Since I'm too lazy to do the math myself, can somebody tell me what the worst case scenario for Cornell is in the regular season, should they lose the last four games? What's the lowest they could finish? If they haven't already done so, what needs to be done to clinch a first-round bye?
Third place. We have the tiebreakers with both UVM and Dartmouth wrapped up. Colgate as well.
Nice. Who could finish ahead of Cornell? Just Harvard and Colgate right?
[Q]Will Wrote:
Nice. Who could finish ahead of Cornell? Just Harvard and Colgate right?[/q]
Right.
I'm not much of a math guy either. But a simple look at the standings, coupled with the above knowledge that we win the tie breakers with Dartmouth and Vermont makes the "math" pretty simple.
Standings:
1 Cornell 18 14-2-2 30
2 Colgate 18 12-4-2 26
3 Harvard 17 12-4-1 25
4 Dartmouth 18 11-7-0 22
5 Vermont 18 10-6-2 22
6 Brown 17 8-7-2 18
7 Clarkson 18 7-10-1 15
8 St. Lawrence 18 7-10-1 15
9 Union 18 7-11-0 14
10 Rensselaer 18 5-12-1 11
11 Princeton 18 4-13-1 9
12 Yale 18 3-14-1 7
The first number after the team name is the number of ECACHL games played, followed by the record, and the number of points. Colgate could gain another 8 points, and Harvard another 10, since they have 5, not 4 games remaining. Dartmouth and Vermont could also gain 8 points, but since we win the tie-breakers with those two, only Harvard and Colgate could finish ahead of us.
Of course this is all kinda silly, since I'd say the chances that we don't gain another point over the next four games is damn close to zero.
Andy
True, but I think the mathmatical and realistic answers are the same. Both ways we could end up third. Realistically we just don't even have to bother to consider Dmouth and UVM, because the chances of us losing out and them winning out is absolutely tiny.
We'd have to majorly stumble to be 3rd or 2nd, but its within the realm of this universe, at least.
But back to the mathematically foollishness... Dartmouth sucked it up against the top teams this year, huh? Cause we're only 6-2-2 against teams possible to make it into the top 4 (excluding Clarkson), and there's no way Dartmouth can beat any combination of that, even with a game against Harvard left? If you take out Brown, who probably also won't make the top 4, we're 4-2-2 (1-0-1 against Gate, 1-1 against Harvard, 1-1 against Dmouth, and 1-0-1 against UVM).
[Q]DeltaOne81 Wrote:
But back to the mathematically foollishness... Dartmouth sucked it up against the top teams this year, huh?[/q]
I wouldn't say Dartmouth sucked it up against the top teams.
1-1 vs. you guys (2-1 W, 1-3 L)
1-1 vs. Gate (1-2 L, 6-3 W)
1-1 vs. UVM (2-1 including the non-conference game) (1-5 L, 5-2 W, [6-3 W])
0-1 vs. Harvard (1-2 L)
1-0 vs. Brown (3-1 W)
That's .500 hockey against the conference teams with winning records. Not outstanding, but not exactly sucking, either.
The Harvard loss was bad merely because of how it happened. The Gate loss happened back when Dartmouth was averaging something like 1.25 goals per game (how times have changed, the Green now lead the conference in offense).
What's killing Dartmouth is their annual loss to Mayotte and Union (1-0), and the choke job they pulled against Princeton at home when Jessiman got hurt (3-0). There's 4 points they had no business giving away.
[Q]Dart~Ben Wrote:
I wouldn't say Dartmouth sucked it up against the top teams.
0-1 vs. Harvard (1-2 L)[/q]Do us a favor and win that second game? Please? :-D
Quoting yourself is something best done by someone else, but here we go, from the post-Yale thread:
[Q]Scersk '97 Wrote:
And, because I'm an obsessive, I've been cranking away at the possibilities for the next few games, using estimates based on the current KRACH. (Likely to win 9 of 10 with Clarkson, RPI, and Union and 4 of 5 with SLU.)
Just to avoid jinxing I'll say that it never goes according to the numbers and they have to play them on the ice and every game is difficult in the ECAC(HL) and yada yada.
Four wins ~ 58%
3 Ws, 1 L ~ 34%
2 Ws, 2 Ls ~ 7 %
1 W, 3 Ls ~ 1 %
4 Ls ~ negligible
[/Q]
As you can see, the likelihood of ending up anything but the #1 seed is rather low. But just take a look at the SUNYAC (in which I take a perverse interest, given that the rivalry between Plattsburgh and Oswego seems to mirror that between Harvard and us in the last few years) for this last weekend. It can happen:
http://www.uscho.com/standings/index.php?season=20042005&conf=15&type=d3
[q]As you can see, the likelihood of ending up anything but the #1 seed is rather low. But ...[/q]1991. Nuff said.
pardon my ignorance... but what happened in 1991? I was 4 and not exactly worried about hockey yet.
[Q]Dpperk29 Wrote:
pardon my ignorance... but what happened in 1991? I was 4 and not exactly worried about hockey yet.[/q]
Jesus. I was a kid in 91 myself, but 4... that makes even me feel old. ::twitch::
That said, I have no idea what happened either :)
[Q]DeltaOne81 Wrote:
[Q2]Dpperk29 Wrote:
pardon my ignorance... but what happened in 1991? I was 4 and not exactly worried about hockey yet.[/Q]
Jesus. I was a kid in 91 myself, but 4... that makes even me feel old.
