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Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

N

Nostrajimus

New member
Outside of FCS football, Hockey appears to be the only other major sport in which a ranked team misses the NCAA Tourney year in and year out.

Every year there are teams that could have a legit shot at the The Frozen Four, but because of a small amount of teams in the tourney (16 out of 59), it's inevitable that a deserving program is left out, whether it's because of a surprise upset in a conf auto bid, or the pairwise rankings don't pan out.

FBS football - approx 50% (60) of the 120 teams receive a bowl bid

Basketball - approx 20% (68) of the 346 teams play in the NCAA Tourney

Baseball - approx 23% (64) of the 280 teams play in the NCAA Tourney

FCS football - approx 17% (20) of the 120 teams make the NCAA Playoffs

Although 27% of hockey teams make the NCAA Tourney, only FBS Football and Hockey have ranked teams who fail to make the NCAA Tourney.

With such thin margin lines in that regard, I feel it's time that the NCAA Hockey Tournament once again considers expanding to 20 teams for the sake of competition.

FBS football used to only have 16 teams, and now their tournament is much more representative of the talent level that is present throughout.

From top to bottom Hockey is much more competitve than most of the major sports, as on any given day a team could be upset in hockey.

I know this has been discussed before, but why would you not want as many ranked teams as possible in the Tourney field? It makes no sense to be honest.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

I see what you're saying, but I kinda like the fact that the NCAA Hockey tournament is as difficult as it is to make.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

Given that the NCAA has a rule for sports that have a playoff stating that no more than 25% of the teams in that sport can make said playoffs we're doing pretty well. I think it is much more likely that the NCAA will go back to 12 with some programs folding than that they'll go to 20.

ETA: Fixed my error.
 
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Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

Or we could just rank the top 10 teams instead of the top 20. Then all the ranked teams could make it.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

goldy_331 said:
Given that the NCAA has a rule for sports that have a playoff stating that no more than 25% of the teams in that sport can make said playoffs we're doing pretty well. I think it is much more likely that the NCAA will go back to 16 with some programs folding than that they'll go to 20.
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I think you mean go back to 12, and I agree. I would say that there is probably no chance that the field expanded to 20 unless massive amounts of schools started hockey programs.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

Nostrajimus said:
I know this has been discussed before, but why would you not want as many ranked teams as possible in the Tourney field?
Click to expand...

Suppose the rankings were for the top 25 teams? would you then want to have 25 teams make the tourney?

Alternately, we could limit our rankings only to the top 16 teams....then we wouldn't have any 'problem' al all!

From my (limited) perspective, I would not want there to be any correlation whatsoever between the number of 'ranked' teams and the number of teams that participate in the Tournament.

When more than one in four teams already make the tournament, that to me already is 'too many' now, rather than 'too few' .... except that we also have a tournament field that is determined by multiples of 4, and since 12 seems to be 'too few', we are 'stuck with' 16 as the next available number.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

Rankings mean nothing. So this is a pretty pointless discussion.

The number of playoff teams should be based on the number of teams playing, not an arbitrary number of teams that get ranked in papers and on web sites. Plus, the PWR system ranks all the teams in a sense. So does that mean all 50+ teams should make it?

Maybe we should give out participation ribbons too.

Also, FBS is not comparable, because they don't have a playoffs. So zero (0%!) teams in FBS make the playoffs.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

oldish husky said:
Or we could just rank the top 10 teams instead of the top 20. Then all the ranked teams could make it.
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Bingo.

Someone gets it. It's arbitrary. If we do a top 50 ranking, would it be a tragedy that some 34 ranked teams don't make it!? The teams that deserve to be in the tournament are in. The teams that don't make the hockey tourney don't deserve to be. Of course there might be a team that is in the tourney that arguably doesn't deserve it but if you agree with the previous two statements it's moot and would even show there are too many bids perhaps.

A while back they only did 10 teams. Then expanded to 15 teams. Now we have 20 teams being ranked. What good does this do other than giving a mediocre team something to feel good about temporarily (until their team gets exterminated in the postseason)?

Bottom line, with a 16 team tournament, if you're not good enough to get in, you're not good enough to win a title and you have no grounds for complaint on an NCAA bid not being received.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

USA Today does a 15-team poll, while USCHO does a 20-team poll. Were there any USA Today teams that did not make the tournament? Aside from fluke years, of course, where a bunch of Cinderellas get the autobid...
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

FlagDUDE08 said:
USA Today does a 15-team poll, while USCHO does a 20-team poll. Were there any USA Today teams that did not make the tournament? Aside from fluke years, of course, where a bunch of Cinderellas get the autobid...
Click to expand...

There's have to be, 'cause I imagine at least two teams every year that aren't ranked get an autobid.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

SCSU Euro said:
I imagine at least two teams every year that aren't ranked get an autobid.
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and from time to time they do quite well....I myself would not cut back on autobids, as it is a 'national' championship, not a 'top four or five teams from each of three power conferences' championship.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

FreshFish said:
and from time to time they do quite well....I myself would not cut back on autobids, as it is a 'national' championship, not a 'top four or five teams from each of three power conferences' championship.
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Umm, ok.... I don't think anyone was saying cut back on the number of autobids, but thank you for your point regardless.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

SCSU Euro said:
Umm, ok.... I don't think anyone was saying cut back on the number of autobids,
Click to expand...

in this thread, (surprisingly?) not yet, anyway.....I have seen that opinion more than once on the board, however. I guess pre-emptive disagreement is a bit confusing!
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

The 25% rule is the reason FBS wil NEVER ever go the playoff route. I think that hockey should only have a top 10 (1 in 6), as that would take care of it.

All the other sports have at least 120 teams considered for the poll, so therefore a top 25 is comparable. The problem is everybody wants to say they are ranked.

UMO comes in at #20 this week out of 59. Big whoop, but they can proudly say they are "ranked". C'mon man!!!:mad:
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

It'd be kind of interesting to see how many "top-10" teams failed to get a NCAA berth and the highest among those. Not nearly interesting enough to look up, though.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

bronconick said:
It'd be kind of interesting to see how many "top-10" teams failed to get a NCAA berth and the highest among those. Not nearly interesting enough to look up, though.
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It has never happened in the USCHO polls (going back to the 1997-1998 season).

I would be interested to see where CC ended up in 1993-1994 when they won the WCHA, but didn't make the tournament.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

I like the current system and do not want to see any changes. If you look at the breakdown most conferences cannot complain. The AHA is a one bid conference. I am sorry to their fans, but it is. The non-conference record speaks for itself. That leaves the other four conferences with 15 spots. Even if all the conferences have upsets that leaves eleven spots to the top eleven teams in the country. I am sorry, but if you are not top ten and you cannot win your conference tourney then you don't belong in the tourney. The conference tourney is the first step in the road to national championship.
 
Re: Ranked Hockey teams that are not chosen for the NCAA Tourney

MCgrad07 said:
I like the current system and do not want to see any changes. If you look at the breakdown most conferences cannot complain. The AHA is a one bid conference. I am sorry to their fans, but it is. The non-conference record speaks for itself. That leaves the other four conferences with 15 spots. Even if all the conferences have upsets that leaves eleven spots to the top eleven teams in the country. I am sorry, but if you are not top ten and you cannot win your conference tourney then you don't belong in the tourney. The conference tourney is the first step in the road to national championship.
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I 100% agree with this, but usually the team who wins the league is also in the top 10. So I would say if you are in the top 20 (PWR that is) you do deserve to be in.
 
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