3/10 Polls

[KeithK \'93]

[Q]I just don't think that the polls are a good place to start looking for what the goal should be.[/Q]

You're right, for all the reasons you cite.  To elaborate on my position: the polls generally are subjective and not "acurate".  So the differences between polls and ranking usually points to the flaws in the polling.  At the present moment, I think it happens to highlight a couple of problems with the rankings (Maine and BU), at least from my point of view.

Naturally, choosing the ranking criteria is an entirely subjective process.

[DeltaOne81]

[Q]Consider the following scenario: Team A wins its first 25 games, then has two of its star players go down with season ending-injuries and loses its last 5 games. Team B loses its first 5 games while waiting for its star goalie to come back from an offseason injury, then goes on to win out its remaining 25 games. Which of these teams deserves a higher seed going in to the tournament? I would have to say it's team B, who is playing well now, and is going to be a much harder team to beat.[/Q]
What if Team A only lost their star players for 5 games, and they'll be back in town for the tournament... so we really create a mathmatical formula that starts figuring how how good a team will be based on who's in the lineup? That'd be an utter nightmare.

The greater important of the playoff games is the title. Otherwise it's just a game. I don't see why they should have to be given any greater importance than they already have. It doesn't make you a better or worse team if you lose to someone in the playoffs versus in the regular season. If we were to lose this weekend, does that really make us worse than if we had lost to RPI twice in the regular season, but beaten them in the playoffs?

I suppose the difference in philosophies is "it's the playoffs it should count more" versus "it doesn't make you better or worse depending on when you win/lose." It's one thing to have a general impression that there *should* be more weight, just because it's the post season, and if that's how you feel, fine, but I don't think that's just in as far as determine who's really the better teams.

[KeithK \'93]

There's a big difference between ranking teams for their conference tournaments and for the NCAAs.  In the conference you have a round robin schedule where everyone plays the same schedule (or at least roughly).  So using the entire conference slate and weighting all games equally is appropriate.  For the national tournament, you are trying to decide, based on greatly divergent schedules, which teams have earned the right to play for the national championship.  In this case, I think it is entirely appropriate to reward teams for success in their conference tournament (in addition to the autobids) and punish those who fail miserably like Maine.

My position, as I've said before, is that you should have to win something first (RS or tourney title) before having a chance play in the tourney at all.  But then we wouldn't get to argue endlessly over chances for at-large bids and bubble teams, and therefore take away hours of February and March entertainment :-)

[gwm3]

The fact that star players were injured wasn't really central to my point.  I included it to illustrate an extreme case where it is clear that a team is not as good going into the tournament as it was earlier in the season.  Of course, I would apply the same logic to a team tanking down the stretch for any reason.

I do think, however, that seeding for the NCAA's should probably include some human discretion to account for known circumstances that the computer rankings don't capture (like injured players, etc.).

[Beeeej]

I don't get it... first, from what I can glean, you're saying that a team that loses its star player down the stretch, thus losing its last five games, should be ranked lower than one that lost its first five games.  Now you're saying that the NCAA should be able to take injuries into account, thus possibly ranking them higher to compensate for the fact that they would be better if they hadn't lost their star player?

Wins are wins, and losses are losses.  Teams are as good as their current roster, and they should be ranked and seeded by their performance on the ice, not by how good they'd be if their entire roster were healthy.

Beeeej

[Keith K \'93]

> ...but I don't think that's just in as far as determine who's
> really the better teams.

Well, that gets to the question of what the tournament bids and rankings mean.  Are we trying to identify the "best" teams?  Well sort of, but that's really an intractable problem.  No ranking can really say with certainty whether BU is better than Minnesota  in an objective sense.  I say this for a number of reasons, of which the most significant is sample size.  Another is the fact that, if there were an objective measure of "better" teams it would change significantly in time due to injuries or players maturing.

I see the tournament bids as identifying the teams that have "earned" a chance to play for the national championship.  We have to some form of ranking system to determine this because there are at-large bids.  But I think it's reasonable to more heavily weight conf. tourney games.  This is mostly a feeling and it's hard to argue logically, but there it is.

Hey, if the conference tourney games should just be like regular games, why bother having the tourneys at all?  The RS standings do a much better job telling you the relative strengths of the teams in a given league than any of the rankings could possibly do.  Or than the tournament does.  So why not just crown the champion now?  We get the Whitelaw, case closed.  After all, the reason they started playing the ECAC tournament in the first place was to select the NCAA teams.

[gwm3]

[Q]Teams are as good as their current roster, and they should be ranked and seeded by their performance on the ice, not by how good they'd be if their entire roster were healthy.[/Q]

Everyone is completely misinterpreting my point.  Here it is in black and white: "A team that sucks at the end of the season should be seeded lower in the end of season tournament than a team that sucked at the beginning of the season."

The whole thing about injuries was just to illustrate a potential reason why a team's performance might dramatically change mid-season.  My point was exactly what you have said above... if a team's current roster is not playing well (for whatever reason), then they should be seeded lower than team who is currently playing well.

