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

[robertearle]

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

Sorry, I'll wait for something more before I give full faith and credit to your uncertainty in the Pairwise as USCHO is calculating them.

...and any of us can look at the current Common Opponent numbers in the current women's Pairwise table and see that USCHO is still calculating them differently than how the men's will be done (when the men's Pairwise starts up).

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

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

the vast, vast majority of the 'have not' programs are in the east

While true, there are also more "have" programs out east too.

Out west you have UM, UW, UND. Out east you have Harvard, Cornell, Clarkson, BC, BU, Mercyhurst, Quinnipiac, RMU (!). So I think it's proportional both ways.

I liked your post, by the way, with the caveat that yes, the eastern teams are showing as a lower SOS -- but they're also being penalized for that lower SOS (assuming, exactly as you said, that SOS is being calculated accurately... which it's incredibly difficult to do across west/east regions because of lack of crossover).

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

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

Not anonymous; my name is Robert Earle.

Yeah I'm not anonymous either, champ.

Again, the Pairwise showed a three-way tie (with UND winning the tie due to a better RPI) UNTIL UND lost to Minn in the WCHA final. That loss ended up flipping their pair with St Lawrence to St Lawrence (because Minn was a Common Opponent), which broke the three-way tie, leaving only a tie between Northeastern and Wisconsin, which Wisconsin won due to their better RPI. But the flip of the UND-StLawrence pair only happened if the CoP was calculated the 'old way'.

We're spinning our wheels here. I don't remember it that way. And neither of us are going to be able to be proven to be right without access to the year-end PWR somehow [shakes fist angrily at the Gods that the USCHO people don't archive these kinds of things].

Again, I am a Wisconsin season ticket holder; the whole thing cost UW a trip to the NCAA tournament in favor of UND. As a UW season ticket holder, that outcome is a VERY clear recollection in my mind. And any details of how we got there that might have slipped away, I was able to refresh because I was posting on Facebook with a couple people as it was happening, and I went into my Facebook history and re-read those posts.

I don't recall anyone here on the forum having this surprise, which leads me to believe you might just be remembering it wrong, or reading the PWR wrong.

I don't know, like I said, we have no way of checking, so we might have to just move on from this argument.

...and any of us can look at the current Common Opponent numbers in the current women's Pairwise table and see that USCHO is still calculating them differently than how the men's will be done (when the men's Pairwise starts up).

Yes, which is to say, "correctly." Men's and women's calculate CoOpp differently. And for that matter, "TUC/Quality Wins."

 

[Eeyore]

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

Did they really? Other than the fact that North Dakota plays in the WCHA, what argument is there to be made that they were somehow better than Clarkson, Mercyhurst, Harvard, BU, Cornell, or BC? The only non-conference games that they played were against RIT (seriously?), Lindenwood (seriously??), and Clarkson -- who they split with.

Both Rutter and KRACH were of the opinion that, far from being sent to play the #1 team in the country, North Dakota should have been hosting a quarterfinal game. So, yes, there is a real argument that PWR got the seedings badly wrong.

 

[5mn_Major]

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

While true, there are also more "have" programs out east too.

Out west you have UM, UW, UND. Out east you have Harvard, Cornell, Clarkson, BC, BU, Mercyhurst, Quinnipiac, RMU (!). So I think it's proportional both ways.

I liked your post, by the way, with the caveat that yes, the eastern teams are showing as a lower SOS -- but they're also being penalized for that lower SOS (assuming, exactly as you said, that SOS is being calculated accurately... which it's incredibly difficult to do across west/east regions because of lack of crossover).

What is important is the percentage in the east or west that are vs. are not those top handful programs. Even in a more narrow light, the western schools you list make up almost half of all western D1 programs and over 10% of all western schools happen to be a particularly good gopher team.

Again, nobody knows for sure whether the PWR appropriately looks at SOS. The reason this whole thing is an issue is that an 8 team playoff doesn't allow women's teams to decide it on the ice.

 

[Eeyore]

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

Again, I could be wrong, but as memory serves it showed a 3-way-tie for 8th, with a pretty solid consensus here on the forum of how the committee was going to break the tie.

I'm pretty sure that the issue is that there was not actually a tie for the #8 spot if you calculate PWR correctly, North Dakota won both comparisons with the teams that were shown as tied with them on the USCHO page.

 

[Eeyore]

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

Again, nobody knows for sure whether the PWR appropriately looks at SOS. The reason this whole thing is an issue is that an 8 team playoff doesn't allow women's teams to decide it on the ice.

We know for sure that PWR does not look at SOS appropriately. It's pretty easy to demonstrate this. Among other things that's why they have to use ad hoc adjustments, such as dropping any game that a team wins but would lower its RPI from the calculation.

