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Monday, March 14, 2005

Michigan's fleeting stay at #4 in the Pairwise is over. This weekend was a total disaster/gift from heaven for Michigan, as Miami and Bowling Green lost their way out of TUC status. Michigan dropped into a tie for sixth with Harvard and likely sealed a trip to Grand Rapids for regionals.

The weekend was actually a total disaster for OSU, who managed to squeak by Ferris in three games but dropped from a solid three seed to 16th in the PWR and out of the tounament, largely because of those TUCs dropping off the face of the earth. This also killed Northern's faint at-large hopes, killed 'em dead.

Looking at the RPI shows exactly how screwed the CCHA is getting by the PWR this year. The RPI cutoff for TUC status is 0.500. Three of the first four non-TUC teams are mediocre CCHA teams: UAF (0.4991), BGSU (0.4989), and Miami (0.4953).

I think it's time to move past the bizarre fiction that the stubbornly stupid PWR system, which is followed letter-for-letter by the NCAA hockey committee when seeding teams in the tourney, is somehow superior to the actual judgement of humans. Either move to a system that does not have obviously counterintuitive properties (eg, UW would have been better served losing this weekend than winning) and arbitrary distinctions between teams (eg, considering wins over BGSU to be really, really significant until they lose two games of 40), or let actual people who can actually apply reason do it.

Also, please note that PWR is giving Michigan exactly what it wants right now, a spot in GR, so this is not self-serving whining. It's principled whining.

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I think in the US it is one e in judgment.

Anonymous said...

I looked at those Pairwise rankings and noticed that Alabama-Huntsville was on there. Alabama-Hunstsville? I can't believe they have a hockey team in Alabama. And they're actually pretty decent, apparently.