Last Modified: 2012 March 25
Joe Schlobotnik / joe@amurgsval.org
URL for this frameset: http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?2002/pairwise.020312.shtml
Game results taken from US College Hockey Online's Division I composite schedule
This analysis is based on the pairwise comparisons at the time it was written. You can also go through this process interactively with the up-to-date results using the "You Are The Committee" script, or you can fill in hypothetical results for the remaining games using the conference tournament bracket or non-table hypothetical interface, and use the resulting pairwise comparisons. You can also use the self-service hypothetical interface to add, remove, or change any results you like from this season and go from there.
Only one weekend remains before NCAA Men's Division I Ice Hockey Selection Committee choose and seed the national tournament field. Twenty-five teams have ended their seasons with losing records, and thus been mathematically eliminated from consideration. Two more (Alabama-Huntsville and Bemidji State) are guaranteed to finish with losing records and have no shot at an automatic bid. The remaining 32 can at least in principle end up being considered. To get a sense of where everyone stands now, let's do a run through the NCAA selection procedures using the results as they stand now.
There are currently 27 teams with records of .500 or better against tournament-eligible competition (not including the five still alive in conference tournaments who have a shot at either a non-losing final record or an automatic berth). The pairwise comparisons among those 27 are as follows:
The top eleven teams win all of their comparisons with all the teams below them, and included in those 11 are the top seeds in four of the five conference tournaments with automatic bids on the line (CCHA, WCHA, ECAC, and Hockey East). If we assume that those four automatic bids would come from that group, and that the fifth to MAAC #1 seed Mercyhurst, we get a tournament field consisting of:
| Team | lPWR | RPI | Comparisons Won | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Hampshire (H) | 11 | .6168 | Mn | DU | BU | MS | Me | SC | Cr | CC | Mi | Ak | Mh |
| Minnesota (W) | 10 | .6243 | DU | BU | MS | Me | SC | Cr | CC | Mi | Ak | Mh | |
| Denver U (W) | 9 | .6170 | BU | MS | Me | SC | Cr | CC | Mi | Ak | Mh | ||
| Boston Univ (H) | 8 | .6054 | MS | Me | SC | Cr | CC | Mi | Ak | Mh | |||
| Mich State (C) | 7 | .5935 | Me | SC | Cr | CC | Mi | Ak | Mh | ||||
| Maine (H) | 6 | .5865 | SC | Cr | CC | Mi | Ak | Mh | |||||
| St Cloud (W) | 5 | .6053 | Cr | CC | Mi | Ak | Mh | ||||||
| Cornell (E) | 4 | .5837 | CC | Mi | Ak | Mh | |||||||
| CO College (W) | 3 | .5783 | Mi | Ak | Mh | ||||||||
| Michigan (C) | 2 | .5742 | Ak | Mh | |||||||||
| AK-Fairbanks (C) | 1 | .5667 | Mh | ||||||||||
| Mercyhurst (M) | 0 | .5454 | |||||||||||
The comparisons are entirely transitive, so we can use them to assign a unique 1-12 ranking. The top four teams get first-round byes, and should be seeded so that #1 UNH is bracketed to play #4 BU in the semis. Since BU hosts the East Regional, that means they must stay East, and New Hampshire would be the top seed in the West. The placement of Minnesota and Denver is somewhat arbitrary, but let's suppose the Gophers are kept West (as the #2 seed) to give them the shorter trip to Ann Arbor and Denver go East as the top seed in that regional.
The remaining eight teams include five from the West and three from the East, so one of the Westerners has to be sent to the East Regional, and the obvious choice is Alaska-Fairbanks, since they are the lowest-rated team, they have to fly to the regionals anyway, and one of the three CCHA teams has to be swapped out to avoid a first-round intraconference game. The regionals would thus be as follows:
Western Regional | Eastern Regional | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The seeds for the East Regional can be assigned according to the pairwise comparisons, but in the West we need to exchange CC and Michigan to avoid a couple of first-round intraconference games. This gives tournament brackets of:
5W Michigan (C) 6E Mercyhurst (M)
4W St Cloud (W) 3E Maine (H)
1W New Hampshire (H)--+--2E Boston Univ (H)
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2W Minnesota (W) --+--1E Denver U (W)
3W Mich State (C) 4E Cornell (E)
6W CO College (W) 5E AK-Fairbanks (C)
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, or by filling in the conference tournament brackets on our table-based text-based hypothetical interface.