ELynah Forum

I'm guessing that's what the Maryland folks are saying, too.  "...and you, and you, and youandyouandyou" is the typical basketball cheer.  Although MU is a possible replacement, Maryland is actually the University of Maryland, which would be UM.

The KU basketball fans do that and point to the opposing teams' players.  5 guys a side fits pretty well with the cadence. . .



Post Edited (02-28-04 15:21)

The inherent stupidity of most ECAC policies aside. . .

QuoteWould you use the standings to determine the #1 team, then figure out head to head among the remaining 11 teams to determine #2, then figure out head to among among the remaining 10...

No, I wouldn't, but now you're mixing overall standings with tiebreaking procedures.  They have a method for determining the standings, and then a separate method for resolving situations that the standings cannot settle - i.e. when there are tied teams.  

My point was not that the ECAC tiebreaking system is perfect (it isn't), nor that it is inherently more logical than the system you are advocating (I think they're equally justifiable).  My point was that, just this once, the ECAC was not merely being dumb, but applied a certain logic to the tiebreaking procedure.  JTW's post clearly summarizes the ECAC's reasoning:

QuoteIt's a common practice to reduce the chance that a team which wins a two-team tiebreaker will lose a three-way tie-breaker thanks to the inclusion of an otherwise irrelevant third team.

You may not agree with their argument, but it makes sense to me.  It makes even more sense if you're up at 2 in the morning trying to find a way to set up a tournament tiebreaker system that will prevent a bunch of whiny athletes (and their fans) from bitching and moaning when they beat a team that ends up advancing over them.  :-P

Why would dropping the bottom team make more logical sense than advancing the top team?

And why would dropping the bottom team *and* advancing the top team at the same time make more logical sense than reapplying?

I've had to work through tiebreaker systems for bizarre summer league tournament formats, and what I found was that the weird reapplication of tiebreaker rules that the ECAC uses usually produces the same effect, while resolving some other issues (mainly reducing the amount of whining coming from the peanut gallery, at least as far as summer league formats are concerned).

For example, suppose Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and RPI are tied.  Let's further suppose that Cornell took 0 points from Brown and Dartmouth, and 3 points from RPI.  RPI took 1 each from Cornell and Brown, and 2 from Dartmouth.  Dartmouth took 2 from RPI, 1 from Brown, and 4 from Cornell.  Brown is the clear winner, losing just 1 point each from RPI and Dartmouth.

With me so far?  Tiebreaker yields:

Brown - 10 of 12 points
Dartmouth - 7 of 12 points
RPI - 5 of 12 points
Cornell - 3 of 12 points

Using this as the final standings puts Cornell at the bottom and Brown at the top.  It even resolves the RPI/Dartmouth split.  But here's the issue - Cornell and RPI finished with the same total number of points in the overall standings, and Cornell took 3 of 4 points from RPI.  Why is RPI now ahead of Cornell?

You can argue that applying tiebreakers straight down makes just as much logical sense as the re-application method that the ECAC uses, but I don't think that it's logical while the ECAC system is dumb.  It's far more elegant, and in most cases it's a simpler way to get the same results, but it's not necessarily a more logical, more fair, or even a better system.

I've just defended the ECAC tiebreakers.  ::uhoh::  I think maybe I should go lie down for a bit. . .



Post Edited (02-23-04 15:55)

Nothing to see here . . .

Move along. . .

(Didn't realize this was a two-year old thread at first)



Post Edited (02-22-04 21:33)

After looking at those numbers, my question is:

Why didn't Walsh win the award?

I mean, the guy had by far the best win percentage, second best save percentage, best goals against average, and played for one of the best teams in the league (at least in the RS).  Of course, that last bit probably hurts his chances at the award, but still - he had an incredible year.

I think you're right that seniority played a large role.  As you said, it seems like it usually does in these things, which is why Danis currently has a better shot at the Dryden award than McKee.

Jonas had a marginally better save percentage, a better win percentage, saw far more shots, and played (and started) more games than Underhill.  He also played behind one of the worst defenses in the league and still managed to post a very good goals against average, including two shutouts.  You could make a case for Jonas using a purely statistical argument, since the only category in which Underhill was better was in GAA, and many people think GAA is as much a function of team defense as goaltending ability.  That would tend to reduce the importance of Underhill's (far) better GAA, especially when you consider that in 2 more GP, Jonas faced 235 more shots - that translates to approximately 11 more shots per game over the course of the season.

