Saturday Morning Brackets

Giving a shot at what the NCAAs might look like as of this morning:

If #1 seeds are straight PWR (not a given), we're looking at: CC, Maine, Cornell, BC. Send BC West, as the #4 (also not a given). Providence (Prov.), BU (Worcester), Minnesota (Minn.) and Michigan (Mich.) all have to stay home. The difficulties as I see them occur with the Denver-St. Cloud-North Dakota WCHA logjam down around the 9-12 slots in PWR. This will probably work itself out in the tournament, but looks knotty because now, one of them would have to play Minnesota in a first-round 2-3 game. To wit:

WORCESTER
1. Maine
2. BU
3. St. Cloud
4. Ala-Huntsville

PROVIDENCE
1. Cornell
2. Ferris St.
3. North Dakota
4. Providence

MICHIGAN
1. Boston College
2. New Hampshire
3. Michigan
4. MSU-Mankato

MINNEAPOLIS
1. Colorado College
2. Minnesota
3. Denver
4. Mercyhurst


The only rub here is the Minnesota-Denver (or Minnesota-St. Cloud, or Minnesota-North Dakota) first-round matchup. Without elevating Mercyhurst or Ala-Huntsville to a #3 (not going to happen, and elevating Providence doesn't help -- they can't leave their regional -- nor will elevating MSU-Mankato: they're in the WCHA, too), or dumping a #2 to a #3 (who you gonna dump? UNH? Ferris State? I guess Ferris State's a possibility...), Minnesota as a #2 is problematic. Since the Gophers are tied in PWR with BC (but lose the tiebreaker), one possibility would be to make Minny a #1:

WORCESTER
1. Maine
2. BU
3. Denver
4. MSU-Mankato

PROVIDENCE
1. Cornell
2. Ferris St.
3. North Dakota
4. Providence

MICHIGAN
1. Colorado College
2. New Hampshire
3. Michigan
4. Mercyhurst

MINNEAPOLIS
1. Minnesota
2. Boston College
3. St. Cloud
4. Ala-Huntsville


In either of these scenarios, the Red's regional looks the same. Naturally, the committee might also dump Ferris St. to a #3. Or it might start factoring in colors of jerseys (who knows). Plus, the conference tourneys will change all this anyway. But what do you want? It's Saturday morning. I'm bored. Shut up!


ZD

That looks like a good regional for us, if it were to happen. The big things right now are (1) keep a #1, (2) keep away from those bogus west sites, and (3) stay away from Mankato, who even with the rout last night are a lot better than a #4 would indicate. Staying away from BC for now might not be a bad idea either.

I was wondering about the whole bracketing procedure. The seeding committee takes the top four teams in PWR and places those in separate regionals. Then the next four get #2's, next four and so on. But they leave little indication that the top team in PWR gets to play the lowest team in PWR. It might be that the #1 seeds can play any #4 seed and not necessarily the lowest PWR.

So is it possible that CC could play Providence or MSU-Mankato? I suppose other criteria come into play here, since CC won't play MSU in a first round game...and I can't see them sending the #1 team in PWR east to play Providence (seeing as how Providence is hosting). Could someone think up a scenario where we get to play the MAAC or CHA team?

The fact is it's impossible to know for sure what the committee'll do. McCaw explictly said in his "oh, btw, we have a new criteria" interview:
[Q]"It won't necessarily be No. 1 playing No. 16," McCaw said. "But a No. 1 seed will always play a No. 4 seed."[/Q]

However, i think the general impression is that since #15 and #16 will be a good step below the others, the #1 and #2 will be rewarded by playing them (anti-respectively), if it doesn't violate some other criteria, but again, there's no way to know for sure. They can really do whatever they want. This is why selection Sunday matters, even without the committee trying to justify it by adding 'mystery.'

Zooey's solution to the WCHA-matchup problem works, but there's a less drastic one, that involves flipping a #3-#4 seeding, rather than a 1-2. And since the top 4 are supposed to get the 'special honor' of the #1 seed in the closet region, I have a hunch the committee would rather flip the lower seeds. Of course, they could also decide that maintaining seedings is more important than a conference matchup.

Since MSU-Mankato is a damn good team anyway, put them up into #3, and flip Denver down to 4 (this is only flipping the current 12-13 in the PWR, very close). And you don't screw Denver over much, cuz they end up playing the lowest #1 seed (BC) instead of the top #2. So you end up with:

WORCESTER
1. Maine
2. BU
3. St. Cloud
4. Ala-Huntsville

PROVIDENCE
1. Cornell
2. Ferris St.
3. North Dakota
4. Providence

MICHIGAN
1. Boston College
2. New Hampshire
3. Michigan
4. Denver

MINNEAPOLIS
1. Colorado College
2. Minnesota
3. MSU-Mankato
4. Mercyhurst

The committee is burdened in setting forth a fair and logical bracket by the host-placement rules with all 4 hosts between 5 and 14 in PW. There are rational reasons for the committee to want to place the hosts at home, but those reasons are obviously not fairness. We should be resigned to the fact that unless Providence ends the season on a long losing jag (and probably even then) or we do (perish the thought) we are going to face them in the first round of the tournament.

