Re: Harvard Crimson 2013-2014
While I have only recently discovered this forum, I have been a fan for some years now. Santa is bringing new Crimson gear for the whole family, and we are particularly looking forward to the Beanpot this year.
I asked my "why can't Harvard be ranked where I think their record indicates they should?" question in another thread. It sounds like I am supposed to root for Cornell in their Florida tournament games against western teams, for example. and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Another question I have is why the active Harvard thread (unlike the other schools') is one that was started for the 2013-14 season. Are Harvard fans pretty rare here, despite their under-ranked #4 status?
Finally, I did not manage to secure Frozen Four tickets for Boston Garden this year, though I am reasonably certain that Harvard will be there. From the ticket buy/sell page here, it looks as if there might be availability later on when some of the other teams are knocked off in the run up, is that the case? I also would love to get still-available tickets for the regionals in Manchester or Providence, but I'm not at all sure how to guess with any confidence where my team might be assigned.
Thanks in advance . . .
So a couple of things.
1) Polls are, depending on who you ask, mostly or entirely meaningless. The "best" rating to pay attention to is the Pairwise rankings, which simulate how the NCAA committee weights different things to make their tournament. Harvard is ranked #2 in the country using that metric. I say "best" because most people would agree the Pairwise is not altogether a good measurement, like KRACH, but it is designed to match the NCAA selection criteria.
As for rooting for Cornell, this is a quirk of the Pairwise system. If Cornell does well and Harvard beats them, Harvard gets some credit for the teams Cornell beat. The Pairwise also has something known as a TUC, or team under consideration. Some teams are so bad that playing them hurts your standing in the Pairwise (I'm simplifying a little here). So you can always cheer for Cornell to be so bad that they fall under the TUC cliff, and thus as a team not under consideration, their games, and any wins or losses against them, don't really matter. I couldn't tell you how Cornell being or not being a TUC would affect Harvard's Pairwise ranking.
2) Harvard fans are pretty rare here (there and everywhere, to save all you wiseguys the trouble). Of the most active, you have bothman, skate79, myself and veritas, and then a few other people who chime in from time to time. Typically we do a thread for each year but no one got around to starting it at the beginning of the season. And then we started doing well and I, being a superstitious fellow, suggested we just stay in this thread.
3) Knowing where the Crimson will end up for the regionals depends on a host of factors because the NCAA has a labyrinth of rules and desires for the tournament.
The relevant rules are basically - try to protect higher seeds, keep travel to a minimum, host schools get to host, have good attendance, and not necessarily in that order
If the season ended today, the teams would be:
1s: Minnesota State, Harvard, Minnesota-Duluth, Nebraska-Omaha; 2s: Miami, Michigan Tech, Vermont, Boston University; 3s: Bowling Green, North Dakota, Minnesota, UMass-Lowell; 4s: Denver, Merrimack, Yale, Penn State.
In a straight seeding, Minnesota State would most likely compete in the west, leaving both eastern sites open for Harvard. But since that site is North Dakota's host site, they have to be there. Likely, the committee would try to protect the #1 seed by moving Minnesota State out of Fargo because if they had to play North Dakota, that's a de facto home game for NoDak even though they are the lower seed. Since the 8th ranked team is BU, Minnesota State would possibly come east, meaning they would get either Providence or New Hampshire. Etc. Etc.
The point of that is to say this - the second the Pairwise rankings change, this all goes out the window. But there will likely be seats available closer to game time.
As for the Frozen Four, if Harvard makes it, the school will have a small block of tickets and hopefully many fans whose teams did not make it will resell them on Stubhub and the like.
