Re: 2017 NCAA tournament selection thread
It looks like that is the bracket....fairness depends on how it is seeded....auto-bids will also mess it up if there are multiple upsets in the conference championships !
The bracket is exactly what should be followed. 4 byes to the QFs, with each QF consisting of a team with a bye against a team without a bye. The interesting question would be how this will get handled in the case of 4 West teams qualifying and 8 East teams qualifying. That is a scenario which would be interesting because of the 500 mile rule.
The committee will pair the teams regionally, based on geographic location of all participants and nal seeding. Teams located more than 500 miles from one another will only be paired if it is not possible to pair them with opponents located within 500 miles. Please refer to Appendix A on page 19 for the Division III men’s ice hockey bracket.
Seems to me it would be very tempting for the committee to do one of the following if there were 4 West teams and 8 east teams
1. Change the bracket so that 4 west teams go directly to the quarter finals. (Two QF games in which both teams had byes - not what the bracket show). All 4 first round games are played in the East to populate the other two quarter final games. This is the "East gets shafted" approach. The FF will have two east teams and two west teams, but to get to the FF, an east team has to play 2 games, and a the west teams will have played one game
2. Have two first round games in the West that feed to a quarter final game between two western teams. Give the east two first round games feeding two quarter final games against two bye teams and have the third quarter final game be between two bye teams. This is the "West gets really shafted" approach. In this scenario, there will be 1 West team and 3 East teams in the FF
If Adrian were one of the 4, the situation becomes a little more clear. Two of the non-Adrian teams play a first round game and the other one gets a bye and plays the winner. Adrian gets into a 3 team pod with teams from Western NY - either with a bye waiting for the winner between Buff State and Oswego (for example), or playing a first round game against one of those with the winner to travel for the QF game.
I haven't thought about the 500 mile rule implications for the case in which there are 5 W teams in the field. With 6, it's a slam dunk to fit the bracket as shown.
