Quest for #1 Seed -- who to cheer for 3/11-12

We're currently tied for 5th in PWR. If the chips fall right, we're certainly in the running for a #1 seed in the NCAA tourney. Here's a guide to where we want the chips to fall in the various games this weekend:

ECAC:
Root for Cornell (duh!)
Root for Brown to take at least 1 game from 'Gate. This will help keep their RPI over 0.5000
Root for St. Lawrence to take at least 1 game from Sucks. This will help keep their RPI over 0.5000

CCHA:
Root for Notre Dame over Michigan.
Root for Michigan State over Miami. MSU wins help our SOS, and we want Miami's RPI to fall under 0.5000 (which hurts Michigan)
Root for LSSU over Nebraska-Omaha. We want UNO's RPI to fall under 0.5000 (which hurts Michigan)
Root for Northern Michigan over Western Michigan. Just to make sure WMU doesn't become a TUC.

WCHA:
Straightforward -- root against ColCol, Denver, Minny and Wisconsin. In particular, root for Alaska-Anchorage to take at least 1 game from Wisconsin. This will hopefully raise their RPI over 0.5000 (which hurts Minnesota).
Root for North Dakota over Minnesota-Duluth. Helps Dartmouth's prospects.

Hockey East:
Root for Massachusetts over Boston College. All other series are relatively meaningless.

AHA:
Root for either Cansius or Sacred Heart. If either wins the AHA Tournament we get an extra TUC comparison.

A question that may have been addressed here previously. Does the RPI bonus for good wins count towards whether a team is a TUC or not? SLU is currently at .5093 RPI, which I suppose could drop below .5000 if they lose twice to Harvard (though a quick hand-calc makes me think they'll stay above water anyway). But the Saints have one good road win (at Maine). If we use the often guessed .003 bonus for this I think it pretty much guarantees SLU will stay above .5000. But will the committee apply the bonus in this way?

[Q]KenP Wrote:

Root for North Dakota over Minnesota-Duluth. Helps Dartmouth's prospects.[/q]

Because Brown played UMD twice, wins by UMD would help keep Brown a TUC.

North Dakota is in the same range too. So them losing could also help Dartmouth.

You only get quality wins for games against the TOP 15 in RPI. You also do not get quality wins for conference games. So we couldn't get a quality win against SLU even if they were #1 in the nation, and they're not nearly good enough to get anyone a quality win anyway at the moment. They *can* get their opponent a TUC win, but that's it.

Also:
Hockey East:
Root for Maine over UML, to keep Maine in the top 15 of RPI and give us our quality win. That could also knock UML down and help Dartmouth and/or Colgate.

Also, I'm not sure that Brown or SLU need to win a game to stay a TUC. They're both is fairly decent shape. Be my guest and run the numbers to see how true that is.

Finally, I'm hesitant to root against Mich. Because their win over Minn is very helpful at keeping us out of Minnesota for the regional. Unless Minn tanks this weekend and UAA becomes a TUC, significantly hurting Minn, I'd rather stay a #2 and keep Minn in our band.

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

A question that may have been addressed here previously. Does the RPI bonus for good wins count towards whether a team is a TUC or not? SLU is currently at .5093 RPI, which I suppose could drop below .5000 if they lose twice to Harvard (though a quick hand-calc makes me think they'll stay above water anyway). But the Saints have one good road win (at Maine). If we use the often guessed .003 bonus for this I think it pretty much guarantees SLU will stay above .5000. But will the committee apply the bonus in this way?[/q]

Yes, TUC status is based on the adjusted RPI including the bonus. The only thing the unadjusted RPI is used for is identifying the top 15 to define a quality win.

In that case SLU is pretty much a lock on TUC status now, since their adjusted RPI is .5123 with a .003 road bonus. I don't think there's any way even two losses will cause them to drop that far.

Let's try it out...
[www.slack.net]

Without bonuses:
Brown losing twice to Colgate leaves them at .5034
SLU losing twice to Harvard leaves them at .5068

Pending other secondary effects, of course, but I have a hard time seeing it being a problem

[Q]DeltaOne81 Wrote:
Let's try it out...

Without bonuses:
Brown losing twice to Colgate leaves them at .5034
SLU losing twice to Harvard leaves them at .5068

Pending other secondary effects, of course, but I have a hard time seeing it being a problem [/q]What if you plug in the negative effect on SLU's SOS of Harvard hopefully losing a game or two in Albany?

[q]What if you plug in the negative effect on SLU's SOS of Harvard hopefully losing a game or two in Albany?[/q]The second order effect of an opponent losing a game is always going to be smaller than the first order affect of losing yourself. Even though SoS is weighted more strongly in RPI than Win%, the SoS factors are averaged over a much larger number of games.

[Q]DeltaOne81 Wrote:
Without bonuses:
Brown losing twice to Colgate leaves them at .5034
SLU losing twice to Harvard leaves them at .5068

Pending other secondary effects, of course, but I have a hard time seeing it being a problem [/q]

Adding in some other games can remove Brown from being a TUC.
In addition to Brown and SLU losing twice, I added the following results:
Cornell sweeps Clarkson,
Dartmouth beats Vermont two games to one,
North Dakota sweeps UMD,
Cornell beats Dartmouth,
Harvard beats Colgate,
Dartmouth beats Colgate,
and Cornell beats Harvard.

In that scenario (which omits all non-ECAC games besides the UMD-North Dakota series), Brown's RPI falls to .4997. SLU safely remains a TUC (.5081).

Well here's the thing. Brown would have then played Colgate 4 times to everyone else's 2. So, yeah, if Colgate beats Brown and then goes on and loses 2, it could definitely hurt Brown, I hadn't thought about that.

Well, so if pretty much everything goes against them, Brown could still fail to be a TUC. I'm surprised it makes that large of a difference, but its good to know. But, they'd only miss by 0.0003, so all we'd really need is a few things to go their way. A win over Colgate (although that would make them play Colgate 5 times, but it would significantly outweigh that effect - I tested), a UMD win or two (possible), a Holy Cross win or two (likely), an AIC win (game should be just about over right now), or a UML win or two (though we want Maine in that series, but Maine 2-1 wouldn't hurt us ). The ony thing that can't happen is Merrimack winning, but at least they can't lose more either

Good catch, they still could not be a TUC, but the universe would pretty much have to align against them. Then again, it *is* Brown