Bracketology Starts

Beeeej

BearLover
The best matchup we could get per the pairwise was Michigan Tech. There's nothing in the pairwise that says the 2nd-best team getting the 14th-best team is any more unjust than the 3rd-best team getting the 13th-best team.

Sure there is. It's called finishing in 2nd, which is slightly higher than 3rd, and gets slightly better treatment. The only way you can justify giving us MTU instead of BU is that you think the #3 deserves better treatment than the #2. You're also forgetting that MTU just won their tournament, something we (badly) failed to do ourselves. You think if we were playing MTU, they'd be easier to beat because they'd only have a couple hundred fans in the building?

How many different ways are you guys gonna find to say exactly the same thing?

Here's one different way. Notre Dame and Cornell are actually tied in PWR comparisons, with ND winning on the RPI tiebreaker. So the committee would be swapping things for two teams who had the same # of favorable comparisons. Also, the committee didn't seem to have any problem with putting #6 in the same region with #1, so attendance and geography seem factors over "protection of a team." I had done my own guess at the final brackets, and had everything as it is except I had Cornell in Bridgeport, ND in Allentown and OSU in Worcester. Perhaps also, I'm bitter as I need to be in NYC for family reasons this weekend and could have swung side trips to Bridgeport but don't have the time to do Worcester.

Beeeej

BearLover
The best matchup we could get per the pairwise was Michigan Tech. There's nothing in the pairwise that says the 2nd-best team getting the 14th-best team is any more unjust than the 3rd-best team getting the 13th-best team.

Sure there is. It's called finishing in 2nd, which is slightly higher than 3rd, and gets slightly better treatment. The only way you can justify giving us MTU instead of BU is that you think the #3 deserves better treatment than the #2.

No, that is wrong. What you're effectively saying is that the gap between 2 and 3 matters more than the gap between 3 and 4. ND finished higher than Cornell, who finished higher than Ohio State. Due to the no-intraconference-matchups rule, either #2 or #3 is getting a harder matchup, and either #3 or #4 is getting an easier matchup. Here, #4 benefited at the expense of #3, but #3 could just have easily benefited at the expense of #2, and the Pairwise says nothing about which outcome it prefers.

Beeeej
You're also forgetting that MTU just won their tournament, something we (badly) failed to do ourselves.

We outshot and, overall, outplayed Princeton. It wasn't a horrible showing. We lost, but that's going to happen in an individual hockey game even when you're the better team. The entire point of the Pairwise is to not let the result of one game crowd out all the others in evaluating a team.

Beeeej
You think if we were playing MTU, they'd be easier to beat because they'd only have a couple hundred fans in the building?

No...I think they'd be easier to beat because they're clearly and by all objective measures not as good as BU. You're also conflating the pairing issue with the home-ice-for-the four-seed issue. The former is less unjust but more impactful; the latter is more unjust but less impactful.

BearLover

Beeeej

BearLover
The best matchup we could get per the pairwise was Michigan Tech. There's nothing in the pairwise that says the 2nd-best team getting the 14th-best team is any more unjust than the 3rd-best team getting the 13th-best team.

Sure there is. It's called finishing in 2nd, which is slightly higher than 3rd, and gets slightly better treatment. The only way you can justify giving us MTU instead of BU is that you think the #3 deserves better treatment than the #2.

No, that is wrong. What you're effectively saying is that the gap between 2 and 3 matters more than the gap between 3 and 4. ND finished higher than Cornell, who finished higher than Ohio State. Due to the no-intraconference-matchups rule, either #2 or #3 is getting a harder matchup, and either #3 or #4 is getting an easier matchup. Here, #4 benefited at the expense of #3, but #3 could just have easily benefited at the expense of #2, and the Pairwise says nothing about which outcome it prefers.

Beeeej
You're also forgetting that MTU just won their tournament, something we (badly) failed to do ourselves.

We outshot and, overall, outplayed Princeton. It wasn't a horrible showing. We lost, but that's going to happen in an individual hockey game even when you're the better team. The entire point of the Pairwise is to not let the result of one game crowd out all the others in evaluating a team.

Beeeej
You think if we were playing MTU, they'd be easier to beat because they'd only have a couple hundred fans in the building?

No...I think they'd be easier to beat because they're clearly and by all objective measures not as good as BU. You're also conflating the pairing issue with the home-ice-for-the four-seed issue. The former is less unjust but more impactful; the latter is more unjust but less impactful.

