NCAA Tourney Team Selection Options

[J.D.]

If Bobby Mo gets an at large on the men's side, that is wrong and BC should absolutely be the team that gets to prove that!

[J.D.]

Not allowed to insert a smiley emoji

[John J. MacInnes]

If you're looking for some chaos, look to the women's bracket. The easiest thing for the committee should be evaluating teams within a conference. Yet nobody seems to know why UMD was picked and Minnesota was left out. And then you see that the UMD athletic director was on the committee...

I've never seen a committee where a member who is affiliated with a school under consideration isn't recused from discussing their own school. So unless you're implying that some other under-the-table deal was made for the support of another school in exchange, this road doesn't lead very far.

[MagnessMan]

Robert Morris and Omaha both have reps on the men’s committee. The rest of the reps are either from really bad teams or else teams that aren’t playing. So congrats to RMU and UNO for their upcoming at large bids?

UNO deserves the bid but yet isn’t a lock in my opinion.

[MagnessMan]

If Bobby Mo gets an at large on the men's side, that is wrong and BC should absolutely be the team that gets to prove that!

Just like St. Cloud did in 2019?!

[J.D.]

As I said, I wasn't allowed to put a smiley emoji in. But either way, Robert Morris should not get an at large bid.

[John J. MacInnes]

Back in the 70s with NMU basketball, we played a game at Edinboro State in NW Pennsylvania. The trip was a nightmare. We flew from Marquette to Escanaba, to Green Bay, to Milwaukee, to Chicago, to Pittsburg, to Erie then bused to Edinboro. It took us a full day. Keeping this flight disaster in mind, I prematurely thought flying from Sault Ste Marie to Fargo would have similar problems, and perhaps busing might be just as fast. After checking, I learned that Delta flies directly from the Soo to MSP. It takes 5 hours and 13 minutes over and 3 hours and 23 minutes back (Soo to Fargo with just one plane change each way).

Although the 11-hour 30-minute 655-mile non-interstate bus trip doesn't sound too inviting, it certainly would be tolerable for the opportunity to play in the national tournament.

No team in the NCAA tournament flies commercial. The NCAA has a contract with multiple charter airlines and each team goes direct.

[SJHovey]

I see Adam Wodon over at CHN wrote a piece this weekend either speculating or advocating (with Adam you can never really tell) that the Committee will go with 9 western teams and 7 eastern teams, but absolutely load up the western regionals. Basically send one of the #1 seeds from out west to Albany, but leave the other 7 eastern teams out there. He got brackets that looked like UND v. BG and MN v. SCSU in Fargo, and MSU-M v. Omaha and Michigan v. UMD in Loveland.

This is exactly the sort of thing that I speculated on earlier, and is one of my fears. Now, Adam has a history of getting these things wrong, so I can take some comfort in that, but such an arrangement would be unfortunate for the game. I don't know why there is the fear of air travel, since there are a lot of studies that suggest there is little or no spread of Covid on an airplane.

Adam does trot out the "who can really say" argument, again, regarding comparisons between teams and conferences. I think that is one of the stupidest arguments that is being made. I can say. Anyone with a functioning brain can say. Anyone who has followed college hockey for longer than a couple of months can say.

This idea that somehow Covid spread around a bunch of pixie dust and suddenly the AHA or WCHA is the best conference, with the top teams, is just silly. It would be like someone saying "hey, North Dakota is really good in football this year, undefeated. They should probably be considered for a spot in the four team football playoff."

[Andrew J Carter]

No team in the NCAA tournament flies commercial. The NCAA has a contract with multiple charter airlines and each team goes direct.

Thanks for the clarification, John.

[purpleinnebraska]

I see Adam Wodon over at CHN wrote a piece this weekend either speculating or advocating (with Adam you can never really tell) that the Committee will go with 9 western teams and 7 eastern teams, but absolutely load up the western regionals. Basically send one of the #1 seeds from out west to Albany, but leave the other 7 eastern teams out there. He got brackets that looked like UND v. BG and MN v. SCSU in Fargo, and MSU-M v. Omaha and Michigan v. UMD in Loveland.

