Playoff possibilities

Less than 24 hours until we finally know who's coming to town, and the picture is not one bit clearer. Tigers, Dutchmen, Saints, and Bulldogs down to the wire.

Interesting to note that of the 4 possible teams that CU will face in the QF round, all 4 won on Friday night. (Tho' Cornell was the only road team to win.) 2 points still seperate 11th and 8th. Princeton has made certain that for them to miss the playoffs, they'd have to lose a 3-way tiebreak between them, SLU(t), and Yale. Which they do in the 2nd tiebreak, using John's script. (But that would mean a Cornell loss to Union for that to happen. Blasphemy! ) So basically, all 4 are still fighting for their lives, and we could see any of the 4 at Lynah next weekend.

I guess another possibility would be a 4-way tie (if Union and Cornell tie). In that scenario, Union gets bumped out of the playoffs.

A Cornell win or tie, coupled with a Yale win vs. Brown, a Hahvahd win at Princeton, and a likely SLU win vs. Vermont gives Cornell the preferred QF opponent of Princeton.

Also, with Clarkson finally getting the UVM monkey off their back Friday, they have clinched home ice for the 206th straight time. (OK, actually, it's 14 straight seasons).

Fun stuff to watch, when you're already assured of your position.

> ...with Clarkson finally getting the UVM monkey off their back Friday, they have clinced home ice for the 206th straight time. (OK, actually, it's 14 straight seasons).

...And we won't talk about what happened the last time the Knights failed to earn a home ice berth...

I won't try to go into exhaustive detail (I'll leave that to Bill Fenwick ) but a few playoff notes
1) Clarkson clinches 2nd with a win or tie tonight. They're third if they lose.
2) Dartmouth clinches 2nd with a win at Cheel. If they tie they can still get 3rd but might end up 5th. A loss could drop them to 6th (I don't think they can lose the RPI tiebreak and fall to 7th).
3) Harvard can clinch 4th with a win and if Dartmouth doesn't they'll finish 3rd. A tie and they still could be 3rd but could fall to 5th. A loss and they could be 7th.
4) Colgate clinches 5th with a win and could get 3rd. A tie clinches 6th but could give them 3rd. A loss could drop them to 8th.
5) Brown seems to lose most of the tie breakers with the home ice contenders that I've tried, even with 3 and 4 way ties. A win and they could be 3rd but only clinch 6th. With a tie I think they can only manage 5th and might be 6th. A loss and they could slip to 8th.
6) RPI clinches 6th with a win and probably can't do much better than 5th. A tie leaves them 7th or 8th. A loss might drop them to 9th.
7) Princeton clinches a playoff berth with a win or tie. A win could get them to 7th and clinches 8th. A tie could still give 7th or 9th. A loss could leave them home next weekend.
8) Union can get to 7th with a win and clinches at least 9th. A tie clinches nothing but could give them 9th. A loss and they're in trouble.
9) SLU is in good shape with tiebreakers as long as Dartmouth keeps home ice and so could get 8th with a win but would probably clinch a playoff spot. A loss and they're in trouble.
10) Yale can't clinch anything with a win. They need some help from the Catamounts (good luck) or Cornell (hopefully a better proposition).
11) Vermont gets to go home...

Why not?

That was quite a series as I recall...and an extra sweet outcome since cornell had swept the RS pair.

A meeting in LP this month would be interesting to say the least!

so. . .after all that we know only two things for certain, their are two clearer winners (thanks for the calculations Keith ). First we win (already knew that); and second UVM is so bad they win a trip to. . . stay in Burlington (already knew that too)!!!! Making a long story somewhat shorter. . .we're only going to know what the deal is in about eight and a half hours. Talk to ya then

Assuming that the road team will be (slightly) favored to drop two quint games, how should we be rooting tonight to give Cornell the best mix of TUC's (including other conferences)?

Assuming that the road team will be (slightly) favored to drop two quint games, how should we be rooting tonight to give Cornell the best mix of TUC's (including other conferences)?

