NCAA Tourney Team Selection Options

[IronRange]

I think the committee has some really tough choices for the last at large spot. End of the day you can float all the theories you want but it will be subjective and leave three programs upset. I’m not concerned about the whole QU discussion. Their track record historically is abysmal. Whoever they draw will devour them. Sioux should get the Saints which is a bye.

Anyone looking past St Lawrence and Zetterquest, might want to look again. And to say the track record of QU is abysmal, is just uninformed. Compare their last 5 years to anyone in the B10 or HE.

[J.D.]

Looks like I didn't end up too far from what FS23 had

[J.D.]

By process of elimination in Loveland

1. Minnesota or Mankato
2. SCSU
3. Michigan
4. LSSU/Denver/Omaha

[J.D.]

And would it be easier to keep Mankato as a 1 seed and have one of the East regionals as:

1. Minnesota or Mankato
2. UMass
3. QU
4. HE#4, AH#2, LSSU

1. BC
2. Wisconsin
3. BU
4. AIC

[J.D.]

Bemidji still ahead of LSSU in KRACH so maybe LSSU gets a 4 seed.

[J.D.]

If they want to try and protect UND as overall #1 and not punish Mankato at the same time as possibly the top #2, I could see Fargo as:

1. UND
2. UMD
3. Bemidji
4. SLU

UND and UMD only played twice all year and not since December. Sure, SLU has to fly but at this point we don't know just how much of a factor it will be.

[J.D.]

Yep, a million options. UMass could be a 1 seed for all we know. We're talking about Bemidji as a 4 but do they fudge it and put them and LSSU as 3s so UND can play SLU, by far the worst team in the field.

Then how do they pick the last bubble teams? Do they use a certain metric to sort teams within a conference to help with that? Do they throw up their hands and just add Canisius and BG as a way to avoid a tough decision? We truly have no idea.

[defkit]

I'm 99% sure of this, but the NCAA does not mandate that the AQ goes to the tournament winner - that's determined by each conference.

As an aside, I really don't think this season is a reasonable barometer for judgment on anything. Be it the AQ, PWR vs. KRACH vs. eye test, or anything else. We should let the season play out as it does and not make knee-jerk changes as a result.

Agreed. I didn't follow the other conferences much, but two things come to mind. St. Lawrence only had to win two games (or was it one?) to win the tourney. That wouldn't happen in a normal year. Second, Lowell would not have been a 7 seed in a normal year. They would have had more games to move up the standings before the tournament started. They clearly found their game in the "second half".

[Numbers]

As far as the bracket, like everyone else says, it's a conundrum. I like FS23's bracket. What's hard is something like this:
1- What do you really do with Quinnipiac? If this were a normal year, the PWR wouldn't give them leeway for their leading scorer being injured - results would be results. But, this isn't a normal year.
2- Realistically, of the top 8 teams, only 2 are from the East - BC and UMass. That means right away, to fill the bracket, you have 2 flights to the eastern sites, and 2 flights to Loveland. That's not a nice start if you are trying to save on travel.
3- To make things worse, it's possible that the #8 team is actually Michigan, and they have to fly anywhere.
4- Finally, after you put in NoDak, Minn, BC, MSUM, Wisc, Mass, SCSU, Mich, UMD, BU and LSSU - all of whom are safe, and then put in AIC and StL at the bottom, you have 3 spots left. The last #3 and the top 2 #4s. And, you are looking at this collection of teams:
QU (probably in, but are the #12, or are they a #4 seed), BSU, Prov (or some other HEA#4), NCHC#4 (Den or Omaha). And, you only have room for 3 of them. Since you aren't going to take 5 from either HEA or NCHC, the committee first has to decide between Prov/Conn/Lowell and then decide between Den/Omaha. That's really hard.
Then they have to leave one of them out. That's hard, too.

In a normal year, I think it would be likely that WCHA would be looking at 2 bids, so BSU might be out. This year, where the conferences were insulated, and the committee wants to save flights, and there is a regional less than 100 miles from Bemidji......???

In a normal year, both Omaha and Denver would have good results in non conference games, and since Denver beat Omaha in the tournament, and has either 3-1 or 3-2 against the Mavs in H2H, Denver might be ahead. This year, there are really good arguments against both of them.

Even if Providence has a slightly better argument, there are few years in which the HEA doesn't get 4 teams, and probably fewer yet in which, combined, HEA and ECAC only get 6.

And, who you choose among those teams affects the bracket. A. Lot.

For example, if you choose NCHC#4, then you put them in Loveland, and you put Mankato there, because that's the 'bracket integrity' thing to do. And, the top2 seeds come out:
NoDak/UMD or Mich::::Minn/(Wisc or Mass or SCSU) and so on for the other 2 regions, in which separating those 3 #2 seeds is really hard.
The 3rd seeds SHOULD be that UMD and Mich play each other in Fargo. And, that would leave LSSU, BU and whoever comes out of the other discussion (QU maybe is right - as a #12 overall). This is not so bad, because someone has to fly to Loveland, and the other two sit in the Eastern Regions just fine.
The problem with this whole setup is that if the committee is either honest enough to admit that Mankato deserves a #1, or honest enough to admit that, if they are a #2, they are a high #2 and therefore shouldn't slot with NoDak, then there is no way to construct a Fargo region without flights. This is the big 'fudge factor' about which only the committee knows.
If the committee allows Mankato to Loveland, then the #4s fit easy as well. It's like FS23 said - either BSU drives west to McIntosh, turns south through the country and comes out on US 59 near Bejou, turns south again to US10 and crosses the Red River into Fargo.......or you get bracket integrity.

