Yale at Harvard

The Harvard feed is so hard on the head--it sounds like the announcers are sitting in the middle of the band section. But from what I can hear, Harvard is really dominating and the scoreboard reflects it, 3-0 Harvard after one. I've barely heard Higgins name mentioned...The Yale offense sounds extremely inept, especially on the power play.

Adam Brown '03 wrote:

The Yale offense sounds extremely inept, especially on the power play.

That plus serious problems in goal can spell real trouble.

Let's hope they don't find a goalie before March 1. I'd like to end the Ingalls jinx--on TV.

Yale has come back to make it 3-2 entering the third.

Harvard up 6-2 in the third. Ick.

In better news, Minn up 2-1 over UND in the 2nd

NoDak beat Minny 4-2. I think that's actually better, since with the ECAC schedule the Red won't get any higher in PWR, whereas Minny could overtake Cornell. See [elf.hockey.cornell.edu]

Our friend Nicky had a bad night in Potsdam.

Well, it's certainly mathematically possible for Cornell to move up in PWR. I ran a bunch of numbers trying to figure out a way to justify optimism, but Greg is probably right (as usual... ).

Looking at the key comparisons:

UND: we actually currently win this comparison - winning RPI, lose TUC, and tie on common opponents at 1.00. However, our RPI will probably drop lower than UND unless they tank a fair number of games. We could win TUC by the end of the season, with our relative "cupcake" TUCs remaining in Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth (and probably Clarkson and Brown) compared to what the Souix will face in UMinn, CC, and DU. However, our common opponents are Princeton, Yale, and Brown. Since we're 1.00 vs them, we can only go down - there's no way to pick up a comparison point for COP. Therefore, this comparison will simply come down to RPI - whoever wins that will at least win the tiebreaker for the overall comparison.

Maine: currently lose RPI, TUC, and H2H, win COp. We really should win TUC by the end of the season, especially since one of our 3 TUC losses was to Maine, so it doesn't count against us nor for them in the comparison. Our common opponents are WMU, BU, and Harvard. We're 5-0 with one (or more) games remaining vs. Harvard. They're 3-0-1 (thank you WMU!), with two (or more) games remaining vs. BU. As long as we beat Harvard, we'll keep the COp comparison, which will leave the comparison tied 2-2 and Maine winning based on the RPI tiebreaker.

CC: currently lose TUC and COp, win RPI. Assume that we lose RPI. They're TUC is .733 and ours is .700. Again, I'd have to believe that we have a reasonable chance of taking this one by the end of the season. Our common opponents are Maine and WMU, and neither of us have games remaining, so they will keep this point. CC will win the comparison 2-1 (beating us in RPI and COp).

BC: currently win RPI, TUC, and COp. They may overtake our RPI, but I don't think we'll lose TUC (we're .700 with relatively low TUCs remaining, they're .6176 with the likes of ME, BU, and UNH remaining). Our common opponents are UVM, BU, Dartmouth, ME, Harvard. We're 4-2 with games remaining vs. UVM, Dartmouth, and HU. They're 2-2-2 with 2 vs. BU and 1 @ ME remaining. I think we'll keep COp. We should keep this comparison (winning TUC and COp but losing RPI).

UNH: similar story. UNH may win RPI, but we should have TUC and COp by the end of the season (those two wins vs BU were HUGE).

OSU: they may get RPI, though the CCHA doesn't have the best conference RPI, either. I think we match up better with our remaining TUCs than they do with FSU and UMich. Common opponents are CCT, Colgate, Princeton, and WMU. We're both 1.00 right now, but I like our chances vs. CCT, Gate, and PU better than theirs vs. WMU - should stay tied at the worst, though one bad night could certainly flip this comparison. We definitely need to cheer against OSU.

BU: we'll take this one based on H2H, TUC (probably), and COp (RPI, UVM, ME, Harvard) since we get extra shots at RPI and UVM and they get extra shots at ME (or ME gets extra shots at them.... )

etc, etc.

I think that it's likely we'll end up 4th in PWR if things go within random error of the expected results from here on out. So, yep - may as well cheer for the Souix. Bleah.

Thanks, Robb, for the thorough analysis.

Finishing 4 would presumably mean a 1 seed in one of the East regionals, right?

Unless there were three Eastern teams in the top 4, then all bets are off

Wow, five goals on 17 shots. Maybe he was having a little chat with the Clarkson fans!

I haven't thought too hard about RPI, but here's how things look for keeping our current KRACH. So far we've won 80% of our games (4-to-1), and our (appropriately weighted) average opponent had a KRACH of 310, which gives us a KRACH of 4 times 310, or 1240. Unfortunately, all of our remaining opponents have KRACH ratings between 15 and 395, with only Dartmouth and Harvard above 300.

You can get a rough sense of strength of schedule by dividing opponents into groups with KRACH below 33, between 33 and 100, between 100 and 300, and above 300; our games so far break down 1/3/4/7, with all three losses coming against the last group. Our remaining games, not counting the ECAC playoffs, break down 1/9/2/2. (Including the playoffs, it's probably 1/11/3/3.) So our strength of schedule by the end of the season will be maybe half what it is now, meaning we'll need to have won about 8/9 of our games. Assuming four playoff games, that means ending the season around 29-3-1, which means we can afford one more tie for the rest of the season if we want to keep our (currently #4) KRACH.

Okay, now I have thought about it, and for RPI, it looks even worse. The average RPIStr (2/3 winning percentage not including games against Cornell + 1/3 opponents' winning percentage) of Cornell's opponents for the entire season (assuming playoff games against Clarkson, Clarkson, Yale and Harvard) is .5082, which means that even if we run the table and finish 30-3 (.9091), our RPI will be .6084, which is less than our current RPI of .6145. (That's what happens when you add winning percentage to strength of schedule instead of multiplying.) The one silver lining is that the average strength of our opponents will likely go up from what it is now, since the average winning percentage will be dragged to .500 as the ECAC games wash out all those non-conference losses.

Hey, if our RPI is only dropping 0.061 by sweeping a relatively week (1/11/3/3) schedule, that's much better than I had feared.

As the UND fans have been saying ( ), all we can do from this point out is win.

-Fred

Not that all this analysis stopped me from smiling internally to see UND go down to MN tonight (6-3 on two ENGs). Now the polls should get really interesting....

And note that mighty invincible North Dakota has gone 1-1-2 since leaving the cupcake portion of their schedule.

And, for anyone watching the DU-SCSU game, are Denver's third jerseys even more hideous than Clarkson's dried mustard disaster?

Tough call - I think the actual color of Clarkson's 3rd is worse, but the luster of DU's yellow might just make up the difference. The DU goalie pads are just unbelieveably bad. Maybe they designed the uniforms intentionally as a distraction for the other team?