Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

[David De Remer]

The question posed here does not refer to the players. So many players gave everything they had tonight. All I want is those who run the NCAA "National Collegiate" (oops, can't call it D-I) women's hockey tournament to exhibit half the effort and courage of the current players.

Today again revealed two areas where the tournament is failing year-after-year:
-- web streaming
-- tournament seeding

Web Streaming

My NCAA quarterfinal viewing experience today began with a full period of Harvard-BC with no audio. It ended with me listening to the UND-Minnesota game instead of viewing it. My video stream froze in double overtime, and all future attempts to reload the stream from the CBS site led me to clips about Lou Roe. Those Roe clips brought back nice childhood memories of UMass basketball, but they weren't what I was looking for tonight. This is the second straight year I've somehow ended up on clips about Lou Roe while seeking women's hockey postseason streams.

Two of the greatest NCAA quarterfinal games to date were tonight's game at Ridder and Wisconsin's 1-0 4OT win over Harvard in 2007. Both endings were completely inaccessible to me due to technical problems. I've regularly watched women's hockey games all over the country without fail during the regular season. When it comes to the postseason, the streams fail at the worst possible time, year after year.

Tournament Seeding

We all know North Dakota is not the 8th-best team in the country. That was obvious even before tonight. Yes, North Dakota is the 8th-best team in the tournament according to the NCAA selection criteria. But significant problems with the NCAA selection criteria are pointed out year after year and nothing ever changes.

I have no doubt that the members of the NCAA women's hockey committee mean well. I appreciated that in June 2012, committee chair Chris Schneider was open enough to speak with people interested in improving the system. But I feel the bottom line of our conversation was simply, "There is no perfect system." Yet that conclusion does not imply the status quo is acceptable. Using any statistical model instead of the Ratings Percentage Index would be a significant improvement.

The problem here isn't about east vs. west interests -- it's about actually ranking teams to the best of our ability with the tools that we have. A better criteria would have benefited the top WCHA teams in recent years, but there's no reason to believe that other teams won't be on the short end in the future. Moreover, the system does not provide any team the right incentive to play a quality nonconference schedule in terms of the selection process -- the benefit of beating a tough opponent isn't large enough when compared to the penalty of losing to a tough opponent. Everyone in the sport suffers.

North Dakota vs. Minnesota was an extraordinary game tonight. But it should have been an NCAA semifinal or NCAA final, not an NCAA quarterfinal. Having this game as an NCAA quarterfinal was a failure. Not improving the system is going to lead to more failure in the future.

The players deserve better.

 

[OnMAA]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

Despite all my recent "jabbing" in fun about the value of unbeaten seasons and about it being a good thing for the exposure of womens hockey if the trophy comes east, agree with most of what you said above.

On the video feed.
In this day and age of broad band access and the ability to create high quality streaming with relatively common equipment, there is no excuse for the extremely poor quality of the video feed from the epic quarterfinal between Minnesota and UND. The NCAA could have easily farmed this task out to a university communications department, or one of the standard crews that do the in-season work, and we would have a better product. They should look at the example set by the D3 crew in Superior. A high quality video feed, with various camera angles and plenty of replays. One of the best I've seen in Women's hockey.

On the seeding.
All kidding aside in my recent postings, do believe that the seeding should be fair and equitable, and it is clear to me that UND should have been a higher seed. The question then becomes, how do you accomplish that with the current system and the small sample size of WCHA vs other conference results. Maybe the WCHA should rethink it's in-conference schedule to allow for a bit more NC play. A larger sample size of NC play will lead to a better chance for proper seeding. Another option to consider is to have a few play-in games, but that would add cost and a week to the schedule, so there might not be much appetite for that. I know one thing for sure. As long as things are decided on paper, rather than on the ice, you will have "what if" and "not fair" debates. Jut look at today's results. No 2 seed falls at home to the No 7 seed, and many were suggesting the 7th seed did not deserve a spot over one of the WCHA teams on the outside looking in. Only way to solve that debate without any controversy is to have play-in games.

