Pairwise

[kellyleeks]

I'll be cheering for Mankato, MSU and Cornell. We still have an outside shot at the #1 seed.

 

[kellyleeks]

And Michigan Tech.

 

[bleedsmaroonandgold]

Why Mankato? I think our best chance of overtaking Quinnipiac in the PWR would be for us to get another against Omaha somewhere in the Final Five. Right now, a better record against common opponents is part of what has Quinnipiac ahead of us, and they swept Omaha, so if we had a chance to improve our winning percentage against the, I think that is our best shot at #1 overall.

 

[kellyleeks]

Why Mankato? I think our best chance of overtaking Quinnipiac in the PWR would be for us to get another against Omaha somewhere in the Final Five. Right now, a better record against common opponents is part of what has Quinnipiac ahead of us, and they swept Omaha, so if we had a chance to improve our winning percentage against the, I think that is our best shot at #1 overall.

If Omaha drops from TUC then we pick up a TUC game on Q. Not sure how far they'll drop though.

We will need to win out though (just a guess).

 

[bleedsmaroonandgold]

I just ran USCHO's Pairwise Predictor (http://www.uscho.com/rankings/pairwise-predictor/). According to that, even if the Gophs win out and Quinnipiac loses out, we don't catch them (I only ran it once, having the higher seed win every game except for Minnesota winning our title game and Quinnipiac losing both the semifinal and the ECAC third place game, maybe there is some other combination of other games which would give it to the Gophs, but I don't have time to fiddle with it all night).

 

[gophersfan]

There is no other combination. Minnesota basely have no shot of the top spot in the pairwase. Don Lucia said that.

Lucia has said Quinnipiac has a near lock on No. 1 in PairWise no matter what. He understands it, I am told.

 

[#1nHkyCfbBsbDncSolarDebat]

Quinipiac has something like a 12-2 record vs ranked teams?! I only glanced over their schedule so don't quote me on that win-loss record, but if anyone thinks the Q is overrated, they are probably wrong.

I wouldn't quibble with anyone who argued that Quinipiac deserves the #1 seed over us. And as of right now, I'm assuming that Quinipiac will be the team to beat on that side of the Tournament. So as long as we don't drop down to a #4 seed, I'm thinking it will be Quinipiac vs us or whichever WCHA team knocks us out before the Title game.

Granted I haven't seen the brackets yet and I believe NOU only lost both games to Quinipiac by a goal each game? So if the right WCHA team gets in that bracket with Q, I might bet on the WCHA team to beat em before we meet up with them, if we get by whoever we have to play.


After Holy Cross, I'll NEVER assume we're going to win a post season game ever again.

And after seeing our Gophers come back from being down 2 goals late in games and still winning, I won't doubt we can beat anyone, either, even if we fall behind.




The big question on my mind, is how many decades longer is it going to take before they get rid of this PWR thing? It's the most ridiculous rating system I've ever run across, except for maybe the RPI, which of course is one of the things factored into the PWR ratings.

It's actually better for a team to lose to a crappy team than it is a good team sometimes, because it only counts against their RPI rating, but not their TUC comparison. IDIOTIC.

And some games can help a team out double or hurt twice as badly if they are both a TUC and also a common opponent.

 

[bleedsmaroonandgold]

I still prefer the PWR infinitely more than any system that involves voters watching games and giving the absurd "eye test" as they arbitrarily rank teams.

 

[mnsportsgeek]

I'm under the belief that if you play in a crappy conference, you are never as good as you think you are. Quinnipiac will not win the national title. History would indicate that.

 

[#1nHkyCfbBsbDncSolarDebat]

I'm under the belief that if you play in a crappy conference, you are never as good as you think you are. Quinnipiac will not win the national title. History would indicate that.

Well afurry91, I sure hope you are right, because of Quinipiac wins the title, that means we didn't, lol.


But history shows that they'll probably make it to the Frozen Four. If not them, then either Mass-Lowell or SCSU.


Why do I say this?!


In the last 4-5 years, over 50% of the FF teams were teams who have never won a Natl Title before and who had either been to just 1 or not even been to a FF before or had only been to their 1st or 2nd FF earlier in this 5 year time period.

FSU and Union made their first trips to the FF last year.
UMD won its first Natl Title ever 2 years ago and Notre Dame made only its 3rd FF ever.
RIT made its first FF 3 years ago and Miami of Ohio made only its 2nd ever.
Miami of Ohio made its first ever FF 4 years ago, and it was also Bemidji St's first FF ever & Vermont made only its 2nd trip ever.
Notre Dame made its 2nd trip ever to the FF 5 years ago.


So, looking at all 20 teams,

last year - 1st timer FSU, 1st timer Union
2 yrs ago - 4th timer UMD, 3rd timer ND
3 yrs ago - 1st timer RIT, 2nd timer Miami
4 yrs ago - 1st timer BSU, 2nd timer Vermont, 1st timer Miami
5 yrs ago - 2nd timer Notre Dame.


4 of those teams made it to the Title game, with one of them winning the Title. Granted the one team winning the title was a WCHA team and the other 3 were CCHA teams, and of the semi final losers 4 of the 6 were from WCHA, CCHA or HE, but 2 of them weren't. Union was same conf as Quinipiac, and Q is better than Union was that year. RIT is from the horrible Atlantic Hockey, but somehow they won 2 games and got to the Frozen Four?! And Holy Cross was from that same crappy conf, and they were able to beat us, and we were a very good team that year.


