12-12 Polls

[Scersk '97]

[Q]jkahn Wrote:
Collegehockeynews and Siouxsports
are currently reporting different KRACH rankings.
Any clues as to which is inaccurate?[/q]

Siouxsports does not include RIT in its calculations.

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]Scersk '97 Wrote:

 [Q2]jkahn Wrote:
Collegehockeynews and Siouxsports
are currently reporting different KRACH rankings.
Any clues as to which is inaccurate?[/Q]
Siouxsports does not include RIT in its calculations.
[/q]

They also normalize them so that 100 is North Dakota, rather than a team with a RRWP of .500.

[French Rage]

Maybe because other than a win at Maine, Vermont has lost or tied every good HE team they played, but managed to sweep the challenging OOC competition of MT, UAA, UMDx2, and Niagarax2.  I think their game against SLU Saturday will give us a better idea.

[dadeo]

Im not saying that UVm is a bad team.  Im just saying is it deserving of such a high rank. (and first place votes?)  All Vermont has proven is that they can win games against average and subpar teams (and actually lost to Mass., but won against Maine)

Also, after UNHs pretty poor week, the pollsters decided to leave them where they are.

[RatushnyFan]

[Q]French Rage Wrote:
 Maybe because other than a win at Maine, Vermont has lost or tied every good HE team they played, but managed to sweep the challenging OOC competition of MT, UAA, UMDx2, and Niagarax2.  I think their game against SLU Saturday will give us a better idea.[/q]
But their victories against UMD were impressive and they also have decent victories against Providence (up and down, terrible against ECAC, but just beat BU and Maine)and tied UNH.  I think they'd beat us right now at a neutral location.

[Q]abmarks Wrote:
I'm not sure where all the anti-Vermont sentiment has come from in the last 5-6 years or so, but people need to be a little objective. [/q]
Agreed.  I wish they were still in the ECAC, would improve the strength of the conference.  It will take years for Quinnipiac to develop a legitimate D1 program that can compete in the top half of the league.

[Trotsky]

[Q]abmarks Wrote:

 [Q2]jmh30 Wrote:

 [Q2]dadeo Wrote:
It definately seems that the USCHO pollsters are a little bit biased (to Hockey Least)[/Q]
Vermont getting first-place votes demonstrates that pretty well.[/Q]
Has anyone on this board that is regularly bashing Vermont actually seen them play this year?  I have.  And they are a very good team.  Very highly skilled and they come to play every night.  (In those respects, they have it over us on both measures).


I'm not sure where all the anti-Vermont sentiment has come from in the last 5-6 years or so, but people need to be a little objective.

Comparing the two polls re: HE cited teams in the top 15 (since usa today only goes 15 deep) there is only one difference between the two polls. All the teams are in the exact same spots except for Maine which is a spot higher in the USA Today.

USCHO            

3   Vermont           ( 2)   11-3-1   723   3
5   Boston College      9-4-1   619   6
9   Maine              11-5-0   468   10
12   New Hampshire      9-6-3   330   12


USAToday

3   University of Vermont           452      3   11-3-1
5   Boston College                   363      7   9-4-1
8   University of Maine           245      10   11-5-0
12   University of New Hampshire   139      9   9-6-3

Hockey East bias?  My ass.

And for you Krachies, CHN Krach has Vermont at #4.  So stop whining about Vermont being overrated unless they start losing and don't drop.  If we were 11-3-1 instead of 8-3-1 and at #4 you wouldn't be whining[/q]


This was a nice rant, but it completely missed the point, which was not that UVM is not a good team, but that an "up and coming" team from the ECAC with a similar record to Vermont's would not, so early in the season, be getting first place votes.  It takes a few seasons to accumulate that sort of credibility coming from the ECAC (SLU and Clarkson, coming off down years, have had great starts but are buried in the mid teens in the polls), whereas by merely connecting up with the HE label, UVM helped themselves to some free positive association.

[DeltaOne81]

[Q]RatushnyFan Wrote:

Agreed.  I wish they were still in the ECAC, would improve the strength of the conference.  It will take years for Quinnipiac to develop a legitimate D1 program that can compete in the top half of the league.[/q]

QU is 3-8 with 6 1-goal losses. Considering "top half of the league" only means passing Yale, Princeton, Brown, RPI, Union, and one other team, I'd be surprised if they weren't in the top half at least once in the next two years. They're a good team as we saw a couple weekends ago.

[oceanst41]

That worked at Dartmouth  ::yark::

[TCHL8842]

I just want to note for everyone here that we currently have a record of 4-1 against TUC teams.  If we can keep this percentage up and raise our RPI a little bit, we should be a lock for a decent seed in the tourney.

