2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

[Eeyore]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

shame if we'll never know who was right on Quinnipiac vs. RMU

I'll live with it. I still think Quinnipiac should be in over Mercyhurst but it's close enough and the criteria fall the right way that it isn't egregiously bad, just mildly annoying.

 

[D2D]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

It does, but it takes away all questions about the bracket. You can have a clean bracket with no conference match ups and nobody gets "screwed".

"Can", yes.
"Will", still very possible.

 

[vicb]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

BU wins:

Minny - BU
Cornell - Mercy-RM-Quinny
Clarkson - BC
Wisconsin - Hahvad



$$$$$$$$$ for Travel. Maybe the teams can eat a McDonalds to help offset the plane tickets. Or Hahvad certainly has an endowment that could help offset some of the $$. This one to me looks like Cornell gets an advantage Minny should have but last year I think they could not beat Mercyhurst so maybe not.

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Minny - BU
Cornell - Mercy-RM-Quinny
Clarkson - BC
Wisconsin - Hahvad

Yeah I think that's what we'll have. I do not envy the committee on choosing that Cornell opponent though. Yikes.

 

[FireKnight]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

I'll live with it. I still think Quinnipiac should be in over Mercyhurst but it's close enough and the criteria fall the right way that it isn't egregiously bad, just mildly annoying.

It's really hard to reward a team that got blasted in their conference semis in favor of a team that went to 2 OT in their conference final. Honestly, if I was going to put one team in the #7 seed that didn't deserve it by the criteria, it'd be North Dakota, but they didn't earn it either.

 

[dave1381]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Yeah, after all the discussion, I see no reason to think the committee will rank #1 to #7 any differently from what's in the USCHO PWR right now, and the perfect bracket integrity also minimizes travel and avoids intraconference matchups. I don't anticipate any surprises - Mercyhurst last team in.

Committee lucks out and will say everything works just fine! Super.

 

[dave1381]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

It's really hard to reward a team that got blasted in their conference semis in favor of a team that went to 2 OT in their conference final. Honestly, if I was going to put one team in the #7 seed that didn't deserve it by the criteria, it'd be North Dakota, but they didn't earn it either.

Sure they did. They beat Wisconsin twice and Minnesota once. That's earning it. The current criteria give UND zero credit for that (when combined with the losses to those teams). Even then, UND is still really close to the bubble teams in the current criteria.

 

[FireKnight]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Yeah, after all the discussion, I see no reason to think the committee will rank #1 to #7 any differently from what's in the USCHO PWR right now, and the perfect bracket integrity also minimizes travel and avoids intraconference matchups. I don't anticipate any surprises - Mercyhurst last team in.

Committee lucks out and will say everything works just fine! Super.

The discussion is great though. Most of us Clarkson fans are relatively new to the NCAA Women's game, as our program is still in its infancy. It's nice to read about what's going on with the other national programs here as we discuss this whole PWR thing.

 

[Eeyore]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

It's really hard to reward a team that got blasted in their conference semis in favor of a team that went to 2 OT in their conference final. Honestly, if I was going to put one team in the #7 seed that didn't deserve it by the criteria, it'd be North Dakota, but they didn't earn it either.

That would certainly be consistent with the committee's inability to pay attention to who a team is actually playing against.

 

[Eeyore]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Sure they did. They beat Wisconsin twice and Minnesota once. That's earning it. The current criteria give UND zero credit for that (when combined with the losses to those teams). Even then, UND is still really close to the bubble teams in the current criteria.

Actually, I'd bet that UND does benefit from the losses to Minnesota. The flip side of the wins against bad teams that hurt your RPI are the losses against good teams that help it, except that they don't toss out the helpful losses like they do the penalizing wins.

 

[robertearle]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

A round of applause for Grant, aka TonyTheTiger. His predictor numbers are remarkably close to the actual numbers. Well done.

 

[FireKnight]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Actually, I'd bet that UND does benefit from the losses to Minnesota. The flip side of the wins against bad teams that hurt your RPI are the losses against good teams that help it, except that they don't toss out the helpful losses like they do the penalizing wins.

Even if you throw out the TUC criteria, which certainly hurts UND, as their TUC are definitely more difficult than M'Hurst or the others, M'Hurst still holds a significant RPI advantage over UND and I don't think that can be overlooked.

We know Minny is far and above the #1 team in the country, but the question becomes how do we grade the Wisconsin win or losses. It's really hard to do, given that the Badgers have only played 2 eastern teams all year, both at home. They beat BU handily but only managed a 1 goal decision against a mediocre Northeastern team. Mercyhurst only played 3 games against western schools, a win and loss against Mankato (which UND had trouble with) and an OT loss to OSU (which UND also had trouble with).

My gut tells me that UND is the better team, but sometimes the blind comparison is the best. In this case, I think there's no compelling reason to put the Fighting Sioux in the tournament.