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

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

Both Rutter and KRACH were of the opinion that, far from being sent to play the #1 team in the country, North Dakota should have been hosting a quarterfinal game. So, yes, there is a real argument that PWR got the seedings badly wrong.

So we assume that KRACH is right because it has the western team higher?

I'm pretty sure that the issue is that there was not actually a tie for the #8 spot if you calculate PWR correctly, North Dakota won both comparisons with the teams that were shown as tied with them on the USCHO page.

I somehow managed to find the old thread despite the fact that they drop off the TUC Cliff after 3 months (HA! That's a joke everyone can enjoy) and looks like Earle was mostly right and I was mostly wrong.

Dave's post here pretty well sums it up. Part of the problem is that the women's committee has a bit more leeway in how they apply the criteria.

 

[robertearle]

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

Yeah I'm not anonymous either, champ."

I guess it was the 'TonyTheTiger' alias you use that fooled me, instead of noticing the "Grant Salzano, hockey writer" footer on your posts.

So, great! You're a hockey journalist! You can do some reporting for us.

Instead of citing 'unnamed sources' and 'those in the know' or whatever, you can actually report to us "I contacted such-and-such at the NCAA for clarification, and he told me that...", etc.

So when you assure me that "those in the know" tell you the CoP change doesn't apply to the women, what is that based on? Just your opinion? A document that you've seen and read, and can point us to? A conversation/interview with someone from the NCAA, or a coach, or an AD, or...?

I'm not looking for an argument, and I'm not looking for snark. I'm looking for information. I want to know that when I spend time looking at the women's Pairwise table, I'm not wasting my time, because the rules under which it is being built doesn't match that which will be used by the NCAA when tournament time comes.

Thanks in advance for any time you spend, or have spent, looking into this for us.

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

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

Having said all that -- As an aside, I really hate subjectivity and wish that the women's side was more transparent and set in stone like the men's side is. Regardless of how much or how little whichever system is chosen is flawed.

 

[robertearle]

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

Sorry, make that 'the TUC' change (or maybe I mean both the TUC and Cop changes.)

 

[ARM]

Well then maybe I missed the threads then; could you point me in the direction of here people have proposed a better system than the PWR?

That's what KRACH is, as well as Rutter's Rankings. LakersFan and dave1381, among others, have contributed to a number of high-level discussions over the years talking about the flaws of PWR in general and RPI in particular. If you haven't read/remembered any of them fine, but don't get up on a soapbox and say nobody has proposed anything better. You just haven't cared enough to read them. Many are still there if you'd like to go hunting in any thread discussing Rutter's Rankings, the Polls, or NCAA tournament fields.

I'd prefer that people bring some level of objectivity to these discussions. There has been strength in the West to date, so the flaws of the PWR have hurt the West more than the East. Going forward, that may not always be the case and some deserving team like BC could be left at home because the PWR is ill-equipped to determine which eight teams belong. I don't think that has happened to Minnesota over the years, but North Dakota has definitely gotten the short end of the stick on more than one occasion. That's why fans of some of these teams have "ire" that has a basis in history, whereas yours seems to be derived from having to read complaints, when you've done a rather poor job of reading or paying attention in the first place. I'll give you another chance, but you've got to try more than you have done so far if you want to be accepted as a reasonable voice in a discussion.

 

[ARM]

Having said all that -- As an aside, I really hate subjectivity and wish that the women's side was more transparent and set in stone like the men's side is. Regardless of how much or how little whichever system is chosen is flawed.

I think that it is; it's just a different stone, and not all of the etchings in the stone have been made available to the general public.

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

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

You're a hockey journalist!

Let's not get carried away

So when you assure me that "those in the know" tell you the CoP change doesn't apply to the women, what is that based on? Just your opinion? A document that you've seen and read, and can point us to? A conversation/interview with someone from the NCAA, or a coach, or an AD, or...?

Well I'm referring to the TUC component, not common opponents -- the men's side dropped TUC entirely but the women's didn't. (((EDIT: Ah you corrected that nevermind)))

I'm not looking for an argument, and I'm not looking for snark. I'm looking for information. I want to know that when I spend time looking at the women's Pairwise table, I'm not wasting my time, because the rules under which it is being built doesn't match that which will be used by the NCAA when tournament time comes.

Heh, well, as that old thread shows... USCHO does its best to 'approximate' what the committee is going to do, and as for wasting your time, well, they do have a bit of subjectivity.