Look at the results in D3. The 7th seed wins the whole show, and aside from their own fans few gave that team a chance at the start of the NCAA tourney two weeks ago.

At the end of the day, the teams that deserve to be there should get a chance to do the talking on the ice. I'm a firm believer in letting head to head results on the ice decide who moves on and who does not.

Just some food for thought.

 

[Eeyore]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

Maybe the WCHA should rethink it's in-conference schedule to allow for a bit more NC play. A larger sample size of NC play will lead to a better chance for proper seeding. .

To be honest, this would require top eastern teams to want to play games against top WCHA opponents and there's no indication that this is the case. I'll give credit to BC and BU, because they clearly do want to play those games. There is zero indication that the top teams in the ECAC want to do the same. We could have had a very meaningful series between Minnesota and Harvard this year, but the Crimson decided that they didn't want to play the Gophers any longer. Cornell, as far as I can tell, is too scared to play WCHA teams.

It's not just on WCHA teams to have more openings for non-conference play. Those other teams have to want to do it, and I don't think they do. Allowing for a NCAA seeding system that rewards teams for a weaker schedule without putting any pressure on the ECAC to step up is ridiculous.

 

[Blackbeard]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

David,

You know what else is second rate? How when a fan forum user uses the "contact" button to contact the forum administrators and then is completely ignored...for weeks on end...even after three follow up emails to see why their questions haven't been answered. Actually, it's not even second rate...it doesn't rate...you can't rate it because it doesn't exist. I'm speaking about common courtesy, business practices and competence. If those responsible have no intention to respond to questions then they should make the "contact" button disappear...don't you figure?

Thought you should know in case you might care and have some influence, assuming it isn't you that's responsible. Even if it is you that is responsible.

 

[polarbear2]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

This is ironic, because I thought the streams of the DivIII men's and women's finals were outstanding. I'll admit the play by play could be improved upon, but the video stream was excellent...

 

[TonyTheTiger20]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

I will say that I had no problem watching the entirety of the Minnesota game. I did reboot it at one point, and it didn't take me right back to the game, but I was easily able to get back to it using the link on the Minnesota schedule page.

 

[123kidd]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

Look at the results in D3. The 7th seed wins the whole show, and aside from their own fans few gave that team a chance at the start of the NCAA tourney two weeks ago.

Not sure if your talking men's or women in the above statement, but UW-River Falls was the #7 seed in the D-III women's tournament and they lost in a Quarterfinal game.

 

[Call It]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

This is ironic, because I thought the streams of the DivIII men's and women's finals were outstanding. I'll admit the play by play could be improved upon, but the video stream was excellent...

The D3 had awesome video, I knew MN vs UND had bad video but when I clicked over to the D3 games you realized that the MN game was using an antenna to stream the video.

 

[Hckynut12]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

The question posed here does not refer to the players. So many players gave everything they had tonight. All I want is those who run the NCAA "National Collegiate" (oops, can't call it D-I) women's hockey tournament to exhibit half the effort and courage of the current players.

Today again revealed two areas where the tournament is failing year-after-year:
-- web streaming
-- tournament seeding

Web Streaming

My NCAA quarterfinal viewing experience today began with a full period of Harvard-BC with no audio. It ended with me listening to the UND-Minnesota game instead of viewing it. My video stream froze in double overtime, and all future attempts to reload the stream from the CBS site led me to clips about Lou Roe. Those Roe clips brought back nice childhood memories of UMass basketball, but they weren't what I was looking for tonight. This is the second straight year I've somehow ended up on clips about Lou Roe while seeking women's hockey postseason streams.

Two of the greatest NCAA quarterfinal games to date were tonight's game at Ridder and Wisconsin's 1-0 4OT win over Harvard in 2007. Both endings were completely inaccessible to me due to technical problems. I've regularly watched women's hockey games all over the country without fail during the regular season. When it comes to the postseason, the streams fail at the worst possible time, year after year.

