Pairwise Ranking

[Petunia \'95]

OK.
I noticed on uscho's pairwise site that if you add in the "bonus" factor, Cornell moves higher.   The "bonus" helps Cornell, I guess because of games vs Notre Dame & Ohio State.  It's kind of ironic I think, that this quality win bonus factor helps an ECAC team.

ANYway...

Didn't someone figure out the likely approximate bonus factor last year after the tournament teams were announced, and if anyone remembers this, can they advise?

Thx.

Also, did anyone notice that MAAC regular season games last weekend had higher attendance than ECAC preliminary round playoff games?
Holy Cross had crowds over 2000, that's kind of ecac-ish, hmmmm.....

[KeithK]

I don't remember what the conclusions were about the bonus points last year.  I expect peopel did make guesses.  Keep in mind that there's no guarantee that they will keep the same numbers this year though.  Since they refuse to tell us what the numbers are I can't help but imagine that we're back in the smoke filled room with the committee adjusting the numbers to give them the outcome that they want to see.

In fairness, it's probably just as likely that the idiots in charge just want to "add some mystery" to the process so that people will bother to watch the selection show.  Ah yes, mystery over transparency.  Brilliant.

[Greg Berge]

Here is the text re: the adjustments to pure PWR on the USCHO site http://www.uscho.com/rankings/pwr.php : The current selection criteria is now affected by two additional RPI tweaks. ... 1) The RPI "bonus". The bonus, added in 2002-03, is awarded for "quality wins," defined as nonconference wins against a team in the Top 15 of RPI. More bonus points are awarded for neutral-site wins than home wins, and even more for road wins. Since the amount of bonus points is kept secret, we can't calculate a definite RPI. However, USCHO allows users, through the form on the right, to enter their own guesses on how much the bonus is worth, and based on that, see the effect on RPI and PWR. ... 2) If a team defeats a weak opponent, it is possible for its RPI to go down despite the win. Starting in 2003-04, if this happens in a team's conference tournament, that game can be thrown out of the RPI calculation for that team. Any team where this has occured has been noted below.

No good reason has ever been given for keeping the RPI bonus a secret, which is suspicious.  Given the poor understanding that committee members have shown of their own selection criteria, it's likely (to the cynical among us, which I'm afraid includes me) that they include a fudge factor to cover their asses in the event that they make a dumb mistake.  I doubt it's kept open to favor a premeditated outcome.  That implies way too much planning and logic.

[Will]

It seems like the whole idea of the RPI Bonus is a fudge factor to make sure that teams like Michigan and Minnesota make the tournament.  Sure, they'll likely make it into the tournament on their own accolades (or, y'know, by virtue of just being in the WCHA, in Minnesota's case), but heaven help us if teams like Colgate make the tournament and lead to less revenue dollars.  (No offense to the real Colgate fans, but let's face it, Colgate doesn't have the biggest student fan following in the college hockey world--free, projectile pizza is needed to get the students into Starr, after all.)  For instance, if the season ended today, it would be no surprise to me if Colorado College and St. Cloud got in and Notre Dame and Michigan State didn't, especially since CC is the Western Regional host this year and thus should attract a good amount of fans there locally.  One wonders if Cornell could benefit from this sort of policy, though--I think it's obvious that Cornell fans made an impact in the last two years' tournaments.

[adamw]

The bonus is not a fudge factor. That much is sure.  Though, their secrecy opens them up to this sort of speculation - so, in that case, they deserve it.

But, in regards to the comment re: St. Cloud/Colorado College ... neither team qualifies for any bonus points this year (just go to USCHO's bonus pages and put in any number, and you'll see). ... So the Committee could do no amount of fudging to help those guys.  After all, no matter what you multiply by 0, it's still 0.

[Chris 02]

If you look at this http://www.uscho.com/rankings/rpi.php page on USCHO, it shows the number of quality wins based on the current top 15 teams.