Edit - now that I think of it, given a .928 save percentage, 11 more shots per game translates to just under 1 GA/Gm, so you could make the logical argument that if Jonas had faced the same number of shots per game as Underhill, his GAA would have been *lower* - so there is a statistical basis for giving Jonas the award that extends to every category.  Of course, this conflates the save percentage and GAA category, and effectively means that the goaltender with the best save percentage should win the award every time.

On the other hand, it does allow people like Laurie Belliveau to win these awards.  She spent four years at Yale with something like a .920 save percentage and a 5.00 GAA, facing 50 or 60 shots per game, but despite her GAA and low win percentage, everyone knew she was one of the top two goaltenders in the league.

Anyway, there must be people who vote for the Dryden award, or at least a person who chooses the winner, because there wasn't a really clear advantage for either player on the basis of the statistics at hand, and everyone who followed ECAC hockey knew that Harvard's defense began and ended with Oli Jonas that year.



Post Edited (02-21-04 15:49)

As a grad student, I think this is a *terrible* idea.  As an alum and a fan, I think the whole "you MUST wait in line for 2 days to get hockey tickets" business is BS, too.

Hockey ticket lines should be simple, but apparently everyone in charge thinks they are complicated processes requiring huge amounts of planning, forethought, and supervision.  It also seems like they want them to be entertaining, and they want the process to contain an element of surprise.  In reality, all you really need is staff and someone with a minimal amount of foresight.  Simpler is better here.  The following is not terribly complicated, but it might *still* be more than we really need for a hockey ticket line:

Have 1 pool of season tickets for those with valid student IDs, grad(*see note) or undergrad.  Tickets go on sale at 5 PM on Sunday (or whenever).  If a line begins to form well before the ticket sale start time (which it will, but not more than a few days earlier most years), athletics will hand out line numbers and keep a list of students and student IDs.  Line checks will be held at random, but no more than once an hour.  Miss one, and you lose your line number (i.e. you have to go to the end of the line).  Each student (or pair of students, if each number can buy 2 tix) will be required to have his or her own line number.  No proxies.  You have the wrong ID, you lose your number and have to go to the back of the line.  Unsold season tix will be folded into the single game ticket allotment.  Above all, DO NOT provide any entertainment.  DO NOT allow the students waiting in line to meet the players in any formally arranged manner.  If you want ticket buyers to get a chance to meet the team, fine, but don't make it part of the line.  If some of the guys on the team want to come say hi to their friends or thank some of the fans, fine, let them, but don't make it an official to-do.

(*note) This is an issue if grad students don't pay an extra activity fee to get athletics discounts.  If that's the case, and it sounds like it is, then you'll have to separate the lines.  Sell a limited number of graduate student tickets at the graduate student rate (whatever that is) *before* the regular undergrad line.  You can even put them all in sections F and G if you want.  If a grad student really wants tickets in sections A, B, D, or E, there will be ways to get them.  (edit - this is assuming the grad rate is NOT the same as the undergrad rate, if the rate is the same there's no need for this extra line, unless you put all the grad students in section G or something).

In fact, there are a number of other possible solutions to this grad activity fee issue without having two separate lines so that grad students can still get tickets at the same exact prices and in the same exact sections as undergrads.  At that point, you may as well put them all in one line, and let the grad students occasionally get 300 of the student tickets at student ticket prices.  If they waited in line long enough to get them, then they probably deserve them, and since athletics was *already* going to sell those at student rates, it makes no economic difference to them.



Post Edited (02-10-04 00:57)

Didn't see Saturday's game, but Colgate was not trapping on Friday.  Colgate consistently had one forechecker coming in low to stop the drop pass from the forward to the D on the breakout, and flushing that forward to the second forechecker coming in at an angle towards the boards.  The trap typcially features a single forechecker that flushes the puck carrier towards the outside, into the teeth of the trap waiting in (or near) the neutral zone.  

Lots of Cornell turnovers in the first game were a result of botched passes from the puck carrying forward to the D (trying to run the standard breakout play even though Colgate's forecheck was tailor made to stop it).  The rest of the turnovers on the breakout came on blind "oh crap here it comes chuck it behind the net" passes.  Credit to the Colgate forecheck, which executed perfectly and finished its checks on Friday, but I think a more experienced team would've figured it out - or at least would've stopped turning it over in the bottom of the faceoff circle before the first intermission.

