According to the calendar, it is March….so let the Madness begin!
The playoffs begin this week in three conferences - Atlantic Hockey, ECAC and Hockey East - while the NCHC and WCHA have one more week of regular season action and the Big Ten have two before Championship Weekend, during which my DVR will likely hate me as I try to record all the games at once. That gives us 18 days until Selection Sunday and the announcement of the 16-team NCAA Tournament field and which regional they will play in.
While I will hold off on the who is playing who and where speculation, I think this is an excellent time to explain the very important difference between the polls and the pairwise.
The national polls are a matter of opinion. Every week the voters - coaches, media members, sports information directors, broadcasters, etc - arbitrarily rank teams they consider to be the best in the country. They get added up and….volia! Every Monday afternoon my inbox is flooded with press releases from the top programs telling me how good their hockey team is based on those people's opinions. I look at it more like a power ranking that tells me how good those teams have been in the past week or two.
The pairwise is a matter of fact. It is a mathematical equation that combines a team's Ratings Percentage Index (RPI, another mathematical equation that determines the value of a team's strength of schedule based on their winning percentage, their opponents' winning percentage and their opponents opponents' winning percentage), records against common opponents and head-to-head competition. After the six automatic bids to the national tournament are awarded to those winning their conference championship, it is this mathematical equation that takes into account the entire season that determines the remaining ten teams that complete the 16-team field.
So in summary, the polls mean nothing and the pairwise means EVERYTHING.
Let's compare:
USA Today/USA Hockey Poll (Pairwise)
1. North Dakota (North Dakota)
2. Minnesota State (Minnesota State)
3. Boston University (Minnesota Duluth)
4. Michigan Tech (Miami)
5. Miami (Nebraska-Omaha)
6. Minnesota Duluth (Boston University)
7. Nebraska-Omaha (Michigan Tech)
8. Denver (Denver)
9. Boston College (Providence)
10. Quinnipiac (Boston College)
11. Providence (Minnesota)
12. Yale (Quinnipiac)
13. Bowling Green (Yale)
14. UMass-Lowell (Bowling Green)
15. Minnesota (Michigan)
While the differences are slight, they are significant and could mean the difference between a #1 seed closer to home and a #2 seed against a tougher opponent in the first round or, in the current case of UMass-Lowell, if you're even in the tournament at all. (Note: The highest ranked Atlantic Hockey Association team is #25 in the pairwise, so while no team from that conference will be able to earn an at large bid to the tournament, the 16th spot is reserved for whichever team wins their conference championship.)
With three more weeks of competition before these positions are set and the always fun scenario of an underdog team tossing a wildcard into the mix by winning their conference championship, earning the automatic bid and kicking a bubblicious team out, every game matters and there is sure to be a lot of scoreboard watching. A lot of these teams will beat each other up in their respective conference tournaments, which means there is the potential for a lot of movement, especially among the five teams from the NCHC - North Dakota, Minnesota Duluth, Miami, Nebraska-Omaha and Denver - just based on the RPI factors of head-to-head competition and record against common opponents, but that's why we watch the games and what makes this time of year so much fun.
With that said, let me put two can-not-miss games on your radar for this weekend:
North Dakota travels to Miami for two and, in a stroke of awesome, both games will be televised nationally. On Friday, you can find the game on CBSSports at 7:30ET and on Saturday through Fox College Sports at 7ET. Rearrange your schedule and/or set your DVR now because not only are there national implications, but also a potentially big swing in the conference standings and the difference between winning the regular season conference title outright, which North Dakota can do with just one point this weekend, or having to share it with the Red Hawks should Miami win both of these games in regulation.
Later this week, I'll tell you more about the players of note in this series because there are plenty!!
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Julie
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