Re: RPI 2010-11 Part II: RPI, the Other Team, the Refs -- We're outnumbered 10 to 6.
That doesn't mean, however, that RPI is not heading in the right direction, and it doesn't mean that it can't be a topic of conversation here.
I said or implied nothing of the sort. Feel free to discuss anything you like. The much maligned media and coaches polls are better indicators at this point in the season of which teams are contenders.
FD08 brought out the fact that the 'Tute is 2-3-2 vs. TUCs. As stated that doesn't count yet, but a .429 vs. TUCs won't hurt us if we can stay there after playing BU, Clarkson, and Dartmouth, the next three current TUCs which we face (which will bring us to 10).
The problem with this line of reasoning is the TUC cliff - who is a TUC and who isn't is always changing. When I last wrote on the PWR, Niagara was a TUC. They have since lost to UConn and Army and are down to 30th in RPI. Brown was also recently a TUC but are currently 28th. Say those two teams put a few wins together and get back into the top 25 of RPI, and CC (18th) loses a few games and drops out. RPI's record against TUCs becomes 4-2-1 (before the BU game) and they haven't done anything different. Thus, at this point in the season, it's "just win," and there's not much else to worry about right now. By mid-January, we will know which teams are going to be TUCs, which teams are potential TUCs, and which teams are not going to be TUCs. At this point, we can probably safely say that the Top 7 or so in RPI will be TUCs. We can safely say that anyone under 50th or so will not be TUCs. With everyone else, there's enough fluidity in the RPI to make everyone else fall into the middle category. As time goes by, the middle category gets smaller where the "in or out" category gets bigger.
Since I'm not writing on PWR at WaP until the end of the month at the earliest, here's what we want to see happen going forward.
1) Beating BU would give the Engineers a record of 1-0-1 against Hockey East teams. That's a good start for COp, but every Hockey East team has ECAC teams on their schedules as well, so it's important to play well in conference (as well as a reason to root for the ECAC out of conference)
2) Beating UAH twice would give the Engineers a record of 3-0-0 in COp against a handful of CCHA teams to start out with, since every CCHA team plays BGSU and many of them face UAH this year. That's a bit bigger, since there are usually much fewer COps in the western leagues.
From there, the schedule becomes insular and it's a matter of doing well in conference and specifically beating the teams that are likely to be TUCs. That makes Freakout an important game regardless, and it makes the night before Freakout an important game too - might as well start rooting for Brown, even within the conference. In that sense, losing to Colgate, while it would mean an RPI hit, wouldn't be devastating in the TUC category.
The way the PWR is set up, it would almost be advantageous to not reach the 10 game mark. Look at Bemidji State last year. But I doubt that's a possibility - the schedule is too strong for that to happen. There will, in all likelihood, be 10 TUC games on the schedule before all is said and done. I expect Yale, Union, and Dartmouth to be TUCs at the end of the year, and that's 7 games right there, plus I'm sure the Engineers will face one of those teams at some point in the playoffs. Throw in BU, who's probably going to be a TUC unless they crash and burn.
Trust me on this, folks. I have a few years of experience in micro-bracketology - analyzing a single team's PWR needs. It's a lot harder than macro-bracketology - analyzing the whole system. With luck, we'll be debuting "Engineer Bracketology," a weekly micro-bracketology exercise, on January 18th. But the team has some work to do first.