 

[vicb]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Anyone think that the Committee will flip BU and Mercy-RM-QU

Minny - Mercy-RM-Qu
Cornell - BU
Clarkson - BC
Wisconsin - Hahvad


Shorter plane trip but a longer bus trip.

 

[robertearle]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

We know Minny is far and above the #1 team in the country, but the question becomes how do we grade the Wisconsin win or losses. It's really hard to do, given that the Badgers have only played 2 eastern teams all year, both at home. They beat BU handily but only managed a 1 goal decision against a mediocre Northeastern team.

I don't remember if Wisconsin had 'final change' - I think they did - but the Northeastern and BU games were played in Vail, CO, not in Madison.

 

[FireKnight]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

I don't remember if Wisconsin had 'final change' - I think they did - but the Northeastern and BU games were played in Vail, CO, not in Madison.

I saw that after I typed it, my apologies.

 

[ARM]

I think the model I described matches up pretty well with what the committee has done since 2008. Note that previously they didn't officially use the new common opponents criterion. I couldn't tell the difference between when the committee was downweighting the old criterion and using the new one, but ARM confirmed that up until this year the committee had been downweighting the old criterion (or so they say).

It wasn't that they were down weighting the old criterion, but rather than the RPI difference in the case in question was so huge that they didn't really get to a point of worrying about nickel/dime differences in things like COP. If a team isn't even in shouting distance in RPI, then it had better have something pretty convincing going for it, is what I took away from what I was told, and I don't consider a one-or-two game swing in COp out of a dozen games to be that convincing.

 

[robertearle]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

I saw that after I typed it, my apologies.

(It was a four team sort-of 'holiday tournament', with St Cloud as the 4th team. Now that we know the NCAA is doing COPs the 'new' way, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see more of that kind of thing. You play one non-conf team and beat them twice, you get 1.00 vs one team. But you play two teams once and beat both, you get 1.00 vs each of them. Don't know if that's what Mark Johnson had in mind when he scheduled it all, but it wouldn't surprise me...)

 

[CrazyDave]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Anyone think that the Committee will flip BU and Mercy-RM-QU

Minny - Mercy-RM-Qu
Cornell - BU
Clarkson - BC
Wisconsin - Hahvad


Shorter plane trip but a longer bus trip.

No, don't agree. BU wouldn't even be in if not for their win today; I can't see them going anywhere but Minneapolis. And assuming Mercyhurst is the pick (based on the estimated Pairwise rankings I've seen), that's not all that long bus trip to Ithaca.

 

[FireKnight]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

(It was a four team sort-of 'holiday tournament', with St Cloud as the 4th team. Now that we know the NCAA is doing COPs the 'new' way, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see more of that kind of thing. You play one non-conf team and beat them twice, you get 1.00 vs one team. But you play two teams once and beat both, you get 1.00 vs each of them. Don't know if that's what Mark Johnson had in mind when he scheduled it all, but it wouldn't surprise me...)

I'd like to see more scheduling like that, not just in tournaments but in regular season non-conference. Back when I was an undergrad, we used to host and travel with our travel partner, even in non-conference instead of 2 games against the same opponent. That was on the men's side, but the same premise holds. We'd go with SLU and visit BU/BC, Providence/Northeastern, BGSU/Ohio State, etc. I know it's tougher out west because there's a lot more space between teams, but it would be nice if they had more variety in scheduling so we could gauge just how good our teams are on a national scale.

 

[dave1381]

Re: 2013-2014 Women's D-I PairWise Contentions and Affirmations

Even if you throw out the TUC criteria, which certainly hurts UND, as their TUC are definitely more difficult than M'Hurst or the others, M'Hurst still holds a significant RPI advantage over UND and I don't think that can be overlooked.

We know Minny is far and above the #1 team in the country, but the question becomes how do we grade the Wisconsin win or losses. It's really hard to do, given that the Badgers have only played 2 eastern teams all year, both at home. They beat BU handily but only managed a 1 goal decision against a mediocre Northeastern team. Mercyhurst only played 3 games against western schools, a win and loss against Mankato (which UND had trouble with) and an OT loss to OSU (which UND also had trouble with).

My gut tells me that UND is the better team, but sometimes the blind comparison is the best. In this case, I think there's no compelling reason to put the Fighting Sioux in the tournament.

Wisconsin lost just once to someone other than UND and Minnesota, and the WCHA overall did just fine. The reason the WCHA teams dominate all the statistical computer rankings other than RPI doesn't come out of nowhere, even if it doesn't come from Wisconsin beating top eastern teams head-to-head. And the WCHA continues to back up that kind of ranking performance with NCAA performance, so I see no reason to doubt the rankings. So I think there are plenty of compelling reasons to put UND tournament, though the committee isn't permitted to use any of them.