Final Weekend Playoff Possibilities

[Jeff Hopkins \'82]

Not that weird...

It means Dartmouth needs to tie Brown and Harvard, and Brown needs to lose to UVM.  Given Dartmouth's propensity for ties this year, that's not that impossible and Brown losing to UVM is not nearly as improbable as one would have thought a month ago either.

It's the ECAC...it ain't over 'til it's over.

JH

[Greg Berge]

Would 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...?

I've just attacked an ECAC policy.  I think I'm on solid ground here.  
;-)

[jtwcornell91]

Starting over with the remaining N-1 teams after you've isolated the top team from an N-way tie is also the way the NFL does things, or at least the way they did the last time I checked.  It'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.

The thing that the ECAC does slightly differently is that if the top two or more teams are tied in head-to-head, they get separated from the top of the group and then have their individual tie broken, but all of them finish ahead of the teams that were lower down.  To quote one of the league's examples:

Suppose teams A, B, C and D are all tied with an equal number of points. Teams A is 1-1-0 vs Team B, 1-1-0 vs Team C and 2-0-0 vs Team D. Team B is 1-1-0 vs Team A, 1-1-0 vs Team C, and 2-0-0 vs Team D. Team C is 1-1-0 vs Team A, 1-1-0 vs Team B and 0-1-1 vs Team D. Team D is 0-2-0 vs Team A, 0-2-0 vs Team B, and 1-0-1 vs Team C. The head-to-head records among all four teams are 4-2-0 for Teams A and B, 2-3-1 for Team C and 1-4-1 for Team D. Teams A and B are thus separated from Teams C and D and the tie-breakers are re-applied in each group. Teams A and B tied head-to-head so additional tie-breakers are needed. Team D won the series against Team C 1-0-1 so Team D would be seeded ahead of Team C despite the fact that Team D was behind Team C in the 4-way tie-breaker.

In the NFL method (at least as of circa 1995), the loser of the tiebreaker between Team A and Team B would be thrown back into a three-way tie with Team C and Team D.

[jtwcornell91]

BTW, I worked out part of the question of whether we get the bye with a split.  If we split, RPI sweeps, Brown doesn't get swept, and Dartmouth does no worse than a split, we end up tied for 4th with RPI.  The one case I looked at was where we beat SLU and lose to Clarkson.  This is the worst version of the split for us, since we want SLU (who swept RPI) to stay in the top 8.  Anyway, in that circmustance, we get home ice if SLU beats Colgate, Clarkson doesn't beat Colgate, and Union gets no more than one point, OR if SLU ties Colgate, Clarkson loses to Colgate, and Union gets swept.

Point being, even if we beat SLU Friday, we'll only clinch the bye that night if RPI ties or loses.

[Ack]

Still will be MUCH simpler at 9:30 on Friday night.

[tml5]

The inherent stupidity of most ECAC policies aside. . .

Would 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:

It'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

[jtwcornell91]

John T. Whelan '91 wrote:

I'll let Bill Fenwick do his usual breakdown of everyone's prosepects

And now he has.  See http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?2004/ecacposs.040227