Tournament Seeding

We all know North Dakota is not the 8th-best team in the country. That was obvious even before tonight. Yes, North Dakota is the 8th-best team in the tournament according to the NCAA selection criteria. But significant problems with the NCAA selection criteria are pointed out year after year and nothing ever changes.

I have no doubt that the members of the NCAA women's hockey committee mean well. I appreciated that in June 2012, committee chair Chris Schneider was open enough to speak with people interested in improving the system. But I feel the bottom line of our conversation was simply, "There is no perfect system." Yet that conclusion does not imply the status quo is acceptable. Using any statistical model instead of the Ratings Percentage Index would be a significant improvement.

The problem here isn't about east vs. west interests -- it's about actually ranking teams to the best of our ability with the tools that we have. A better criteria would have benefited the top WCHA teams in recent years, but there's no reason to believe that other teams won't be on the short end in the future. Moreover, the system does not provide any team the right incentive to play a quality nonconference schedule in terms of the selection process -- the benefit of beating a tough opponent isn't large enough when compared to the penalty of losing to a tough opponent. Everyone in the sport suffers.

North Dakota vs. Minnesota was an extraordinary game tonight. But it should have been an NCAA semifinal or NCAA final, not an NCAA quarterfinal. Having this game as an NCAA quarterfinal was a failure. Not improving the system is going to lead to more failure in the future.

The players deserve better.

There is no possible way I could have said this better, and I couldn't possibly agree more with ALL of your comments....well said!

 

[Watson Rink]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

Let's not get too carried away by the excitement of one 3OT game. While I agree that using a statistical method other than RPI would probably be an improvement, criticism of ND's 2013 seeding should be based solely on (as David De Remer rightly points out) their regular season performance, not what we now know in hindsight about (and could not have known about while doing the seedings) their tournament performance. Just as the outcome of the MH/Cornell game doesn't imply that MH should have been seeded #2 and MH #7, so the fact that ND lost to Minny in overtime after losing to them in regulation 5 times this season doesn't in itself imply that ND should have been seeded #4 or higher. That thesis should be examined solely on a dispassionate analysis of RPI vs KRach vs Rutter vs whatever else there may be. After all, didn't 6- 26 Bemidji State take Minny to overtime, too, in just 5 attempts?

 

[OnMAA]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

Look at the results in D3. The 7th seed wins the whole show, and aside from their own fans few gave that team a chance at the start of the NCAA tourney two weeks ago.

Not sure if your talking men's or women in the above statement, but UW-River Falls was the #7 seed in the D-III women's tournament and they lost in a Quarterfinal game.

My mistake. My premise still stands, that very few gave Elmira a chance in the first round prediction pool. Most saw four seed Bowdoin winning.

 

[OnMAA]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

To be honest, this would require top eastern teams to want to play games against top WCHA opponents and there's no indication that this is the case. I'll give credit to BC and BU, because they clearly do want to play those games. There is zero indication that the top teams in the ECAC want to do the same. We could have had a very meaningful series between Minnesota and Harvard this year, but the Crimson decided that they didn't want to play the Gophers any longer. Cornell, as far as I can tell, is too scared to play WCHA teams.

It's not just on WCHA teams to have more openings for non-conference play. Those other teams have to want to do it, and I don't think they do. Allowing for a NCAA seeding system that rewards teams for a weaker schedule without putting any pressure on the ECAC to step up is ridiculous.

Not sure if that is an ECAC issue, or a challenge for Ivy teams that start a month later due to Ivy regulations. It is really though for Ivy teams that only play 29 games and start once other teams have 6 to 8 mostly NC games in already in the ECAC. Teams Like Clarkson did play a strong NC schedule. Therefore stand by my premise, that if the WCHA teams do have more room for NC games after Nov 1, you'd see more interaction with the ECAC.