Well, I'll get the ball rolling by looking at what teams hurt and help us by being TUCs.

Hurt:
Harvard (11-13-4): Well, this is easy. Root against Harvard. If they beat Princeton tonight, they will become a TUC by winning their QF series.

BU (23-8-2): No chance of getting that loss off our TUC table.

N. Mich. (22-11-2): No chance. Who knew the 2OT loss would mean so much?

OSU (17-15-4): But their regular season is over. No way for them to play 3-under .500 in the playoffs, so that loss is on our TUC record.

Dartmouth (12-11-5): This is a biggie. Root against them at all costs. Tonight's game vs. Clarkson is big because that would put them at .500, and a QF loss would definitely eliminate 2 L's from our TUC record (in addition to the bonus that we wouldn't have to face them again). A DC win tonight means that even with a QF loss, they stay as a TUC.


Help:
Clarkson (14-13-6): Even more reason to root for them tonight.

Brown (14-12-2): To quote the UPS ads, "What can Brown do for you?" Win/tie vs. Yale tonight, and their status as a TUC is secure.

Colgate (13-16-2): They'll have to make a serious run at Lake Placid.

RPI (15-12-4): Seems to me they've locked up TUC status. Root for Colgate tonight.

Union (13-12-6): hairy due to the possibilities of playing us. If CU wins tonight, and Union doesn't wind up playing at Lynah, then we can root for them to win their QF series.

UAH (14-17-1): They play 2 agains Bemidji St. next weekend. Then single-elimination tourney. Still a chance, but I'm not too hopeful, especially if they stay in 4th place and would have to go through Wayne St. in the Semis.

Niagara(17-15-1): They finish the regular season vs. Wayne St. tonight who is 14-2-3 in CHA league play. But going into a single-elim. tournament 1 game over .500 clinches it.

OK, so my post edit wouldn't take (hit the button and nothing happened). Probably something to do with all the browser windows I kept opening and closing while editing my post.

Bottom line tonight (for TUC value...not who our QF opponent will be):
1) Root for Cornell over Union (duh).
2) Root for Clarkson over Dartmouth.
3) Root for Princeton over Harvard.
4) Root for Colgate over RPI.

The remaining two games get weird. Which do you value more, assuring Brown as a TUC, or keeping Union as a TUC by knocking them out of the playoffs? With the above 4 happening, the best option for our TUC would be:

5) Root for a Brown-Yale tie.
6) Root for a SLU win or tie over Vermont.

This combination clinches TUC status for Brown and Union. Union hits the golf course with a .500 overall record. But that means Yale comes to Lynah (whole other discussion).

One more, and really the only non-conference team to watch for TUC purposes:
7) Root for Alabama-Huntsville vs. Bemidji St. next weekend and then to march to a CHA playoff championship.

A check of the rankings shows Niagara at 14-14-1 and UAH at 11-16-1. I think the games against Findlay don't count. So UAH is definitely not a TUC unless they sweep Bemidji and then win their tournament (3 games). Niagara is in trouble too unless they can beat Wayne St. tonight.

So we root for Niagara to win tonight and then for UAH to run their table.

Is Union still a TUC? USCHO seems to have expunged them, but Union's own tally would have them just on the cusp. Is this the Findlay issue again?

Yup, it's Findlay. Union was 1-0-1 against them so their record for NC$$ purposes is one under .500. Not a TUC.

Ehhhh, TUC OFF!!!

So, another demonstrated weakness of the selection criteria. Good luck trying to get the NCAA to do anything about it.

The in/out" feature" of TUC is absurd.

And how does PWR account for Colgate being a different team in Jan/Feb than it was in Nov/Dec? Or Brown? Or Lowell? Or Union? Or Harvard?

I'm sorry if I'm just out of the loop, but what the heck is TUC?

TUC=Team Under Consideration for the NCAA tournament. This is any eligible D1 team with a record of .500 or above vs eligible D1 teams, or which receives an automatic bid by winning a conference tournament (not CHA).