If the committee goes into 'saving flights' mode, then it's a mess. Here's a strange flight saving option:
Bridgeport: #3BC, #5Mass, #12QU, #15AIC
Albany: #2Minn, #8Mich, #11LSSU, #16StL
Fargo: #1NoDak, #6Wisc, #9UMD, #14BSU
Loveland: #4Mankato, #7SCSU, #10BU, #13DU
This is absolutely rotten for North Dakota, shouldn't happen, and most likely won't happen. But you could fudge a bus for Wisconsin, and then the only flights you have are Minn, Mich, and 3 teams to Loveland.

Yuck....

I won't even guess what the committee will do. Too many unknowns.

[Numbers]

Concerning the AQ. In a normal year, it's just fine. The conference tournaments can serve as a source of revenue for the conferences, and they don't mean anything unless there is a reward attached to them. In a normal year, some underdog has to go through 3 rounds of games, and usually the first and sometimes the second is 2 of 3, so it tends to limit great upsets.

I read an article on a different site about the slow progression of the PWR as a way for the committee to make decisions about the field. That article suggested that, 25 or 30 years ago, something similar to KRACH was offered to the committee, but they wanted no part of it, because it can't be easily to people. (And, that's true. Most good math and science can't be easily explained to people.) The more recent tweaks to the PWR formula have clearly been designed to make the result mimic the KRACH, and as a result, the actual formula of the PWR has gotten very complicated, so that it would be hard to explain RPI to a stranger right now. But, the concept is simply enough done. It's a good tool. Not a perfect tool. But no perfect tool really exists. Even KRACH, although mathematically correct, is imperfect when there are as few non-conference games as there are. And, we all know that the most important games for the NCAA tournament are the early season ones in which one conference plays another, because those games really set the base for the RPI (and for KRACH, too, if it were being used).

Overall, the present system is good. Much better than anything else you could do. Hockey doesn't lend itself, yet, to in game analytics in the way basketball does. There are some good metrics available, and the NHL uses them, but they are not yet understood by a large number of people, so they are not yet ready for use for choosing the NCAA field.

[brassbonanza]

Without delving into the details, doesn't this Covid season reveal how fundamentally stupid the AQ system is..?

I'm 99% sure of this, but the NCAA does not mandate that the AQ goes to the tournament winner - that's determined by each conference.

As an aside, I really don't think this season is a reasonable barometer for judgment on anything. Be it the AQ, PWR vs. KRACH vs. eye test, or anything else. We should let the season play out as it does and not make knee-jerk changes as a result.

[purpleinnebraska]

Without delving into the details, doesn't this Covid season reveal how fundamentally stupid the AQ system is..?

Agreed. In a normal year, teams play more than 20 conference games, and now we'll decide the representative through a tournament?

[J.D.]

I actually mentioned the return of Bongiovanni. I do think that's a factor. Ultimately I don't think the committee will view QU as a true bubble team despite what I think is a questionable body of work. They could still slide in as the last 2 seed or at worst a 3.

What is the best metric for comparing teams within a conference? Maybe the committee simply uses math to rank teams within a conference which would help if multiple teams from a conference are on the bubble like HE and NCHC.

[MN Magic]

We know 14 of the 16 teams. Those last two will be very difficult. I believe the committee will pick Bemidji for travel reasons to stay in Fargo. That last team is a toss up. Picking Denver with a losing record to play a #1 seed in Denver doesn't seem right. Then you have Providence or Omaha (Mike Kemp factor) as the most likely scenario for that last team in. IMO

[ICECAT1811]

Yeah, as has been stated over and over, this is a weird and crazy year for the committee.

I do think a lot of people are discounting Quinnipiac though...particularly when trying to use recent history to support it. The Bobcats are probably one of the top 8-10 programs in college hockey over the last 7-8 seasons. They've made 5 trips to the NCAA Tournament in that time frame, going 7-5 in those tournaments, advancing to the National Championship game twice. They went to the Regional Final in 2019, and were a bubble NCAA team last season, finishing 14th in the Pairwise before the season ended.

I get it. We don't like that the ECAC only had 4 teams play this season and they shouldn't get 2 NCAA bids. However, QU won about 2/3s of its games, and lost in overtime in its conference championship game (to a team it had beaten 4 times this year). I guess I'll sum up my thoughts, which I think are similar to yours: The ECAC doesn't deserve 2 bids in the NCAA Tournament this season, but QU probably deserves to be in the tournament.

QU has had this success over the past 8 years without 18 NHL draft picks on the roster like UND MN BU BC PROV WISC...and others. It’s hard to compete with the monster size schools when you have 3-4 draft picks each season..but they have..making two NCAA finals with two different rosters the past 8 seasons. Losing in today’s ECAC final was like the loss to Yale in NCAA final in 2013. They played an opponent 4+ times in one year who they’ve beaten several times. The saying goes..It’s hard to beat a team 5 times in a row. They should have not even had a conference tournament with 3 teams. The auto bid should have gone to regular season champion.

Their leading goal scorer has been out all year. What would each team that’s a lock or on the bubble look like without their leading goal scorer all year? Something committee should consider while evaluating their at large bid qualification.