Re: B1G Hockey: The Countdown Begins
Love how you cherry picked a one year time frame here and acted like this is typical.
Well, looking at the NCAA Tournament since 2003 (when it went to 16 teams, and yes, this is purely an arbitrary selection on my part), we get the following numbers:
NCAA Participants:
WCHA - 44 (~42%, including 9 of the 12 teams currently in the conference (Bemidji went as a member of the CHA))
CCHA - 38 (~32%, including 9 of the 11 teams currently in the conference (10/12 if you include Omaha from '03-'10))
Head to Head:
WCHA holds a 14-9 advantage
Frozen Fours:
WCHA - 15
CCHA - 9
Frozen Four Head to Head:
WCHA holds a 3-1 advantage
National Championship Game Participants:
WCHA - 7
CCHA - 5
National Champions:
WCHA - 5
CCHA - 1
What does this tell us?
The two conferences have been fairly equal in getting teams to the NCAA Tournament. The conferences have also had strong success getting their teams to the title game (7/44 for the WCHA (~16%) and 5/38 for the CCHA (~13%)). The biggest discrepancy that I see is that the WCHA has been significantly better at winning the whole thing (50% of the time) compared to the WCHA (10% of the time).
Again, this is looking at data from the last 10 years. CCHA fans could rightly look at the last 4 years (2009-present) and point to the fact that they have sent more teams to the NCAAs than the WCHA (17-16), and that they have a winning record against the WCHA in the NCAA Tournament (6-5). However, the WCHA still has the only title between the two conferences in that group, while the CCHA could come back by pointing out that they have had 3 title game participants to the WCHA's 2 (and 5 Frozen Fours to the WCHA's 4). Ultimately, I feel that a 10 year period is more reflective than a 4 year period, but I think either way you look at it, these two conferences have been very similar on the national stage over either period of time.
Of course, if we wanted to see a more historic approach, one could go back to probably 1981-1982 and pull the data from that time period. Unfortunately, I do not have that extra amount of time at the moment.