I find it extremely hard to believe that hypothetically, if an Atlantic Hockey team goes 7-0-0 out of conference (against mid to high level OOC teams) and wins the regular season title in Atlantic Hockey that they would miss the NCAA tournament if they got upset in the AH playoffs. Such a team would have an advantage in common opponents against any team from a conference they played against, and if they got to 10 games against teams against consideration they could win pairwise comparisions against teams above them in RPI.
And 10 games isn't nearly as hard to reach against TuC anymore, now that the Western pod plays 3 times each and the conference has added a couple of quality schools - not to mention the redefinition of TuC to include all teams with an RPI of .500 or better. IIRC last year there were 3 Western teams in consideration (AF, RM, and RIT), and as things stand this year RIT has 9 games scheduled against TuC (AF X 3, RM X 3, LSSU, Ferris State, Union) so one playoff game against RM or AF would give them 10.
I suspect the Tigers would have a punching chance had they not lost at home to a 3-13 RPI team. Obviously it would take a hot 2nd half including a win tomorrow against LSSU (slumping a little) and at least one of two vs Wisconsin (who's in a down year) and then a great 2nd half in AH (and some luck in RM and AF along with RIT differentiating themselves further from the rest of the conference to remain in consideration). The loss to RPI gives ECAC teams too much of an advantage in common opponents (RIT went 1-2 vs ECAC). It will be interesting to see if RIT does manage to string some results together where flipping just that RPI game would put the Tigers.
