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2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

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Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

Numbers said:
Thanks. I tried that, but it seems to be for the purpose of seeing conference results. We of course are more interested in PWR here. Did I miss a page there on siouxsports?
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I think SS only has the What-If calculators for the regular season. This site and College Hockey News put up pairwise calculators, but only after the opening rounds of each conference playoff are finished.

I don't think there is an ideal solution to creating both a great tournament environment AND having the system fair to all teams given the somewhat flawed system we have to select and seed the field. I wish the NCAA would stop trying to serve the two interests. I don't like the idea of trying to place the teams sort of in a strict 1-16, 2-15, 8-9 etc model, but allowing for SOME tweaking (host teams, avoiding intra conference games, "tournament atmosphere"). Either place them strictly based on their seed, or place them geographically.

We already place the #1 seeds closest to home in order of their seed. Why not do this with all 16 teams? You will likely end up having the majority of teams as close to home as possible, which would help with atmosphere and attendance.

We allow for some movement within the seeding bands. Why not just do it with all of them? You will still have a "1" seed playing a "4" seed this way. It may punish an overall #1 by having them play a team seeded higher than 16 to open the tournament, but then it may aid them later on by giving them a potentially easier team to beat to go to the FF or to win it all. And since we do the tweaking I mentioned already, we often see teams play a game against a seed that doesn't follow the strict 1-16, 8-9 model at any point during the tourney.

edited to add that I would also be in favor of re-seeding the FF in this scenario. I believe they place the field now with the assumption that all the #1 seeds advance to the FF and in that circumstance, 1 overall will play 4 and 2 will play 3. In this model, just re-seed as needed to reward the highest seeded team.
 
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Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

Numbers said:
Thanks. I tried that, but it seems to be for the purpose of seeing conference results. We of course are more interested in PWR here. Did I miss a page there on siouxsports?
Click to expand...

Nope, SiouxSports has never bothered with a PWR calculator because I've always thought Whelan had a perfectly good one. His isn't the most user-friendly thing in the world, but given that it's targeted toward a pretty sophisticated audience, I've always thought it appropriate. Instead I've tried to fill in around the edges for amateur PWR analysts with things like the RPI details, PWR details, and forecasts from the PWR simulator.

Is there something else you'd like to see that would help you with your own analysis of the PWR?
 
Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

Thanks Jim. The problem we have here is that Whelan's site is great. However, this year there are 3 games not include in the script, and it makes everything come out wrong. I sent him an email a few years ago, when I was first understanding what KRACH actually does, and he replied. But, he didn't respond to me this year when I had another question. So, I don't know how to get him to rectify it.

i should clarify. His calculator works correctly when using the "use actual game scores" button. But, the "user defined setting" or whatever he calls that, where you input your own scores, doesn't have those 3 games. Thanks again.
 
Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

JimDahl said:
Nope, SiouxSports has never bothered with a PWR calculator because I've always thought Whelan had a perfectly good one. His isn't the most user-friendly thing in the world, but given that it's targeted toward a pretty sophisticated audience, I've always thought it appropriate. Instead I've tried to fill in around the edges for amateur PWR analysts with things like the RPI details, PWR details, and forecasts from the PWR simulator.

Is there something else you'd like to see that would help you with your own analysis of the PWR?
Click to expand...

Hey Jim, if you want to go bigger talk to me... I've floated out a certain idea more than a few times... would love to make it work but its a little intensive. If you're crazy enough we could try to make it work... at least from the point of the HEA quarterfinals on out.

--Pat
 
Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

Going into this weekend, this is what I came up with:

Worcester:

1. BU
2. Merrimack
3. Union
4. Northern Michigan

Bridgeport:

1. UML
2. BC
3. Notre Dame
4. Michigan State

Green Bay:

1. Michigan
2. UMD
3. Ohio State
4. Air Force

St. Paul:

1. Ferris State
2. Minnesota
3. Maine
4. North Dakota
 
Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

Gentry, ND and Union were virtually tied...figured the committee would go with the BC/ND showdown.
 
Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

J.D. said:
Gentry, ND and Union were virtually tied...figured the committee would go with the BC/ND showdown.
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Dangit, that only works at the actual F4. The Whioux win that regional matchup.
 
Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

MCgrad07 said:
Personally I like the tournament as single eliminaton at "neutral sites". When looking at regionals since the tournament went to its current format it seems like Worcester and Manchester should rotate hosting the Northeast, Albany and Bridgeport the East, Grand Rapids and Green Bay the Midwest and St. Paul and somewhere else there was no one clear. I would keep those as the regional sites and dump the "host school tags" a one seed should not get punished because a conference school is an at large 4 seed and a host i.e. BC last year going to St Louis and UNH staying at home despite being the 13 seed overall
Click to expand...

I agree completely. I know they think this helps with attendance, but I think integrity of the bracket should be priority.

For the West or Midwest regional, how about the Palace in Auburn Hills or All-State Arena or Sears Center in Chicago?
 
Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

hattrick16 said:
I agree completely. I know they think this helps with attendance, but I think integrity of the bracket should be priority.

For the West or Midwest regional, how about the Palace in Auburn Hills or All-State Arena or Sears Center in Chicago?
Click to expand...

The Palace Experiment with hockey has been confined to the occasional one game- last time it was Michigan/Notre Dame there in 2008. The ice and boards were awful. If the IHL was still around and the Vipers still played there (where there was consistent care and intelligence) then it may be an option. You still have to put up temporary ice and boards over a hardwood surface. The Pistons never liked it, nor did Davidson. No idea if the new owner, Tom Gores, even has an idea of what hockey is (I'm being sarcastic, he's an MSU grad) let alone want an event placed there. I also didn't like the sightlines there, too far from the ice. But, it is a thought and it would be close to both Michigan and MSU to host.

I'd prefer Grand Rapids, though. They do a good job there.
 
Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

davyd83 said:
The shootouts mean nothing to the NCAA standings and PairWise Rankings. In the big picture, they are irrelevent.
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*facepalm* Whoa. Stop. This isn't about the PWR.

The What-If calculator available on SiouxSports is only used to predict the final positioning for each conference. It has NO feature to take your "what-if" for each conference and generate a PWR ranking from that.

When the CCHA first adopted the three point system, they tried to shoe-horn the points into their "What-If" calculations. But since their code was designed to check, balance, and auto-fill against the traditional point systems, the wacky "5 points for one team, one point for the other" doesn't allow the same check and balance. People using the "What-If" calculator needed to be aware that when they selected (for example) Northern Michigan to tie against Bowling Green, they needed to guess who wins the shootout and correctly select both teams guessed points.

Currently, if you select "Michigan tech to tie against Nebraska Omaha," it automatically fills the Nebraska Omaha selection with a tie. http://siouxsports.com/hockey/whatif/
 
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Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

Looks like the USCHO bracketologist doesn't think the committee would make the BC/ND showdown happen in Bridgeport. He went with the alternative of BC/Union in Bridgeport and Merrimack/ND in Worcester.
 
Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

Bakunin said:
Well, if you want the first two rounds to take two weekends instead of one, you have teams 1-8 host best-of-threes on their home rinks with the winners advancing to a couple of single-elimination regionals. The downside of this is it would eliminate that off weekend between regionals and the Frozen Four. However, the atmosphere would certainly be better - at least for the first round (whether or not we want to reward teams with home ice using the flawed pairwise is another matter entirely).
Click to expand...

You lose TV coverage of the full tournament. That's one advantage to the current format.
 
Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

Code: 
[B]Bridgeport	Worcester	St. Paul	Green Bay[/B]
Boston U	Lowell		Ferris State 	Boston College
Michigan	Denver		Minnesota	Minn-Duluth
Union		Merrimack	Maine		Mich State
Notre Dame	AHA Champ	North Dakota	Northern Mich
 
Re: 2012 NCAA Tournament: Bracketology

Friday, 2/10 nine of the twenty top-ranked teams including the top four and seven of the top ten lost to lower-ranked or unranked teams. At this time assigning who will oppose who in the playoffs, let alone where, looks to be premature.
 
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