[Chris \'03]

[Q]chrisatpc Wrote:

 If you look at this http://www.uscho.com/rankings/rpi.php page on USCHO, it shows the number of quality wins based on the current top 15 teams. [/Q]

I just noticed this on that page:
[q] If a team defeats a weak opponent, it is possible for its RPI to go down despite the win. Starting in 2003-04, if this happens in a team's conference tournament, that game can be thrown out of the RPI calculation for that team. Any team where this has occured has been noted with an asterisk beside their RPI. [/q]

It's only helped RPI's RPI so far.  

[Tom Pasniewski 98]

To be accurate, it didn't really help their RPI, it just didn't hurt their RPI, which is fair.   Now if they can do something when BU's RPI goes up for losing to BC this weekend, that would help too.  But .500 RPI and .500 winning percentage for TUC would help currently bouncing three teams from TUC , all in Hockey East (Mass.-Lowell, BU and Northeastern).  That Northeastern can be a TUC but be the only team ineligible for the conference playoffs is just wrong.

[Al DeFlorio]

[Q]Tom Pasniewski 98 Wrote:

 To be accurate, it didn't really help their RPI, it just didn't hurt their RPI, which is fair.   Now if they can do something when BU's RPI goes up for losing to BC this weekend, that would help too.  But .500 RPI and .500 winning percentage for TUC would help currently bouncing three teams from TUC , all in Hockey East (Mass.-Lowell, BU and Northeastern).  That Northeastern can be a TUC but be the only team ineligible for the conference playoffs is just wrong. [/Q]
I'm still not convinced that losing a game should ever raise your RPI.  Yes, it should go down less for losing to BC than to Bentley.  (In the TUC criterion, however, you're better off losing to Bentley.  That's a real puzzler.)  But having your ranking improve because you lost?  Huh? ::help::

[KeithK]

In a sensible system your ranking would always go down when you lose and always go up when you win, though the amounts are ay vary significantly depending on competition.  But everyone who's paying attention knows that RPI is not a sensible system...

[Jim Hyla]

Hey, do you think we could get more bonus points for beating the only teams who could give us bonus points? That is, we didn't lose to any bonus point teams or putting it another way, we didn't have any quality losses that we didn't also beat. ::nut::

[Al DeFlorio]

[Q]Jim Hyla Wrote:

 Hey, do you think we could get more bonus points for beating the only teams who could give us bonus points? That is, we didn't lose to any bonus point teams or putting it another way, we didn't have any quality losses that we didn't also beat.  



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 03/10/2004 6:23pm. [/Q]
We get more bonus points than UND! ::banana::

[Chris 02]

It appears that according to this week's bracketology, Cornell is the last team to not make the NCAA tournament.  And for those following bracketology since it started about a month ago, Colgate has moved up significantly from having to play the #3 seed in the first round (following the CHA and AHA auto-bids) to playing the #8 seed, Wisconsin.  With just a few games remaining, I imagine that Colgate will have a pretty good idea of their at-large status.  I think this might work in Cornell's favor somewhat, is that if in the back of all the Colgate players' minds, they know they're going to the tournament, they might not play with quite the same urgency as Cornell in the ECAC playoffs.  On the same hand, Cornell must realize that if they want their season to continue, they must win.  LGR!

[ugarte]

[Q]chrisatpc Wrote:

 It appears that according to this week's bracketology, Cornell is the last team to not make the NCAA tournament.  [/Q] Actually, St. Cloud is the last team to miss the tournament.  The first list on the page has the top 15 (including SCSU at 15) plus HC and Bemidji.

The point is the same; we almost certainly have to win out. (Though now I could see a loss in the final to 'Gate coupled with early upset losses by the other bubble teams pushing us in - especially since our RPI can't be hurt by winning against Clarkson.)

So Let's GO RED!!!

[ben03]

As discussed above (too lazy to check) ... does the bonus system put us ahead of St. Cloud?
Thus, we would be the last team out ::rolleyes:: but I could be wrong ...