This is exactly the sort of thing that I speculated on earlier, and is one of my fears. Now, Adam has a history of getting these things wrong, so I can take some comfort in that, but such an arrangement would be unfortunate for the game. I don't know why there is the fear of air travel, since there are a lot of studies that suggest there is little or no spread of Covid on an airplane.

Adam does trot out the "who can really say" argument, again, regarding comparisons between teams and conferences. I think that is one of the stupidest arguments that is being made. I can say. Anyone with a functioning brain can say. Anyone who has followed college hockey for longer than a couple of months can say.

This idea that somehow Covid spread around a bunch of pixie dust and suddenly the AHA or WCHA is the best conference, with the top teams, is just silly. It would be like someone saying "hey, North Dakota is really good in football this year, undefeated. They should probably be considered for a spot in the four team football playoff."

But the point isn't which conference is better. No one disputes that the NCHC is better, top to bottom, than the WCHA. But that's not the issue. The issue comes down to individual teams, and without nonconference games, there's really no objective way to say specifically that Omaha is better than BGSU, for instance.

[John J. MacInnes]

The frustrating thing is that the NCAA had a chance to make this better.

If anyone with prescience noticed that there were going to be more tournament worthy teams in the West and they really wanted to eliminate travel, they blew it when they got the gift of Manchester cancelling their host site. But instead of finding a more central location, they buried the replacement site way up in the northeast again in Albany. If that site was moved to somewhere in Ohio, you're much closer to a lot more teams and have better options.

[J.D.]

I see Adam Wodon over at CHN wrote a piece this weekend either speculating or advocating (with Adam you can never really tell) that the Committee will go with 9 western teams and 7 eastern teams, but absolutely load up the western regionals. Basically send one of the #1 seeds from out west to Albany, but leave the other 7 eastern teams out there. He got brackets that looked like UND v. BG and MN v. SCSU in Fargo, and MSU-M v. Omaha and Michigan v. UMD in Loveland.

This is exactly the sort of thing that I speculated on earlier, and is one of my fears. Now, Adam has a history of getting these things wrong, so I can take some comfort in that, but such an arrangement would be unfortunate for the game. I don't know why there is the fear of air travel, since there are a lot of studies that suggest there is little or no spread of Covid on an airplane.

Adam does trot out the "who can really say" argument, again, regarding comparisons between teams and conferences. I think that is one of the stupidest arguments that is being made. I can say. Anyone with a functioning brain can say. Anyone who has followed college hockey for longer than a couple of months can say.

This idea that somehow Covid spread around a bunch of pixie dust and suddenly the AHA or WCHA is the best conference, with the top teams, is just silly. It would be like someone saying "hey, North Dakota is really good in football this year, undefeated. They should probably be considered for a spot in the four team football playoff."

They might say it's a fear of travel due to COVID but with limited fans at regionals/FF...revenue is down. So limiting flights is limiting costs.

Agree on the conference evaluation. Anyone saying RMU or Army should get an at large can GTFO. If anything, the lack of PWR will only help a conference like the WCHA this year. I think there's a legit shot they get 3 in. I bet in a PWR year, Notre Dame would be higher ranked than they are being thought of right now. Same for the Hockey East cluster of UConn/PC/NU.

[J.D.]

The frustrating thing is that the NCAA had a chance to make this better.

If anyone with prescience noticed that there were going to be more tournament worthy teams in the West and they really wanted to eliminate travel, they blew it when they got the gift of Manchester cancelling their host site. But instead of finding a more central location, they buried the replacement site way up in the northeast again in Albany. If that site was moved to somewhere in Ohio, you're much closer to a lot more teams and have better options.

Do we know who was even interested/capable of taking that regional on short notice? A 9-7 edge for western teams isn't a big enough swing to move away from two eastern sites. The bigger limiting travel mistake is Loveland. Now I have no idea if anyone else would be interested in taking the regional but they should have tried to push Loveland aside for a year.

[J.D.]

Only seeing now that Clarkson has called it a season...

[J.D.]

Kinda ridiculous that the winner of Colgate-SLU will now play for an auto bid but whatever. Go Quinnipiac.