With Tuesday’s Providence win over Boston University, the Terriers drop to fifth in the PWR. BU’s RPI went from .6033 to .5879. Good enough in the PairWise world to lose four comparisons. The comparison with Cornell goes from a 1-1 tie to a 2-0 Cornell win because of RPI, this is also the case with Notre Dame, from 3-2 in favor of BU over Vermont to 3-2 in favor of Vermont because of RPI, and from 3-1 over Northeastern to a 2-2 tie, with the tie broken by the RPI.
The old adage remains the same — beat the teams below you in the rankings.
So what does that do to our bracket? It mixes it up quite a bit. It actually made things a little easier in terms of putting teams into brackets.
West Regional (Minneapolis)
15 Maine vs. 2 Vermont
10 Minnesota vs. 8 Princeton
Midwest Regional (Grand Rapids)
14 Air Force vs. 3 Notre Dame
11 Boston College vs. 6 Michigan
Northeast Regional (Manchester)
13 New Hampshire vs. 4 Northeastern
12 Ohio State vs. 5 Boston University
East Regional (Bridgeport)
16 Niagara vs. 1 Cornell
9 Miami vs. 7 Denver
It’s a little fuzzy here on the switching of teams. I only made one change, Denver and Princeton to avoid the Minnesota-Denver matchup. This change was simple. The other possible ones, not so simple.
I did not make the other two changes which could have been made to avoid all-Hockey East matchups. Why? I went with bracket integrity and the five-team rule for teams from the same conference. I also went with the protection of the number one overall seed. Those are my reasons and I’m sticking to it. Besides, there’s still plenty of games to go and things will change. The lesson here is that it is quite possible that the committee will think this way as well. But one just does not know.
How about a geographic bracket?
West Regional (Minneapolis)
14 Air Force vs. 2 Vermont
10 Minnesota vs. 7 Denver
Midwest Regional (Grand Rapids)
12 Ohio State vs. 6 Michigan
15 Maine vs. 3 Notre Dame
East Regional (Bridgeport)
16 Niagara vs. 1 Cornell
9 Miami vs. 8 Princeton
Northeast Regional (Manchester)
13 New Hampshire vs. 4 Northeastern
11 Boston College vs. 5 Boston University
Yup, you see it correctly.
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