So I'm not really disagreeing with you afurry91, as much as saying that things seem to be changing in college hockey. Not sure if its the NHL robbing the traditional powers of their players, and hence why we saw MSU and Michigan start out the season so badly this year, and why BC and BU are struggling in comparison to the recent past, but things are definitely changing.

 

[bleedsmaroonandgold]

Its interesting you bring up Union and Ferris State. There are a few things that I think are noteworthy about that underdog pair. Union was a non-scholarship program, which I think makes them deserving of some kind of motivational sports movie given how many scholarship programs they had to beat to get there.

Additionally, we played BU in one semifinal while FSU played Union in the other semi-final. If I recall correctly, our semifinal had more national championships between the two teams than FSU and Union had combined tournament games won. That really was an exciting year for underdogs.

 

[bleedsmaroonandgold]

I'm under the belief that if you play in a crappy conference, you are never as good as you think you are. Quinnipiac will not win the national title. History would indicate that.

I think its pretty easy to claim that Minnesota deserves to be #1 because the WCHA is stronger than the ECAC. I don't think the numbers back that up though. Its fair to criticize the RPI. However, QU has performed significantly better against the TUC than the Gophers have (17.5% better), and more importantly (in my opinion) they have a better record against our common opponents than we do. I struggle to find an objective measure that would put us above Quinnipiac, besides just saying "we have a tougher conference".

 

[#1nHkyCfbBsbDncSolarDebat]

Well, 2 objective rating systems, the KRACH and the Massey Ratings both have Minnesota as #1, but they both have Quinipiac as #2.

And bleedsmaroonandgold, while you make a good point about their record vs TUC and vs common opponents, it is my contention that the PWR rating system is far from the best way to figure out which teams are the most deserving.

For instance, one team could play 10 games vs TUC, but all 10 games could be vs teams rated #1-10.

While another team could play 10 games vs TUC with all 10 games being vs teams rated #15-25.

And in fact, that is about what you get when you compare Minnesota with Quinipiac. Maybe not if you look at the PWR ratings, which are skewed by its own internal bias. It's like circular reasoning if you use the PWR ratings to figure out which teams are rated 1-10 and 15-25, and then use the PWR again to figure out the TUC.

What I am saying is fine, use the PWR mechanism of comparing TUC, which is looking at the RPI ratings. But look to say the Massey Ratings when figuring out which teams are rated #1-25.
And when you do that, we find Minnesota has played its games vs TUC, against the likes of #3 MnSt, #4 UND, #6 Denver, #8 SCSU, #9 Wiscsonsin, #10 ND and #11 Boston College.
Quinipiac has played its games vs TUC, against the likes of #13 Rensselaer, #16 Yale, #20 Union, #22 St Law, #23 Brown, #24 Cornell & #26 Ohio St.

And we both played games vs #18 NOU. But you can see that I listed the Top 7 rated opponents for each team and ALL 7 of the Gopher's opponents are rated Top 11, while ALL 7 of Quinipiac's opponents are rated from #13 to #26.


So sure, Quinipiac is probably going to have a better record vs TUC, than the Gophers. But the imbalance in our strengths of schedule is not accredited to the Gophers in any way?

Instead, Quinipiac gets a pass on its several bad losses it has, because those losses were to teams NOT EVEN rated high enough to be a TUC. So they only count against Quinipiac in a less impacting way, in their RPI rating. While most of the Gopher's losses, in fact ALL BUT ONE, count against them in the RPI and in the TUC.

It's simple, the PWR is skewed and designed to favor a weaker team like Quinipiac.

And I'm sure the NCAA loves that fact. New blood is needed for college hockey to survive and thrive right?! If UND, Minnesota, BC, BU, Denver, Michigan and Wisconsin simply take turns winning the title every year, then the sport will stagnate. So let an ancient system like the PWR remain so that WCHA teams do not dominate the tourney every year.

 

[bleedsmaroonandgold]

It still think we cannot overlook the fact that, in games against the same opponents, Quinipiac has the better record than we do, and that is the fairest and most direct comparison between two teams who have not played each other.

 

[#1nHkyCfbBsbDncSolarDebat]

It still think we cannot overlook the fact that, in games against the same opponents, Quinipiac has the better record than we do, and that is the fairest and most direct comparison between two teams who have not played each other.

Yes, that should be a factor, but what are we working with here? 2 games?! That's only 5% of the games.

If you do the same kind of selective comparisons with WCHA teams, there would be all kinds of crazy results. And taking results from just one weekend of hockey you can cherry pick a weekend and make Quinipiac look like one of the worst teams in college hockey, and you can make the Gophers look like one of the greatest teams ever in college hockey history. And then switch around to 2 different weekends and its vice versa.

 

[kellyleeks]

It still think we cannot overlook the fact that, in games against the same opponents, Quinipiac has the better record than we do, and that is the fairest and most direct comparison between two teams who have not played each other.

We would have won the ECAC, but there's no way Quininpinninpiac wins the WCHA. They couldn't do it week in and week out.

 

[bleedsmaroonandgold]

We would have won the ECAC, but there's no way Quininpinninpiac wins the WCHA. They couldn't do it week in and week out.

I don't necessarily disagree with that statement, though I haven't watched Quinipiac play this year, so I can't agree with it either. I am just a lot more comfortable with an objective mathematical formula (any kind of which will have some flaws) than I would be with a committee sitting in a room saying "yeah, I think Team A is better" (which will also have some flaws).

 

[kellyleeks]

And quinoinninacpic is down 4-0 to the perennial hockey powerhouse Brown after 2 periods. They could very easily be beat in the first round of the tourney next weekend.