 

[WIrinkrat]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

Not sure if that is an ECAC issue, or a challenge for Ivy teams that start a month later due to Ivy regulations. It is really though for Ivy teams that only play 29 games and start once other teams have 6 to 8 mostly NC games in already in the ECAC. Teams Like Clarkson did play a strong NC schedule. Therefore stand by my premise, that if the WCHA teams do have more room for NC games after Nov 1, you'd see more interaction with the ECAC.

Or an issue where schools that don't have big-time football and/or basketball programs to beef up their athletic department budgets don't want to take on an extra $30k to put their team on a plane and fly to Minnesota.

 

[Eeyore]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

Not sure if that is an ECAC issue, or a challenge for Ivy teams that start a month later due to Ivy regulations. It is really though for Ivy teams that only play 29 games and start once other teams have 6 to 8 mostly NC games in already in the ECAC. Teams Like Clarkson did play a strong NC schedule. Therefore stand by my premise, that if the WCHA teams do have more room for NC games after Nov 1, you'd see more interaction with the ECAC.

Until those ECAC teams are willing to help us fill the dates we already have, I remain skeptical of your take.

 

[OnMAA]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

Or an issue where schools that don't have big-time football and/or basketball programs to beef up their athletic department budgets don't want to take on an extra $30k to put their team on a plane and fly to Minnesota.

Agree that Budget constraints are a major consideration. It is not surprising to me that once the sport became an NCAA sport, the BIG schools started funding the sport more and it is the BIG schools that have been dominating on the playing field ever since. The Ivy schools will never support a mean stream sport with the same funding levels.

 

[vicb]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

Until those ECAC teams are willing to help us fill the dates we already have, I remain skeptical of your take.

A question I have is, Are the WCHA teams willing to play home and home. North Dakota and Minnesota have done home and home with Clarkson in the past. Are the other teams willing to do this or are they like the men's programs where they are glad to play you on their ice but will not do a return series on our ice??

 

[hckeyfan]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

A question I have is, Are the WCHA teams willing to play home and home. North Dakota and Minnesota have done home and home with Clarkson in the past. Are the other teams willing to do this or are they like the men's programs where they are glad to play you on their ice but will not do a return series on our ice??

They usually make agreements ahead of time....this year, you can come here and play us two games on our ice. Next year, we'll come to you and play two games on your ice. Some of the WCHA teams have backed out of these agreements in the past, and have soured some of the ECAC/CHA teams on making any further arrangements.

 

[Eeyore]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

A question I have is, Are the WCHA teams willing to play home and home. North Dakota and Minnesota have done home and home with Clarkson in the past. Are the other teams willing to do this or are they like the men's programs where they are glad to play you on their ice but will not do a return series on our ice??

Minnesota alternated home ice with Harvard for years and has had a home-and-home with New Hampshire for the past two. UMD has made trips to Boston in recent years.

 

[Watson Rink]

Re: Why is the NCAA D-I women's hockey tournament so second-rate?

I think that Harvard has played home-and-away, first with UMD when they were hot and later with Minnesota.

My personal preference is for four-team weekend match ups pitting two Eastern teams against two Western teams. That way you get more variety per weekend and richer data for statistical rankings.

Admittedly, the logistics for a WCHA-hosted or Cornell/Clarkson/Mercyhurst-hosted tourney would involve air travel for two teams and bus travel for a third, but would be simpler for a tourney hosted by any two of the four Beanpot schools.

 

[Hux]

I think that Harvard has played home-and-away, first with UMD when they were hot and later with Minnesota.

My personal preference is for four-team weekend match ups pitting two Eastern teams against two Western teams. That way you get more variety per weekend and richer data for statistical rankings.

Admittedly, the logistics for a WCHA-hosted or Cornell/Clarkson/Mercyhurst-hosted tourney would involve air travel for two teams and bus travel for a third, but would be simpler for a tourney hosted by any two of the four Beanpot schools.

I don't think it need be a tourney. Given the number of teams in the Boston area a WCHA team could come in and play two different teams rather than a two game set with one.