Last Modified: 2012 March 25
Joe Schlobotnik / joe@amurgsval.org
URL for this frameset: http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?2002/pairwise.020226.shtml
Game results taken from US College Hockey Online's Division I composite schedule
One week remains in the regular season of five of the six Division I conferences, 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 29 tournament-eligible teams with records at or above .500:
The first five bids go to champions of five Division I conferences. Each of the conferences has decided to give this bid to the winner of its tournaments, so even though Cornell and Mercyhurst have clinched their conferences' regular seasons titles, they have not yet secured NCAA tournament berths. But for the purposes of this exercise, let's assume each conference tournament is won by the team which currently has the best winning percentage in their conference. That would be Cornell in the ECAC, Mercyhurst in the MAAC, Denver in the WCHA, Michigan in the CCHA, and New Hampshire in Hockey East. The seven at-large bids are easy to assign because St. Cloud, Boston University, Minnesota, Michigan State, Maine, Colorado College, and Alaska-Fairbanks win their pairwise comparisons with all the other teams under consideration for an at-large bid. This gives us a hypothetical tournament field of:
| Team | lPWR | RPI | Comparisons Won | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Hampshire (H) | 11 | .6138 | DU | SC | BU | MS | Mn | Mi | Me | CC | Ak | Cr | Mh | |
| Denver U (W) | 9 | .6278 | SC | BU | Mn | Mi | Me | CC | Ak | Cr | Mh | |||
| St Cloud (W) | 9 | .6154 | BU | MS | Mn | Mi | Me | CC | Ak | Cr | Mh | |||
| Boston Univ (H) | 8 | .6123 | MS | Mn | Mi | Me | CC | Ak | Cr | Mh | ||||
| Mich State (C) | 7 | .5994 | DU | Mi | Me | CC | Ak | Cr | Mh | |||||
| Minnesota (W) | 6 | .6120 | MS | Mi | Me | CC | Ak | Mh | ||||||
| Michigan (C) | 5 | .5807 | Me | CC | Ak | Cr | Mh | |||||||
| Maine (H) | 4 | .5788 | CC | Ak | Cr | Mh | ||||||||
| CO College (W) | 3 | .5775 | Ak | Cr | Mh | |||||||||
| AK-Fairbanks (C) | 2 | .5730 | Cr | Mh | ||||||||||
| Cornell (E) | 2 | .5707 | Mn | Mh | ||||||||||
| Mercyhurst (M) | 0 | .5463 | ||||||||||||
The first-round byes are given to the top four teams. The top four are pretty clearly UNH, DU, SCSU, and BU, although #5 does win the "out of order" pairwise comparison with #2 DU. Within this top four, BU loses and UNH wins comparisons with all the others. This means that the top four should be put into the brackets so that BU and UNH would play in the semifinals if they both advance out of the regionals. This makes things a little strange, since BU has to play in the East regional as host, which means UNH has to be sent West for bracketing reasons. So this means UNH ends up as the first seed in the West and BU as the second seed in the East. The placement of Denver and St. Cloud is more or less arbitrary, since either team would have to fly to either regional venue. Denver, on the basis of their pairwise comparison win with SCSU, could be rewarded with a spot in the West or with a #1 seed. Let's suppose it's the latter.
Of the remaining eight teams, five come from the West, so we need to send one of them to the East Regional. Alaska-Fairbanks is the obvious choice, since either regional means a plane flight and four time zones for the Nanooks, plus they're last among the Western teams in terms of pairwise comparisons, and at least one CCHA team needs to go East to avoid a first-round intraconference game. This gives us the following regionals:
Western Regional | Eastern Regional | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The East Regional can be seeded directly according to the pairwise comparisons; in the West we need to change things a little to avoid having first-round intraconference games, so we switch Michigan and Colorado College and end up with the following brackets:
5W CO College (W) 6E Mercyhurst (M)
4W Mich State (C) 3E Maine (H)
1W New Hampshire (H)--+--2E Boston Univ (H)
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2W St Cloud (W) --+--1E Denver U (W)
3W Minnesota (W) 4E AK-Fairbanks (C)
6W Michigan (C) 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. You can also go though the process yourself using today's pairwise comparisons with the "You Are The Committee" script.