Our TUC record is second best right now to only Wisconsin, I find this very impressive since I dont think we have played to our full potential by any means this year.

[French Rage]

[Q]TCHL8842 Wrote:

 I just want to note for everyone here that we currently have a record of 4-1 against TUC teams.  If we can keep this percentage up and raise our RPI a little bit, we should be a lock for a decent seed in the tourney.

Our TUC record is second best right now to only Wisconsin, I find this very impressive since I dont think we have played to our full potential by any means this year.



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 12/13/05 01:32PM by TCHL8842.[/q]

Though two of those are Niagara, who is barely a TUC.  Without that, we drop several spots in the premature PWR.

[RatushnyFan]

[Q]DeltaOne81 Wrote:

 [Q2]RatushnyFan Wrote:

Agreed.  I wish they were still in the ECAC, would improve the strength of the conference.  It will take years for Quinnipiac to develop a legitimate D1 program that can compete in the top half of the league.[/Q]
QU is 3-8 with 6 1-goal losses. Considering "top half of the league" only means passing Yale, Princeton, Brown, RPI, Union, and one other team, I'd be surprised if they weren't in the top half at least once in the next two years. They're a good team as we saw a couple weekends ago.[/q]
I think they have 11 ECAC games left and close doesn't count.  I think they'll win 2-3 of those games.  I think the real QU is the one that we've seen post their tremendous Harvard and Dartmouth victories.......just one opinion.  Sure they'll compete with everyone and on occasion outcompete a more talented club (ie first period versus Cornell) and they're well coached.  But why should their experience be much different from Union's?  Union has had some good coaches (Kevin Sneddon, Stan Moore) but they haven't been able to pull it together - my educated guess would be that the difference is primarily in their ability to recruit versus more established programs.

[KeithK]

The reason some people think that they will have an easier time than Union in the long term is that it appears that the Q administration appears to be more supportive than Union's.  No sense that .400 is a good season there.  They'll have a nice facility eventually and full scholarships as opposed to Achilles and round-about  foreign student financial aid.

I agree that Quinnipiac is unlikely to finish near the top of the league this year or maybe soon.  But they already have some talent and have are a danger to win any given night.  (Though anyone paying attention to Wisconsin's loss last weekend knows the general truth of that.)

[DeltaOne81]

[Q]RatushnyFan Wrote:
I think they have 11 ECAC games left and close doesn't count.[/Q]

Agreed, I didn't say this year. It does count for future years though as far as potential goes.


[Q]I think the real QU is the one that we've seen post their tremendous Harvard and Dartmouth victories.......just one opinion.  Sure they'll compete with everyone and on occasion outcompete a more talented club (ie first period versus Cornell) and they're well coached.  But why should their experience be much different from Union's?[/Q]

One word: committment. Union is a school who's president publically stated that he was thrilled that the team reached 0.500 at some point. The coaches are no doubt good, but the administration has no interest in having a successful team.

Quinnipiac on the other hand has risen from D-II/III to be a perrential power in a "mid-major" conference, outbid several other schools to join the ECAC and won the bid due to proving their committment (Steve Hagwell's term - and I can't be the only one who thought that was a not-so-veiled shot at Union, can I?), is building a brand new (gorgeous via the pictures) athletics center, and regularly buses their fans to "away" home games and tournaments.

Heck, I'm not saying I know what will happen. It is entirely possible that they will struggle for a long time. If I could tell the future I'd have a lot better places to use that skill than eLF . But they have a heck of a lot more potential than Union and for good reason.

[RichH]

[Q]DeltaOne81 Wrote:

One word: committment. Union is a school who's president publically stated that he was thrilled that the team reached 0.500 at some point. The coaches are no doubt good, but the administration has no interest in having a successful team.[/q]

Well, once again, I'll throw out the thought that has been in my head since the UVM-replacement search was finalized.  Can the league kick out Union and bring in RIT?  That's a program that would be a great fit in the ECACHL, IMO.  Cornell-RIT and Colgate-RPI would be fine in the travel partner scheme.

What were the circumstances of Army leaving the league?  Was it league pressure or Army just not wanting to continue?  Union would better please their administration moving back to D-III anyway, I think.

[Killer]

[Q]DeltaOne81 Wrote:

 Quinnipiac on the other hand has risen from D-II/III to be a perrential power in a "mid-major" conference, outbid several other schools to join the ECAC and won the bid due to proving their committment (Steve Hagwell's term - and I can't be the only one who thought that was a not-so-veiled shot at Union, can I?), is building a brand new (gorgeous via the pictures) athletics center, and regularly buses their fans to "away" home games and tournaments.[/q]

Which leads to an odd statistic if you look at attendance numbers on USCHO:

190.8% of capacity for "home" games

http://www.uscho.com/stats/attendance.php