There is no "in/out" feature of TUC. There is no such thing as a TUC until the season is over. Teams don't get "considered" until all of the games have been played.

Our willingness to obsess over phenomena like "what would happen if the season ended today" only creates the illusion that there is an "in/out" feature. Union's season ended yesterday. Not only ARE they not a TUC, they never were.

Well, I don't know what you can do about the strength of a team changing as the season goes on. After all, ECAC teams that had the misfortune to play Colgate when they were hot have an advantage over those that played them earlier, but no one complains about that.

OTOH, both the "vs TUC" criterion and the "Last 16" criterion apply a sharp cutoff which gives some funny results (e.g., a team in a conference with a play-in game might be better off not getting a bye if it lets them erase a loss from their last 16 games). But the reasonable alternatives, which would weight some games progressively more, are likely to be opposed by the NCAA on the usual grounds of being "too complicated".

As an example, one solution I've suggested (as a further enhancement to KPWR) would be to have a record-vs-stronger-teams criterion which included all of a team's games, but weighted them by the opponent's expected winning percentage vs an average team. So instead of having a sharp cutoff, you'd gradually go from zero weight for the worst opponents to full weight for the best opponents.

For the last 16 criterion, you could do something like having the weight of each game be 93.75% of the weight of the following one. (This is 15/16, and is chosen so that if a team plays an infinite number of games, the total weighted number of games in this criterion will be 16.) So the last game of a team's season would count towards this criterion as a full game. the previous one as .9375, the one before as .87890625, etc. As an example, here's how much each of Cornell's games last year contributed to their last 16 record and how much they would contribute to this sort of progressive-games criterion.

20001104 SH 5 Cr 3 NC  0.00  0.1268
20001110 Cr 0 Un 2 EC  0.00  0.1352
20001111 Cr 3 RP 2 EC  0.00  0.1443
20001117 Ha 1 Cr 1 EC  0.00  0.1539
20001118 Bn 0 Cr 2 EC  0.00  0.1641
20001121 Me 1 Cr 1 NC  0.00  0.1751
20001125 Ck 1 Cr 2 nc  0.00  0.1867
20001126 Ni 4 Cr 3 nc  0.00  0.1992
20001201 Ya 3 Cr 4 EC  0.00  0.2125
20001202 Pn 0 Cr 3 EC  0.00  0.2266
20001227 OS 5 Cr 6 nc  0.00  0.2418
20001228 Me 2 Cr 1 nc  0.00  0.2579
20010106 Qn 2 Cr 2 NC  0.00  0.2751
20010112 Cr 3 Vt 2 EC  0.00  0.2934
20010113 Cr 1 Da 4 EC  0.00  0.3130
20010118 Cg 2 Cr 2 EC  0.00  0.3338
20010120 Cr 4 Cg 3 EC  0.00  0.3561
20010126 Ck 1 Cr 2 EC  1.00  0.3798
20010127 SL 6 Cr 3 EC  1.00  0.4051
20010202 Cr 2 Bn 1 EC  1.00  0.4321
20010203 Cr 2 Ha 1 EC  1.00  0.4610
20010209 Cr 1 Pn 4 EC  1.00  0.4917
20010210 Cr 0 Ya 1 EC  1.00  0.5245
20010216 Da 1 Cr 1 EC  1.00  0.5594
20010217 Vt 2 Cr 5 EC  1.00  0.5967
20010223 Cr 2 SL 3 EC  1.00  0.6365
20010224 Cr 0 Ck 2 EC  1.00  0.6789
20010302 RP 2 Cr 1 EC  1.00  0.7242
20010303 Un 1 Cr 2 EC  1.00  0.7725
20010309 Pn 2 Cr 3 NC  1.00  0.8240
20010310 Pn 1 Cr 2 NC  1.00  0.8789
20010316 Cr 5 Ha 2 nc  1.00  0.9375
20010317 Cr 1 SL 3 nc  1.00  1.0000

Yes, but the sharp cutoffs mean that looking back and changing one or two seemingly irrelevant results can have a big impact on the selection criteria if it changes who's a TUC, in effect inflating the importance of those results.