What you're claiming I mean isn't at all what I've actually said, and that leads me to believe you still genuinely don't understand how the committee does this. Yet we've already spent way more energy and time on this than it was worth, and I have no desire to waste more trying to clarify. I hope to see you in Worcester, and I hope to enjoy that interaction considerably more than I've enjoyed this one.

Beeeej

BearLover

Beeeej

BearLover
The best matchup we could get per the pairwise was Michigan Tech. There's nothing in the pairwise that says the 2nd-best team getting the 14th-best team is any more unjust than the 3rd-best team getting the 13th-best team.

Sure there is. It's called finishing in 2nd, which is slightly higher than 3rd, and gets slightly better treatment. The only way you can justify giving us MTU instead of BU is that you think the #3 deserves better treatment than the #2.

No, that is wrong. What you're effectively saying is that the gap between 2 and 3 matters more than the gap between 3 and 4. ND finished higher than Cornell, who finished higher than Ohio State. Due to the no-intraconference-matchups rule, either #2 or #3 is getting a harder matchup, and either #3 or #4 is getting an easier matchup. Here, #4 benefited at the expense of #3, but #3 could just have easily benefited at the expense of #2, and the Pairwise says nothing about which outcome it prefers.

Beeeej
You're also forgetting that MTU just won their tournament, something we (badly) failed to do ourselves.

We outshot and, overall, outplayed Princeton. It wasn't a horrible showing. We lost, but that's going to happen in an individual hockey game even when you're the better team. The entire point of the Pairwise is to not let the result of one game crowd out all the others in evaluating a team.

Beeeej
You think if we were playing MTU, they'd be easier to beat because they'd only have a couple hundred fans in the building?

No...I think they'd be easier to beat because they're clearly and by all objective measures not as good as BU. You're also conflating the pairing issue with the home-ice-for-the four-seed issue. The former is less unjust but more impactful; the latter is more unjust but less impactful.

What you're claiming I mean isn't at all what I've actually said, and that leads me to believe you still genuinely don't understand how the committee does this. Yet we've already spent way more energy and time on this than it was worth, and I have no desire to waste more trying to clarify. I hope to see you in Worcester, and I hope to enjoy that interaction considerably more than I've enjoyed this one.

This quote

Beeeej
It's called finishing in 2nd, which is slightly higher than 3rd, and gets slightly better treatment. The only way you can justify giving us MTU instead of BU is that you think the #3 deserves better treatment than the #2.

is not correct. There is equal justification, according to the PWR, to giving Cornell MTU as there is giving Cornell BU. I do not mean to convey any ill will in saying this. Did the CHN and USCHO writers who predicted Cornell would play Michigan Tech also "not understand how the committee does this"?

Not worth arguing about, not worth complaining about, LGR

Beeeej
Yet we've already spent way more energy and time on this than it was worth, and I have no desire to waste more trying to clarify. I hope to see you in Worcester, and I hope to enjoy that interaction considerably more than I've enjoyed this one.

Which is to say that there is still a strong likelihood that you won't enjoy that interaction, either.

"my kingdom for a user-mute button"

ugarte

djk26
I think we would find reason to complain if Cornell's regional were Brown, RIT and Alaska Anchorage. And the games were played at Lynah Rink. "That's not fair...the other regions get better preparation for the Frozen Four."

It's the NCAA tournament. There are no easy games. We lost in the semifinals of our conference tournament, we have a loss to RPI (#58 in the Pairwise) on our resume and we are a #1 seed, we did't get sent west, and our opponent is a team we have beaten this season.

I realize I am oversimplifying a lot, and BU is a LOT better than they were in November. I really expect Cornell to lose (just based on previous NCAA tournaments), but I will still cheer them on. I just never expect that we will get an "easy" regional (and really no team ever draws a cakewalk), especially when the committee has to work around the "no intraconference matchups in the first round" rule.

i said this to beeeej offline but i am disturbed less by our getting screwed than by bu getting the benefit of a home game, even though obviously i feel the pain more acutely because cornell gets the short end of the stick. if you aren't the "official" host - an already dubious way of earning a home game - it is bullshit that as a 4 seed you still get to play in your own backyard. if you squeak into the tournament, pack your bags.

One reason it's a little surprising the committee does this is that it largely removes one incentive to do the work of hosting a regional. But I'm guessing that the NCAA sees the the attendance issues as outweighing the risk that they'll run out of regional hosts.