As for how I know that the women's committee is still using TUC in its selection criteria -- earlier this year I was able to line up an interview with Coach Crowley (here) and one of my questions for her was about whether there was any change to the women's selection criteria like the men's, whether she knew of any changes coming down the line, and whether she had any changes she'd like to see. That question and a few others were cut from the article in the interest of keeping it to a readable length, but the gist of her answer was "no, that was just on the men's side, I haven't heard any suggestions of changes in the future, I don't have much of a problem with the PWR."

To that point:

--1) I'm going off of memory on that but should have the audio archived somewhere; I'll try and dig it out during lunch.

--2) After NoDak's coach and MLam were pretty much bawling their eyes out exactly as you described because they thought their season and career was over (I found video of the presser here) I'm a little more concerned that maybe no one has a goddamn clue what goes on with the committee. But dropping TUC entirely as a component is, I think, an actual definition change in the qualification, more so than last year with just the coach not thinking about how the committee might put more weight on some things than others.

--3) Perhaps calling her a 'source' was me being a bit more mysterious than I intended.

 

[Eeyore]

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

So we assume that KRACH is right because it has the western team higher?

No. We assume that KRACH is almost always going to closer to being correct because for mathematical reasons we've all discussed, and you've agreed with when you're not feeling like an especially big ***, we know that it does a better job of calculating strength of schedule.

And that's why you're coming off as ridiculous in this debate: we know that you understand all of this and are really just playacting.

 

[robertearle]

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

As for how I know that the women's committee is still using TUC in its selection criteria

Thanks for the info, Grant.

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

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

That's what KRACH is, as well as Rutter's Rankings. LakersFan and dave1381, among others, have contributed to a number of high-level discussions over the years talking about the flaws of PWR in general and RPI in particular. If you haven't read/remembered any of them fine, but don't get up on a soapbox and say nobody has proposed anything better. You just haven't cared enough to read them. Many are still there if you'd like to go hunting in any thread discussing Rutter's Rankings, the Polls, or NCAA tournament fields.

Hey if people want to just use KRACH to determine the field, fine, I'm all aboard that train. The more math the better. But my frustration comes from where it appears that people want to give North Dakota (as the obvious example) a leg up because 'hey, they must be stronger, they're in the WCHA and have to play Minnesota.'

That's why fans of some of these teams have "ire" that has a basis in history, whereas yours seems to be derived from having to read complaints

Fair enough. I'm just of the opinion that North Dakota doesn't have much of an argument to say 'we should have been ranked higher than x y and z" last year based on the fact that there are so few data points between the two regions and their biggest out of conference series was a split with Clarkson.

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

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

No. We assume that KRACH is almost always going to closer to being correct because for mathematical reasons we've all discussed, and you've agreed with when you're not feeling like an especially big ***, we know that it does a better job of calculating strength of schedule.

And that's why you're coming off as ridiculous in this debate: we know that you understand all of this and are really just playacting.

Like I said to ARM, I much prefer KRACH too. So I guess every year the argument that comes up is "I don't like how the PWR ranked X and Y because KRACH ranked them differently." Which, I mean, that's fine.

I'm not playacting -- let me put this another way: If Northeastern was the team last year that was 4th (or whatever) in KRACH and 8th in PWR, I don't think we hear the same frustration coming out of Minnesota about playing the Huskies. Not because they played North Dakota 5 times already but because I think it's perceived that the eastern teams are just inherently weaker.

Does that clarify where I'm coming from?

 

[Watson Rink]

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

like I said earlier this year, you people out east will try anything and everything to stack the deck to try to win the NCAA tourney except for one thing:

improve

actually, it probably isn't so much an east/west thing, it's more of a Canadians out east thing

Now that this thread has rehashed yet again the traditional east vs. west brouhaha, I'm curious why people haven't picked up on the Canada vs USA gauntlet thrown down by the above-quoted post. (do we have an emoticon for ducking while brickbats begin to fly?)

Seriously, is an argument being made that eastern schools have too many Canadian players compared to western schools? I know there's a marked (and perhaps natural) difference in Canadian roster-peopling between some eastern teams near the Canadian border (e.g. Clarkson, Cornell) and some eastern teams in balmier climates (e.g. BC and Harvard).....are there differences among western schools too or is the WCHA uniformly all-American? And is an argument being made that the presence of Canadian scholar-athletes is somehow unfair, or a Bad Thing in any way? If so, in what way?

Or am I entirely missing the point of the above-quoted post?

 

[ARM]

I'm just of the opinion that North Dakota doesn't have much of an argument to say 'we should have been ranked higher than x y and z" last year based on the fact that there are so few data points between the two regions and their biggest out of conference series was a split with Clarkson.

That's fair. But NoDak also did go 3-0-1 against UMD, a team that both BC and BU were .500 against. UND struggled against UM and UW, and that's why it was in a mess as far as the PWR goes.