Committee meetings

A recap of what was discussed in San Francisco last week is at [www.uscho.com] .

Oh, lovely. They're considering building basketball-style fudge factors into the RPI. Guess they want to put the suspense back into the selection announcements.

This is just the off-season for stupid ideas, isn't it?

Wow, I didn't know Mark McRae was an All-American Academic selection. That's pretty impressive. A 3.89 GPA in biology (pre-med.) Geez, I know how hard that is...



Sorry, I didn't realize this was another thread...

I really hope so. Maybe ESPN complained that the selection show didn't have enough drama so they're trying to spice things up. God forbid that the process should be transparent enough that everyone can figure it out in advance.

Not that I mind changing the process necessarily, as long as it stays transparent and objective. But fudge factors for "quality wins" seems far from objective.

Also, I don't particularly like any of the changes they're talking about, except possibly the TUC. As we discussed last year at length, the TUC bubble makes for some really stupid scenarios (come on UAH, win out so we get two more TUC wins!), though maknig it depend on RPI vs. win% isn't going to change this - it'll simply move the bubble. But all of the other changes seem to be geared toward screwing any possible contenders from the ECAC and the MAAC (more weight to SOS, "quality wins", etc.). I don't think that's actually the intent, but it's the likely result.

Oh well.

The NCAA lacrosse selection committee has seemingly been obsessed with "quality" wins.

Vintage CYA move to justify any re-sort at the bubble that the committee wants. It has a nice secondary consequence of keeping as many MAAC, CHA and perhaps ECAC teams out of the tourny as possible. Shrug. Win at (shudder) Albany and you're still in, no matter what silliness they adopt.

Next logical step is to extend "significant wins" to seeding as well as qualification. That way they can ghettoize the MAAC, CHA, and ECAC in the bottom 4 slot in each regional, and move them around to gut their fan bases (gotta restore that #1 seed autobye somehow). After all, if the result of the bidding tweak is a bunch of mediocre WCHA and HE teams, then you don't want those teams losing to "minor conferences" in the first round. That wouldn't be fair.

The NC$$ is more and more like the NFL Pro Bowl. Nice to be recognized and all that, but not meaningful beyond the catered buffet.

USCHO has also reported on the rule changes for next season. Most important among these are the addition of an Olympic-style 15-second faceoff rule (with the exception of TV timeouts), as well as going to the NHL crease.

The full story: [www.uscho.com]