Polls 11/01

November 1, 2004

   Team        (First Place)    Record  Pts   Last Week
 1 Boston College       (35)     3-1-0  593     2
 2 Michigan                      5-2-1  493     3
 3 Minnesota-Duluth      (3)     5-1-2  474     1
 4 Minnesota                     5-2-0  461     6
 5 Wisconsin                     5-1-0  448     5
 6 North Dakota                  4-2-2  393     4
 7 Colorado College      (1)     4-0-0  377     8
 8 New Hampshire                 3-1-1  335     9
 9 Maine                         5-4-0  257     7
10 Denver                        4-3-0  198    10
11 Northern Michigan             4-1-1  183    15
12 Cornell               (1)     2-0-0  177    14
13 St. Lawrence                  4-3-1  129    NR
14 Ohio State                    5-3-0   92    13
15 Nebraska-Omaha                5-1-0   42    NR

Others Receiving Votes: Dartmouth 35, Miami 35,
Mass.-Lowell 22, Colgate 20, Boston University 18,
Michigan State 6, Rensselaer 6, Niagara 3,
Providence 2, St. Cloud State 1

Has a first place vote ever gone to a team that low in the polls?

LOL. That's *hilarious*.

But we'll take it.

[Q]CowbellGuy Wrote:

Has a first place vote ever gone to a team that low in the polls?[/q]

Maybe he voted from Miami Beach.

how bout those saints?!

Well, we do have the #1 offense and #1 defense in the nation!

A vote for us is no more unreasonable than putting UMD first after they just lost 3 of 4 points to Vermont in Duluth...

Denver has had a really hard schedule. They've played #1, #4, and twice against #5.
It really must be great being Maine, considering they are 5-4 with wins against all sub-.500 teams except for St. Lawrence who also beat them. They lost twice to North Dakota, St. Lawrence, and to mediocre BU.

Ain't it great to be Michigan? You wind up #2 in the country just because there's nobody else in the CCHA you can vote for with a straight face.

Polls are such a farce.

USA TODAY/USA Hockey Magazine Top 15 men's hockey poll#


The USA TODAY/USA Hockey Magazine Top 15 men's
college hockey poll with first-place votes
in parentheses, 2004-05 record and rank:  

(as of Monday, November 1)

    TEAM                        PTS    Record    Last week
    ----                        ---    ------   ----------
 1. Boston College (27)         502     3-1-0         2
 2. Minnesota-Duluth (3)        435     5-1-2         1
 3. Michigan (1)                411     5-2-1         4
 4. Minnesota (2)               402     5-2-0         6
 5. Wisconsin  (1)              399     5-1-0         5 
 6. North Dakota                345     4-2-2         3                     
 7. New Hampshire               288     3-1-1         7 
 8. Colorado                    285     4-0-0         8
 9. Maine                       214     5-4-0         9
10. Denver                      207     4-3-0        11
11. Northern Michigan           166     4-1-1        15
12. Cornell University          133     2-0-0        NR
13. St. Lawrence University      85     4-3-1        NR
14. Ohio State                   83     5-3-0        13
15. Dartmouth                    35     1-1-0        12

 

Others receiving votes: University of Nebraska-Omaha 25, Miami University (Ohio) 18,
Boston University 13, Colgate University 10, Michigan State University 9, 
University of Massachusetts-Lowell 6, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 4, 
Sacred Heart University 4, Northeastern University 1.

Sacred Heart got 4 votes in the USA Today poll! That's hilarious.

Maybe the voters' expectations were an 11-0 shutout by Cornell so they exceeded expectations. Sort of like Daniel Patrick Moynihan's idea of defining deviancy downward.

much more likely that it was one ridiculous vote than it was four

Results for "nearby" ranked teams:

08 UNH (W-BU, L-Maine)
09 Maine (L-BC, W-UNH)
10 Denver (idle)
11 NMU (T-MTU, W-MTU)
12 Cornell (W-Harvard, W-Brown)

Based on the above I don't expect us to go up. Maine/UNH will get credit for losing to ranked HE teams, Denver will get credit for being WCHA and NMU at least picked up 3 points. Well, I suppose we could swap with NMU, but not counting on it.

Not that I put much faith in their opinion, but Cornell is #8 in the INCH rankings:

[insidecollegehockey.com]

Harvard...ahem..."dropped out."

We should retain our lone first place vote in the USCHO poll.

Big gap in last week's poll between #8 (335 pts), #9 (257 pts) and #10 (198 pts). I'm guessing we'll jump to #10. All we need is a net increase of 21 ranking points, and my guess is a 4-point weekend, coupled with our being the only unbeaten team left, should cover that.

If we sweep MSU convincingly we'll be 6, 7, 8 or 9 in the 11/15 poll. Maybe even #5 if someone falters.

After looking at the weekend results of the half-dozen teams above us, the same depressing conclusion came to me last night: It will be hard to crack the top ten and maybe even to move up much. The ones just above Cornell either won, or lost to teams well above them, so losses were to be expected. And with MSU coming up and MSU not currently in the top 15, we're expected to beat MSU. So we've got to be 6-0 after next weekend to move into the top ten. Still and all, playing MSU beats playing a bunch of other CCHA teams.

It's hard to expect much movement even if we do take two from MSU.

The top four schools are all off. Of the 6 WCHA teams above us, two are off, and the other four (the four closest to us) are all playing each other. Unless there's two absolute routs, it's hard to see those WCHA voters demoting them significantly. Maine and UNH are playing weaker HEA teams. The only hope for any movement is if Ohio State takes two from NMU, and in that case, the CCHA voters will probably pole vault them over us.

[Q]Jeff Hopkins '82 Wrote:

It's hard to expect much movement even if we do take two from MSU. [/q] I think if we take a pair of road games from MSU the voters will give us more credit than you think. Probably won't pass the defending NCAA champs, but we will be a solid 10 with room to keep moving up.

[Q]Greg Berge Wrote:

We should retain our lone first place vote in the USCHO poll. [/q]

Reminds me of when I was covering football, probably in 1995. For one week , we cracked the Top 25 Division I-AA Coaches' Poll based on Hofher's lone first-place vote.

[Q]ugarte Wrote:

I think if we take a pair of road games from MSU the voters will give us more credit than you think. Probably won't pass the defending NCAA champs, but we will be a solid 10 with room to keep moving up.[/q]

Agreed. On 11/1 we received 177 points. I'm guessing a 50-point increase this week (maybe more). A strong showing next week could realistically earn us up to 100 points. We could be in the 300's next week, which, by 11/1 rankings, is right around #8.

For a historical perspective, in consecutive weeks Cornell received an 84-point raise on 11/25/2002 (after sweeping Harvard and Brown), a 42-point raise on 12/2/2002 (after sweeping BU), and a 76-point raise on 12/9/2002 (after sweeping Western Michigan).

Yes, but Harvard and Brown were both much stronger teams then than they are currently.

Hey, BU was on Sportscenter this morning. Damn Borque.