NCAA Brackets

I just did another "If The Season Ended Today" column (indexed under [slack.net] and available directly at [slack.net]

The brackets I got look like this:

           5W Mass-Lowell (H)                 6E Cornell (E)      
           4W Michigan (C)                    3E Boston Univ (H)   
                1W Denver U (W)     --+--2E Minnesota (W)          
                                      |                             
                2W St Cloud (W)     --+--1E New Hampshire (H)
           3W Mich State (C)                  4E CO College (W)    
           6W Mercyhurst (M)                  5E Maine (H)

Interesting first-round opponent for Cornell, no?

Is there any effort made by the Committee to keep teams from playing rematches in the tournament, or does it just prevent intra-conference matchups?

As far as I know, just intraconference games.

Also, they have at times rationalized second-round intraconference games as more acceptible when the teams had split their season series, so I think a Cornell-BU matchup might actually be attractive.

That's actually a pretty good draw.

Greg Berge wrote:

That's actually a pretty good draw.

For us or in general?

For us. Cornell knows it isn't outclassed by BU because of splitting with them, so that takes away the "ohmygod it's the NCAA" first night jitters. If they advance, of course it's a long shot to face a rested team (rememeber the final period of 1997 in Grand Rapids?), but of the big guys Minny looks mortal at least (their defense is nowhere near as a good as St. Cloud or Denver).

The only seeding issues to think about are:

(1) Bye (not possible)
(2) Stay East

Being seeded 3, 4, 5, or 6 is effectively interchangeable.

As long as Mercyhurst and three non-bye HE teams are in the NCAAs, I have a hard time seeing Cornell get sent West.

Who has been sent out of region the past few times? I would think the committee might, unofficially, try to cut a team some slack and try not to send them out of region again if they have gone recently.

Yeah, that would be Lowell. But if Lowell, Maine, and BU are all in the NCAAs and none of them has a bye, they need to send someone to the West to avoid an all-Hockey-East first round game. BU can't go because they're hosting the East Regional. And if it comes down to a choice between Lowell and Maine, well, you see why Lowell always ends up getting the shaft. (Actually, they're behind Maine in the selection criteria now anyway.)