That said, I have no idea what happened either [/q]
We needed one point on the final weekend to take the RS title. We didn't get it.
[Q]KeithK Wrote:
[Q2]As you can see, the likelihood of ending up anything but the #1 seed is rather low. But ...[/Q]
1991. Nuff said.[/q]
ARGH!!! :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-(
That was effin' awful. Just awful.
[Q]Dpperk29 Wrote:
pardon my ignorance... but what happened in 1991? I was 4 and not exactly worried about hockey yet.[/q]
Yikes. I was 28 in 1991. Thanks for making my day. :`(
For context: This was back when there were only four conferences, each with two auto-bids to a twelve-team NCAA tourney - and the RS champ got one of the auto-bids.
Beeeej
[Q]Beeeej Wrote:
For context: This was back when there were only four conferences, each with two auto-bids to a twelve-team NCAA tourney - and the RS champ got one of the auto-bids.
[/q]
Jeez, don't make it worse than it was! The RS champ auto-bid didn't start until the Colorado College fiasco in 1994, when they finished first but choked in the playoffs against the 10th-place team and wound up out of the NCAAs. Funny how nobody cared when Harvard did exactly the same thing in 1992, bwahahahaha.
What do you expect from me, Bill, absolute accuracy? :-D
Beeeej
More stupid questions from the guy who is too lazy to do the math himself: What would be required for Cornell to clinch a 1st place finish? 2nd place finish or better?
Are you too lazy to click?
http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?2005/ecac.nutshell:-)
from what I can see, and using my limited mathematical skills, we need to score 4 points to clinch second, and 5 to clinch a tie for first with harvard. however, it would be easier to just win out, then no math is required
Cornell leads with 30 ECAC points and four games remaining so it can amass 38 points (2 points for a win, 1 for a tie).
Harvard is second (based on wining pct, third based on points) with 25 and five games remaining so it can reach 35 points. If Cornell wins 3 of 4 games (or wins 2 and ties 2), that's enough for Cornell to control its destiny.
Colgate is third with 26 points and eight games remaining. It can get to 34 points. Two Cornell wins and a tie takes care of Colgate.
Dartmouth and Vermont have 22 points and could get to 30 with their four remaining games.
In the Ivies, Cornell has two losses to Harvard's one loss (2-0 to us) and one tie (2-2 vs. Brown), and Harvard has two Ivy games remaining. (Cornell's done.) A Harvard win and tie, ties Cornell, and two wins beats Cornell for the Ivy title. [edit adding:] It plays Brown next Tuesday 2/22 then at Dartmouth Friday 2/25.
Four points clinches 2nd, knocking off Colgate who we win all tiebreakers with (I'll take Whelan's word on this). Five points clinches a tie with Harvard. We split the H2H with HU, so the tiebreaker goes to Record vs. Top4. Since we would be a top 4 team, this equates to record vs. the other two teams in the top 4. If Colgate finishes Top 4 then we're guaranteed to win the HU tiebreaker, since we beat them in record vs. Colgate 3 pts. to 0 and there isn't any other team that Harvard could have a +3 or +4 advantage over us. If Colgate isn't Top4, then we can lose the tiebreaker if Dartmouth and Vermont are Top4 and Harvard wins at least one of there remaining games against them (likely in a tie scenario). Or Dartmouth/Brown if Harvard wins both of those games. We can't lose a Top4 comparison if it's Vermont/Brown, but we could tie. Several scenarios lead to a record vs. Top8 comparison. Here it depends on how things play out, since we play the current 7-10 yet this season and the very fact of a tie implies we've lost at least 3 points against these teams. At least we know that we definitely will win the H2H goal differential comparison with Harvard if it got that far.
We cannot clinch the RS title this weekend without help.
Cornell has already clinched tiebreakers against Dartmouth and Vermont in all possible scenarios, so it doesn't matter that they can get to 30 points also (in the event we lose 4 straight). We also win the Colgate tiebreaker on H2H, whether two way or any combination up to a five way tie (Cr, HU, Col, DC, Vt). So two wins eliminates them. It's only the Harvard comparison where tiebreakers are uncertain and we need the full six points to outpace them for sure.
[Q]KeithK Wrote:
Cornell has already clinched tiebreakers against Dartmouth and Vermont in all possible scenarios, so it doesn't matter that they can get to 30 points also (in the event we lose 4 straight). We also win the Colgate tiebreaker on H2H, whether two way or any combination up to a five way tie (Cr, HU, Col, DC, Vt). So two wins eliminates them. It's only the Harvard comparison where tiebreakers are uncertain and we need the full six points to outpace them for sure.[/q]
So a Cornell sweep and one Harvard loss = regular season title?
So it seems. It'd be nice if the Harvard loss came against Brown next week. Then we would clinch two titles via Harvard losing. I like it when Harvard loses and it means good things for us. :-D
The proper timing for a Harvard loss is against Brown (it's at Harvard in front of their intensely loyal fans) or up at Dartmouth. I'd pick Dartmouth, though it would be nice if we weren't in suspense until the final game of the Ivy season.
There'll be a gametracker for Brown (plus the delightful WHRB announcers) next Tuesday keeping us posted.