NCAA Tourney

OK...don't hurt me for posting this topic so early in the season. I just knocked on wood, crossed my fingers, and did whatever other voo doo I could do to keep the bad vibes away... ::voodoo:: (hmm...I bet that won't work ...Age...any chance of a voodoo face?)

But I noticed that the format of the NCAA Tournament has changed this year. Now that there are two different locations for the East and Northeast regionals...is there any method to the madness of assigning which teams to which regional? I checked the USCHO page on Tournament Selection process, but they have all of the old information for the 12 team tournament.

Just wondering if I should be looking into a road trip to Providence or Worcester...assuming our current level of play continues... Or is this more or less going to be a craps shoot?

Don't worry Jason, I was pondering the same thing a few days ago and came across this page:

[www.uscho.com]

To summarize, their priorities are that host schools get to be near home, #1 seeds get to be near home, and that first-round intraconference games are to be avoided. I'm not sure who the 4 hosts are (at the time of that article, only two hosts were known - BU an UMich). The way I read it, if 3 of the top 4 teams are Eastern, though, the #3 eastern team would still get a #1 seed out west, rather than "getting" to stay home. After the #1s and hosts are placed, they go down the PWR list and place the teams as #2s, etc. Looks like they will flop teams rankings to keep them in the "right" regional. E.g. if Cornell is in the 5-8 slots of PWR, they should get a #2 eastern seed, but if that gives them a matchup with a #3 team that's also from the ECAC, they could swap the seedings of the #3 and #4 teams to avoid the matchup in the first game, while keeping all the teams at the same regionals.

I guess Worcester is marinally closer to Ithaca, but I can't imagine that it would be enough of a difference to affect the committee's placement. Given the guidelines published, I'd say that Cornell has a pretty good shot at eastern placement (assuming we get in), but it is basically impossible to tell if it'll be Worcester or Providence.

Jason:

Crap shoot it is. I imagine if Cornell wins the regular season and ECAC tournament titles, they would be pretty much guaranteed to stay in the East. Whether that would be Worcester or Providence is anyone's guess.

You'll just have to sit tight until 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 23rd when the NCAA Tourney pairings are announced on ESPN.

The other two regional hosts are Providence College and the University of Minnesota.

As for the exact way the selection process will work, there can't be any certainty as yet, because the NCAA has yet to publish the Championships Handbook online. I would think that any such handbook would not include a published bracket, so that the committee can pair the regional winners any way it desires in the national semifinals (that is, to ensure that if the top seeds advance, #1 and #4 overall meet in one semifinal, and #2 and #3 in the other).

I agree with the others - there's no way to know where the Big Red would be placed, since Providence and Worcester are roughly equally distant from Ithaca.

Matt Carberry wrote:

As for the exact way the selection process will work, there can't be any certainty as yet, because the NCAA has yet to publish the Championships Handbook online. I would think that any such handbook would not include a published bracket, so that the committee can pair the regional winners any way it desires in the national semifinals (that is, to ensure that if the top seeds advance, #1 and #4 overall meet in one semifinal, and #2 and #3 in the other).

Well, considering that last year they did publish a bracket in the Championships Handbook and ignored it...