Technically true, apple.

But the point is, whether a team finishes at/above .500 vs. below .500 can have significant impact on the rankings of others--because that team goes from "counting fully" to "not counting at all" in TUC. And what difference does it really mean for Union to be .500 or .485 in terms of the their difficulty as an opponent. It would not be inconceivable that Cornell would have a higher ranking today (whether that's true or not in this specific case is not the point--the point is it could happen) if they had lost to Union last night. That's the problem with TUC. One loss more or less for borderline teams and they either influence your TUC or they don't. If Dartmouth loses two out of three next weekend they miss TUC by a game, and our TUC record likely goes up dramatically as a result. It's that large step-function effect (quantum leap?) that I use the term "in/out" to describe.

Holy Cross is guaranteed to be a TUC while North Dakota may or may not end up as one, perhaps missing by one game. Should a win over Holy Cross count for more than a win over UND? It's possible for a team playing in a conference tournament consolation game to go in or out of TUC based upon the result of that meaningless-to-them game, so a win or loss in that game could flip around the TUC rankings for teams on the bubble.

While it's true that any individual win or loss can tip the scales in any of the ranking factors, the granularity of the others (e.g., RPI, common opponents) is much finer and you don't get the big swings that a TUC in/out change can cause.

Your point about the "last 16" criterion is valid, John, but I find it less objectionable than TUC because it's something a team influences directly--by winning or losing its games. Cornell has played hard these last games to make its "last 16" as strong as possible.

Also, a team's record in the "last 16" is compared directly with every other team's, whereas TUC is affected by "third party" results which will move teams you've already played in or out of TUC status, possible having significant impact on your pairwise comparisons with other teams.

Interesting. I like it. Do you have a similar theory for dealing with the TUC question?

I actually think the .500 criteria, while arbitrary, is a good one - but I disagree with the Findlay rule. Schools that are in the process of moving to D-1 should be able to upgrade their NC schedule without negative consequences. I could see why a team wouldn't want to give up qualifying games because it would be harmful to the conference (as it will be for the ECAC since Union games don't count for TUC).

> Interesting. I like it. Do you have a similar theory for dealing with the TUC question?

The cleanest way to get rid of TUC would be to simply get rid of it. The concept being captured is "games against quality opponents," but this is already captured by the schedule strength metrics.

I would also vote for getting rid of L16 and anything like it attempting to capture "recent results." I just don't think it matters -- a season is a season, period. Or perhaps we should weigh each conference game as 93% of the one following it? I applaud John's effort at creating a much better indicator than L16, but I still don't agree that a recent result should matter any more than an early result.

But accounting for strength of schedule is not quite the same thing as having a criterion which rates a team's performance against good opponents without caring about their performance against poor ones. The vs TUC criterion, like the tiebreakers in several leagues, rewards a team more for beating a good team and losing to a bad one than the other way around.

If you really want to be fair, you should just seed the NCAAs by KRACH and be done with it. But, presumably motivated by the usual arguments and counter-arguments about head-to-head results (How can Cornell be seeded above Dartmouth in the ECAC playoffs when they swept us?), common opponents, "who's hot", and performance in big games which figure into smoke-filled room discussions and second-guessing of seeds, they established the current selection criteria as a sort of "tie-breaker" when the differences in RPI were too small to be significant. Then this set of criteria got transformed from a tiebreaker to the method used to rank teams in the first place.

The KRACH isn't "fair" -- it's just another set of criteria (and one which allegedly helps mediocre teams that happen to be in good conferences).

It may be "more fair" than PWR, but even that's questionable, and it ranks us worse, so screw it anyway.

If we wan to be "fair", that is to give everyone a fair chance to get in based on performace against a set of known criteria without the volatility, etc. we should go to a system like Greg mentioned the other day: bids to conference champions only. Then there'd be no arguments about which ranking system is fair or whatever...