One problem, which is consistent on the breakout and the power play, is a lack of puck movement.  Cornell moved the puck better than anyone in the ECAC last year.  This year, well. . . when Cornell was scoring goals, the puck movement was better.  Obviously not as good as last year, but still pretty good.  Now it's awful.  Losing Gleed/Wallace/Cook/Hynes was a big blow there.  I remember Cook having horrible problems moving the puck on the breakout against Clarkson (they ran a weaving forecheck that nobody else in the league used at the time) when he was a freshman, and I guess it takes time to learn how to run the breakout at this level and adjust to different forechecks.

Give Colgate credit, though:  they were dominant on the forecheck, and never really allowed Cornell to get a forecheck or cycle going in the offensive zone (again, this was Friday, but it sounded like Saturday was much the same).  Colgate's a good team this year, and I'll be surprised if the Raiders don't finish in the top 4 and make a run at Albany.

There's really no way to tell without knowing the severity of the injury.  IN fact, there are a number of injuries which could be diagnosed as a separated shoulder during an initial examination (i.e. someone looking at the injury at the game without the benefit of x-rays or an MRI), so it's not even clear that the injury is a separated shoulder.

Basically, if it's something like a mild rotator cuff injury, without an actual separation, he'll be back in a week or two.  If it's a third degree separation that requires surgery, he's done for the season.

I seem to remember a list of Cornell sports that presented Football and Sprint Football as separate "sports" - although now that I think about it that may have been a list of teams.  Doesn't make much sense to me that they would be considered different sports, although I guess there are rules differences.  Anyway, lots of weird things like that - I think indoor and outdoor track are considered separate teams, although most of the participants are the same.

www.uscho.com

Details at 2 according to the caption.  I guess they'll be updating shortly.

As far as I know, Ultimate is a club sport at Harvard (and at Cornell - and pretty much everywhere else).  

I think the difference between the numbers that you've posted is the difference between teams and sports.  Harvard might have 37 distinct varsity sports, and still support 50+ varsity teams. For example, ice hockey is one varsity sport, but two varsity teams.  Field hockey and football would each account for one sport and one team.

The first goal didn't look in.  You don't have to take my word for it, though - the red light didn't come on, and the Cornell players didn't even break stride.  Usually, at least one of the guys on the ice will start to raise his arms if the puck goes in the net.  Murphy may not have had a great angle on that one, but nobody gave him any reason to believe that the puck went in.  It sounded like it hit Danis in the face, too.

The second goal was clearly in.  I was just about to yell "that's a goal" when Murphy blew the whistle and started pounding on the top of the net.  It looked to me like it hit the back bar and bounced down and away.

Murphy's penalty calling was weirdly inconsistent, but I didn't notice any bias against Cornell.  I thought the number of penalties called on each team was about right, although that was mostly from borderline calls making up for big missed calls.  Since everyone was getting away with the big things, it's not much of a surprise that the game got a little bit out of hand.  Overall, I thought the game was reasonably well officiated, by ECAC standards.

Cornell played a heck of a game.  They were finishing their checks, skating through Brown players like they weren't there, and just looked physically dominant on the ice.  The power play was a thing of beauty, the PK was generally pretty good, although they did have some communication breakdowns, and they generated a ton of chances even strength that a lesser goalie wouldn't have touched.  Give Danis credit - he gave up some big rebounds, but he also stopped some top quality scoring chances.

This team reminds me an awful lot of the 2000-2001 team that averaged 2 goals per game - both for and against.  That team lost a bunch of close games where it outshot and outmuscled the opposition, played stifling defense, and lost or tied because of an inability to finish and one or two defensive zone mistakes.  The reason that team was winning more (home) games than this year's team?  More experienced goaltending.  Give McKee a year (or two) - he'll be damn good.  He actually reminds me of a freshman Matt Underhill - he makes some mistakes and gives up a few bad goals, but has good size and quickness.  If he works as hard as Underhill did, he's got a shot at being a very good college goaltender, and maybe even posting All-American numbers.

Um, maybe not.  There's live music at the Chappy quite often nowadays.  Yesterday they had a $10 (!) cover, which prevented me from getting beer there.  :`(



Post Edited (12-03-03 14:59)

Jim Hyla wrote:

[q]Since we are not accomplished writers,[/q]

Speak for yourself.  ;-)