PWR 3/1

I'm not sure I believe this, but according to USCHO, Cornell just jumped to a tie for FIFTH in PWR!

greg...u gotta wait for the rest of the games to finish it looks like anchorage might help CU 2nite with a win (knock on wood)
but it does look like cornell will be tied for 5th, though they fall to 7th after tie-breakers right?
LGR!

Could knocking that N. Michigan loss out of our Last 16 really have been worth 5-ish positions? I'm not going to begin to speculate on what the remaining 3 games (2 meaningful) will mean for the PWR, but at the moment we've in a 2 way tie for 5th, loosing the tie breaks to (screw) BU, as we always do.

After the final game tonight has ended, Cornell sits in a three way tie for 5th in the pairwise with St. Cloud and BY. The tie is non-transitive - Cornell beats St.C, St.C beats BU and BU beats CU.
Of course, this will all change a dozen times between now and 3/16...

I'm amazed we beat St. Cloud, Denver, and Minnesota... but if you look, (slack.net/hockey) we are either tied or win the comparison in the common opponent category (winning for St. Cloud b/c of Brown). And our last 16 does look like it's helping us, as we win all those, too. Everyone else above us we lose the common opponent comparison.

I'm also surprised how good our record vs. TUC is--ironically, if we win against Union tonight, they are no longer a TUC (12-12-5 as of now).

According to USCHO, Union is currently 13-12-6, which means we could trounce on them tonight (hopefully), and still have them as a TUC.

We're getting into the TUC "silly season." It will get worse when tournament quarterfinals weekend comes along.

A few years ago Michigan was in a situation where sweeping a quarterfinal series would have knocked the opponent out of a TUC slot, whereas beating them two-out-of-three would have kept the losing team a TUC and improved Michigan's PWR.

Cornell will be a TUC, as will RPI. UVM, Yale, and SLU cannot be TUCs. The other seven teams could go either way (although Princeton would have to win the ECACs including the PIG to do it). Craps, anyone?

Am I wrong, or do we now lose the direct comparisons with four of the teams clustered around us in the PWR rankings: BU, Maine, Michigan, and Michigan State (and all four because RPI is the tiebreaker). And aren't the last at-large teams chosen on the basis of direct comparisons?

I could be wrong, but I think the only way to turn these around would be RPI, and that seems unlikely given relative conference strengths. Either that, or some really funny things have to happen with the TUC list in the next two weeks.

RPI being the tie-breaker is only USCHO's way to do it. The committee has no official way, but just looks at all factors. Actually, the committee doesn't use PWR at all as USCHO shows it, they pretty much only see the 'individual data' kind of things, in which case they'd see us tieing with teams like BU, Maine, etc, beating Minnesota... not shabby .

From what I remember, losing the direct comparisons will hurt us if we're on the bubble with those teams, which certainly could happen. It could also hurt come seeding time (if we get in) because that's done on a direct comparison basis.
This is where the Estero games particularly hurt. Really just the NMU game. If we win that one in 2OT, we'd have gone on to play Maine and our common opponents record against MSU, for example, would be 1-0-0 handing us the overall comparison (I think)
Taking a look at the numbers, the NMU win would give us the UM and MSU comparisons putting us solidly third in the nation (beating the tied Minnesota on direct comp). And if we'd also beaten Maine we'd win that comparison too and be 2nd (direct comp over Denver). Ah, what might've been... But we're still in decent shape.