[Q]But they leave little indication that the top team in PWR gets to play the lowest team in PWR. It might be that the #1 seeds can play any #4 seed and not necessarily the lowest PWR.[/Q]
Correct. And that's exactly what the committee chair Ian McCaw said in the USCHO article [www.uscho.com]
[Q]"It won't necessarily be No. 1 playing No. 16," McCaw said. "But a No. 1 seed will always play a No. 4 seed."[/Q]

[Q]Could someone think up a scenario where we get to play the MAAC or CHA team?[/Q]
Certainly. A surprise winner in any of the conference tournaments could knock Providence or Mankato out of the tournament, removing 2 road blocks that z-dog mentioned above. It's also possible for Cornell to be the #2 PWR team if Maine continues to tank...it's only a thin RPI difference that's keeping us at #3. And it's unlikely that BC can, given they've pretty much lost the comparisons with Cornell and Ferris St (a lot has to happen for them to win those)...BC can win the comparison with Maine, and that's about all they can gain. Say OSU or Mich St. win the CCHA, Cornell wins the ECACs and say that Providence doesn't make it past BU in the first round of the Hockey East playoffs. Providence is most likely out, and you can put a non Hockey East team in Providence as #4 paired with Maine. As the second #1 seed, and no other ECAC teams to avoid in the first round, it's not out of the realm of possibility to think that a MAAC/CHA reward would be given.

[Q]MINNEAPOLIS
1. Colorado College
2. Minnesota
3. MSU-Mankato
4. Mercyhurst[/Q]

Alas, this doesn't work, if the committee's goal is to keep first-round matchups strictly non-conference, since Minny and MSU are both in the WCHA. Obviously, this is all going to change come conference tournament time (and maybe even tonight...), but given the way things roll out right now, I still think making Minny #1 or making Ferris St. #3 is the only way to go. Then again, the NC$$ could go back on its goal of avoiding conference games, and then all this speculation was



ZD

Whoops, I know we had moved stuff around before to get it, and I found what we had done, and it was continent on OSU being in the picture, which they're not now.

Eh, screw it, I'm sure the committee's new formula will give them some 'magic' solution.

The committee has both "rules" and "preferences" and we have to evaluate how they will resolve conflicts. A simple view:

The rules: (1) Hosts stay at home; (2) PWR (for the ease of the shorthand) will determine each team's seed.

The preferences: (1) Avoid interconference matchups in the first round; (2) maximize revenue by keeping teams as local as possible, especially those that have shown a history of fans that will buy tickets away from home.

Becuase we have to assume that the rules supercede preferences, I can't agree with your solution, ZD. Avoiding conference matchups is a goal, but the teams are promised the benefit of the seeds that they earned. Because the bracket will be dominated by WCHA and HE this year, the committee is going to have deal with the fact that the rules override the preferences. They aren't going to flip the seeds to avoid conference matchups, and Cornell is going to get screwed by playing a road game to start the tournament.

I guess we'll see. I'll wager that the "flexibility" the NC$$ has given itself in seeding will result in a not-straight application of the PWR order into the brackets. If, for example, Minny and BC are still tied in PWR by tournament time (obviously, this isn't likely), and despite the fact that according to USCHO.com BC currently wins the Minn-BC pair, I *wouldn't* be surprised to see Minny get a #1 and BC get a #2 for some (what might seem to us) arbitrary reason, such as quality road wins, whatever that means. (Actually, in the *specific* case between Minny and BC, Minny actually *beat* BC during the regular season, so that 2-2 pair is certainly tenuous....)

In other words: I'm just guessing at my fake little brackets, but I'd say that in the end the PWR won't wind up explaining the seeding. Someone will get screwed...and the NC$$ *will* rejigger somewhat arbitrarily.

And as for the Gophers, let's face it: if they win the WCHA tourney, they're the #1 in Minneapolis. If they don't, they're the #2 in Minneapolis. Their story is pretty simple, I guess.


ZD

The USCHO PWR never purported to choose the exact order or the seeding. Their big thing was that it simply predicted the teams in the tournament. That's it.

Chris '02 wrote:

The USCHO PWR never purported to choose the exact order or the seeding. Their big thing was that it simply predicted the teams in the tournament. That's it.

No, but the PWR is based on the selection criteria, and the selection criteria are supposed to be used in the seeding. It won't be exactly 1-16, 2-15, etc., but it's supposed to be used to determine the "bands", to seed the top four for bracketing and placement into regionals, and to where possible to balance the strength of the regionals (which they said they wanted to do after the way it worked out last year).