I agree with JTW that it is not unfair to include in the selection process biases in favor of recent success and success against better teams. Pairwise may not be perfect, but I don't think it is horrible. The critieria can be adjusted, however.

I like the way JTW adjusts the criteria so that games are weighted according to when they were played and agree taht it is an improvement over the arbitrary cutoff of L16.

I am in favor of including a criteria like TUC for determining how a team has done against good teams in addition to RPI, H2H, "L16", and COpp. The Holy Cross vs. NoDak issue is an important one though, and I think a way to resolve it is something like "Record against top 25 RPI" or something like that.

Oh, give it up, King of Purity.

can someone explain to me one thing, though. i was wondering if anyone has a reason why the last 16 games should weigh more than the other games. why should a win over holy cross in february be worth more in L16 (though this year not in strength of schedule, etc) than a win over michigan in december?
good teams should play well in their tourney? well doesnt a win plus a shot at an autobid reward that already?
just trying to provide food for discussion. i dont really have a position either way, just curious what u all think.

Record against top 25 RPI would have some of the same sharp cutoff problems as the current "vs TUC" criterion. A more gradual approach would be to produce a strong teams criterion in which each opponent would be weighted by some function that went smoothly from 0 for a winless, tieless team to 1 for an unbeaten, untied team. One possiblity is winning percentage, of course, but this has the Quinnipiac-vs-NoDak problem. I'd propose something like weighting by the expected winning percentage vs a team with an RRWP of .500. (I.e., a KRACH of 100, if it's normalized properly.)

I don't mind the sharp cutoff as much as you, though I acknowledge that it is a problem given how closely clustered the RPIs will be between, say, 22 and 30. A weighting system would also be a reasonable way of capturing this criteria.

The tournament is at the end of the year. A selection criteria that captures, and gives "extra-credit" to, recent performance is a way of getting the teams playing the best hockey come tournament time into the tournament. I think it is a valid criteria, as long as it is properly treated alongside other criteria that analyze the whole season.

There is a good reason that everyone living outside of Lincoln and Miami were furious when Nebraska got to play for the BCS championship. Nebraska was busy playing shitty football while Oregon and Colorado were gaining steam. Something that penalized late-season failure in that case would have been nice.

From a post I made on USCHO:

"I absolutely agree that L16 needs a SOS adjustment. However, I absolutely disagree that L16 should be removed as a component of the PWR.

Humor me with a little thought experiment. For this example, assume all 3 teams have the same SoS. Team A returns all its starters and has all its lines worked out and starts winning a decent number of games from week 1. Team B lost a lot of senior starters but has a few incoming blue chip recruits including a highly ranked goalie. Team C has a few amazing star players but lacks depth in it's 3rd and 4th lines.

Before the Christmas break, Team A wins 75% of their games while Team C wins 85% with their high powered offense. Meanwhile Team B struggles to figure out who should play on what line and only wins 40% of the time.

But after Xmas, we see a different picture emerge. Team A continues to win 75% of its games. But by this time, Team B has their lines figured out and has worked their new better goalie into the rotation and is tearing up the league, winning 90% of its games. Meanwhile Team C's star players are dinged up and the inability of the other lines to score causes their winning percentage to drop to 50%.

Thus, come tourney selection time, we have the following records.

Team A: 27-9-0
Team B: 24-12-0
Team C: 24-12-0

Now imagine we have 2 slots available. Who deserves to go? Obviously Team A deserves to go as consistancy deserves to be rewarded. But how do we decide between Team B and Team C? Personally, I'd rather see Team B go on to the postseason given that they have gone 18-2 since christmas as compared with Team C who has gone 10-10.

In effect, L16 rewards 3 things:
a) depth
b) coaching
c) player development"

Or it may reward:

a) an easy conference (no NC games in the second half)
b) a fortuitous home/away breakdown
c) a well-placed hot streak being over-represented

This is a philosophical difference, but I still haven't heard a good argument for why a February game is intrinsically more important than a November game.

Having the concept of auto-bid in the tourny is the biggest boon of all to a team on a late hot streak. That's enough for me.