As to my latter point, I was merely suggesting that the committee (the humans, not the computers) be given some discretion in seeding.  This might allow them to take into account a situation where some of a team's losses early or in the middle of the season occurred under extenuating circumstances (i.e., an injury) that no longer exist .  This is in no way inconsistent with saying that a team that currently has injured players, and hence is not playing well now, should be seeded lower than a team that is currently playing well.



Post Edited (03-10-03 23:20)

[Beeeej]

Graham I:
[q]My point was exactly what you have said above... if a team's current roster is not playing well (for whatever reason), then they should be seeded lower than team who is currently playing well.[/q]

Graham II:
[q]I do think, however, that seeding for the NCAA's should probably include some human discretion to account for known circumstances that the computer rankings don't capture (like injured players, etc.)[/q]

If we're misinterpreting, Graham, I don't think it's entirely our fault.  :-{)}  Seriously - I'm not trying to cross-examine you, but how do you reconcile the two quotes above?

Beeeej

[gwm3]

And yes, I realize the insurmountable impracticability of giving the committee such discretion, but it would theoretically produce a better field for the tournament.

[gwm3]

Beeeej -- I think I edited my post to answer your question.  If it doesn't, I agree that it's my fault.  I do tend go on incomprehensible rants on this board from time to time ;-)



Post Edited (03-10-03 23:29)

[Beeeej]

From what I can see, your edited post now says that the committee should be allowed to adjust seeding to compensate for injuries earlier in the season, but should not be allowed to adjust seeding to compensate for injuries later in the season.  How does that make any more sense than what you said before?

Beeeej



Post Edited (03-10-03 23:36)

[gwm3]

It makes perfect sense.  The goal of this discretionary system I propose would be to give teams that currently have the strongest rosters the highest seeds.  Obviously injuries earlier in the season which are no longer affecting the team will be treated differently than current injuries which affect the roster that a team will be able to put on the ice during the tournament.

Example (assuming perfectly identical schedules for simplicity):

Team A: 25-5.  Loses first 5 games due, in part, to injury.  Players all back for the tournament.
Team B: 25-5. Loses first 5 games without "excuse."
Team C: 25-5.  Loses last 5 games due to injury.  Players all back for the tournament.
Team D: 25-5.  Loses last 5 games due to injury.  Players will not be back for the tournament.
Team E: 25-5.  Loses last 5 games without excuse.

If these are the 5 teams in the tourney:

A and C are tied for 1st (losses under extenuating circumstance that no longer exists)
B would probably be 3rd (losses not "excused," but playing well down the stretch.
D and E would both be at the bottom because they are playing poorly now, and there is no reason (i.e., an injured player coming back) to expect that their play will improve at all in the tournament.


Now I realize this system could not be pulled off in any realistic setting, but I think it makes some sort of weird sense (though apparently only to me).



Post Edited (03-11-03 00:06)

[ugarte]

The main flaw in your system, Graham, is that it relies too much on the good faith and good judgment of people who are only human.  The reason most people on this board (from what I can see) favor objective systems is that subjectivity leads to controversy.  

I agree that of your hypothetical teams, A and C appear to be the best.  [STUPID HYPO ALERT] But what if the star player of team B just got dumped before the losing skid, but won his baby back in time to get the season back together?  It isn't an "excuse", but it says as much about the team in November as the injuries to A and C do about their teams during their own 5 game stretches.  

Teams lose for all sorts of reasons, and all teams have injuries big and small over the course of a year.  Objective criteria will tend to average out the bumps that each team gets during the season (or at least over a number of seasons).  Turning the selection process into the sort of excuse making that is the lifeblood of sports talk blather seems like a mistake.  You want to bemoan your fate because of an injury at a bad time?  Tell it to your priest, but as far as I am concerned teams A, B, C, D and E are the same at the end of the year.  And trying to turn "games lost to injury into an objective criteria seems (1) impossible and (2) an even bigger mistake.  

To take the most extreme example of what is wrong with your proposal, it would certainly be obscene to see a hypothetical 25-5 Merrimack team penalized for a first round conference loss because their goalie won't be available for the NCAA's.



Post Edited (03-11-03 00:29)

[DeltaOne81]

I for one think your system makes conceptual sense, but as you yourself said, ti would be an utter mess (well, you didn't quite say that) on an absolute scale. Plus, I don't like giving the committee discretion, when you have no way to know how and when they're gonna apply it.

The first proposal would be to RPI-ify or KRACH-ify Last 16. In order words, how well you did, weighted for SoS, over your last 16 games. But that wouldn't be entirely fair considering everyone plays more conference games near the end. Is it really fair to hurt us bc we have to play ECAC teams at the end, even if we schedule some good opponents in the first stretch of games? The only thing I could think might be fair is some kinda Last 16 versus how you shoulda done against those teams. In other words, have you fallen down or risen up, and it should probably only be a tiebreaking criteria, but the math is beyond me at this time of night .

-Fred

[ugarte]

It is possible that the insular end-of-season conference schedules would not permit enough interconference play for KRACH to resolve itself or at least to make it a useful tool.