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2026 Bracketology: The Road to the Aud

elbojpb said:
Huston's take on the exact same issue ... probably skewed by the fact that only one NCHA team reaches the tourney in this week's bracketology edition.
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It sucks because the NCHA is a gauntlet, but it's also hard to claim that SNC/Aurora/Trine deserve an at-large any more than any of the other dime a dozen teams with mid-single digit loss totals.
 
First off, let me introduce myself. I've been doing bracketology and RPI/SOS/etc. calculations for various D2 sports for several years. Since D2 sports are moving to NPI this fall, I took some time a few months ago to learn how it works and how to calculate it. I'm here because I saw there was controversy surrounding the D3 hockey NPI. So I'm not a D3 hockey fan, just someone who's interested in the NPI.

A few things that I think need to be clarified:

The 25/75 weighting of winning percentage and SOS is misleading, as there is no time when a team's overall winning percentage and SOS are combined in that way. The NPI doesn't even output an SOS figure; that's created after-the-fact by averaging the opponent NPI ratings (not something that ever happens within the NPI calculation).

Rather, the 25/75 W%/SOS is applied to each individual opponent, in which the SOS part is that opponent's NPI and the W% is 100 for win or 0 for a loss. This is where the quality win bonus is added in, if applicable (and it also applies to the half-win from a tie and the 1/3-win from an overtime loss in the regular season).

If you've got 9+ wins (adjusting for overtime and ties as well as home/away weighting) and the total for a win is less than your NPI, that win is discarded as long as that doesn't bring you below 9. This applies also to the win "parts" of ties and overtime games... but the loss parts are unaffected. (USCHO's weighted winning percentages, from what I can tell, account for home/away weighting and overtime, but not for excluded results.)
 
Inkblot Sports said:
First off, let me introduce myself. I've been doing bracketology and RPI/SOS/etc. calculations for various D2 sports for several years. Since D2 sports are moving to NPI this fall, I took some time a few months ago to learn how it works and how to calculate it. I'm here because I saw there was controversy surrounding the D3 hockey NPI. So I'm not a D3 hockey fan, just someone who's interested in the NPI.

A few things that I think need to be clarified:

The 25/75 weighting of winning percentage and SOS is misleading, as there is no time when a team's overall winning percentage and SOS are combined in that way. The NPI doesn't even output an SOS figure; that's created after-the-fact by averaging the opponent NPI ratings (not something that ever happens within the NPI calculation).

Rather, the 25/75 W%/SOS is applied to each individual opponent, in which the SOS part is that opponent's NPI and the W% is 100 for win or 0 for a loss. This is where the quality win bonus is added in, if applicable (and it also applies to the half-win from a tie and the 1/3-win from an overtime loss in the regular season).

If you've got 9+ wins (adjusting for overtime and ties as well as home/away weighting) and the total for a win is less than your NPI, that win is discarded as long as that doesn't bring you below 9. This applies also to the win "parts" of ties and overtime games... but the loss parts are unaffected. (USCHO's weighted winning percentages, from what I can tell, account for home/away weighting and overtime, but not for excluded results.)
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Thanks for the clarification. The general consensus here is that the NPI does not work for hockey, D3 especially. Mostly due to the lack of east/west matchups.
 
JSicedog said:
Thanks for the clarification. The general consensus here is that the NPI does not work for hockey, D3 especially. Mostly due to the lack of east/west matchups.
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I don't think NPI cares about head-to-head or record against common opponents like pairwise did. Head-to-head and record against common opponents were the two things that led to issues in the pairwise due to lack of east/west matchups.

From what I can tell, NPI only cares about your win % and the win %/NPI of the teams you played. If we can agree on the relative importance of these items, then it shouldn't matter if you have a high win % by playing teams exclusively in the east or exclusively in the west (assuming the same SOS). The problem with NPI is that it gives way too much weight to win %.
 
Actually now that I think about it a bit more, the problem with pairwise and the lack of east/west matchups was that for teams with no head-to-head or common opponents, the sole ranking criteria was RPI (which is basically just NPI by a different name).
 
altazo said:
I firmly believe the NCHA will be a 2 bid conference after the post season tournament shakes out.
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I hope that this is true, but I think the only way that this is possible is if Adrian does not win the Harris Cup. And even Adrian's spot in the NPI is precarious because they would have at least one more loss in an at-large scenario. That said, if you made me pick between Adrian and the field, I'm taking the field.
 
altazo said:
Salve doesn’t belong in the tournament, but they do deserve a tip of the hat. That team was basically done last summer, and almost every single player was in the portal. What they have achieved this season, despite the weak schedule, is commendable.
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THIS is a really great point. I hate that Salve is being vilified a bit because of something that was completely out of their control. It’s actually a pretty cool story, albeit potentially controversial because of lack of SOS compared to other teams.
 
PrezdeJohnson09 said:
THIS is a really great point. I hate that Salve is being vilified a bit because of something that was completely out of their control. It’s actually a pretty cool story, albeit potentially controversial because of lack of SOS compared to other teams.
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Deep down I believe the coaching staff, AD or someone in the school had enough math sense to figure out this "Loophole"
 
WCHornet said:
Deep down I believe the coaching staff, AD or someone in the school had enough math sense to figure out this "Loophole"
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I don't think so. They were scrambling to fill out their schedule last minute and named their head coach 3 weeks before the season started. This wasn't some calculated play from them. This didn't become a real possibility until early January when Schultz from Geneseo called them out mid-game about that matchup having "big NPI implications and Salve doesn't even realize it" or something along those lines, and that's when DIII Hockey News started broadcasting it.
 
JSicedog said:
I don't think so. They were scrambling to fill out their schedule last minute and named their head coach 3 weeks before the season started. This wasn't some calculated play from them. This didn't become a real possibility until early January when Schultz from Geneseo called them out mid-game about that matchup having "big NPI implications and Salve doesn't even realize it" or something along those lines, and that's when DIII Hockey News started broadcasting it.
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This. There is ZERO chance Salve thought/wanted this scenario going into the season.
 
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