC). All of these teams except Mercyhurst are in the top ten in the pairwise rankings, and those ten teams win all their comparisons with all the other teams under consideration. (The other five of those ten are SCSU, Minnesota, BU, CC, and Maine.) The final at-large bid would seem to come down to a choice among Mass-Lowell, Alaska-Fairbanks, and Western Michigan. Each team wins one and loses one pairwise comparison with the other two, but UML has the best RPI of the group, so they would get the bid. This makes the hypothetical field of twelve:

TeamlPWRRPI Comparisons Won
Denver U (W) 11 .6288 SC NH Mn BU CC MS Cr Mi Me ML Mh
St Cloud (W) 10 .6164 NH Mn BU CC MS Cr Mi Me ML Mh
New Hampshire (H) 9 .6158   Mn BU CC MS Cr Mi Me ML Mh
Minnesota (W) 8 .6141     BU CC MS Cr Mi Me ML Mh
Boston Univ (H) 6 .6043       CC MS Cr   Me ML Mh
CO College (W) 6 .5959         MS Cr Mi Me ML Mh
Mich State (C) 5 .5931           Cr Mi Me ML Mh
Cornell (E) 4 .5810             Mi Me ML Mh
Michigan (C) 4 .5804       BU       Me ML Mh
Maine (H) 2 .5778                 ML Mh
Mass-Lowell (H) 1 .5701                   Mh
Mercyhurst (M) 0 .5378                    

The first-round byes are given to the top four, and we should bracket things so that #4 Minnesota would play #1 Denver in the semifinals. This can be accomplished by seeding DU and SCSU first and second, respectively, in the West, and UNH and Minnesota first and second, respectively, in the East.

Now, for assigning teams to the regionals, things get a little tricky. The regionals are in Worcester, MA and Ann Arbor, MI, so the host teams BU and Michigan have to stay in their respective regions. There are six Eastern and six Western teams in the tournament, but we already have a Western team (Minnesota) playing in the East. In the past, the NCAA tried to send two Eastern teams West and two Western teams East to mix things up, but this year they may want to reduce air travel by keeping teams closer to home. Still, at least one Eastern team needs to go West. The obvious choice would be Mercyhurst, since they lose comparisons with all of the other tournament teams, plus Ann Arbor is actually a shorter trip for them than Worcester, anyway. Problem is, that would leave three Hockey East teams to play in the two first round games of the East regional, which would necessitate a first-round intraconference matchup, which the NCAA still wants to avoid. So they would have to send Lowell (or possibly Maine) to the West either instead of or in addition to Mercyhurst. Given that Colorado College would have to fly to either regional, a logical solution to the whole thing would be to send CC to the East and Mercyhurst and UML to the West, producing the following regionals:

Western Regional
(Grand Rapids, MI)

Eastern Regional
(Worcester, MA)

TeamlPWRRPI Comps Won
Denver U (W) 1 .6288 SC
St Cloud (W) 0 .6164
Mich State (C) 3 .5931 Mi ML Mh
Michigan (C) 2 .5804 ML Mh
Mass-Lowell (H) 1 .5701   Mh
Mercyhurst (M) 0 .5378    
TeamlPWRRPI Comps Won
New Hampshire (H) 1 .6158 Mn
Minnesota (W) 0 .6141
Boston Univ (H) 3 .6043 CC Cr Me
CO College (W) 2 .5959 Cr Me
Cornell (E) 1 .5810   Me
Maine (H) 0 .5778    

We can't quite seed the regionals directly by pairwise comparisons, since that would give a first-round BU-Maine game, so we switch Cornell and Maine to get the following: 

5W Mass-Lowell (H)                 6E Cornell (E)      
4W Michigan (C)                    3E Boston Univ (H)   
     1W Denver U (W)     --+--2E Minnesota (W)          
                           |                             
     2W St Cloud (W)     --+--1E New Hampshire (H)
3W Mich State (C)                  4E CO College (W)    
6W Mercyhurst (M)                  5E Maine (H)

The Gory Details

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.

Last Modified: 2012 March 25

Joe Schlobotnik / joe@amurgsval.org

HTML 4.0 compliant CSS2 compliant