Welcome back to Bracketology.
We’re working off the updated NPI, and as always we’re building this thing the same way every time: start with the rankings, make sure every conference is represented, lock in the field, then build the bracket by pod — because if you don’t get the pods right, everything else is pointless.
The one wrinkle again this week is Atlantic Hockey America. The top 16 in the NPI still doesn’t include an AHA team, so for the sake of this exercise we’re taking the top AHA team as the conference representative. This week, that’s Bentley.
So our 16-team field (overall seeds 1-16) is Michigan, Michigan State, North Dakota, Western Michigan, Penn State, Providence, Cornell, Minnesota Duluth, Quinnipiac, Dartmouth, Denver, Boston College, St. Thomas, Wisconsin, Augustana and Bentley.
Now we build the four pods according to bracket integrity. The initial four pods are 1-8-9-16, 2-7-10-15, 3-6-11-14 and 4-5-12-13.
On the first pass, that gives us:
1 Michigan / 8 Minnesota Duluth / 9 Quinnipiac / 16 Bentley
2 Michigan State / 7 Cornell / 10 Dartmouth / 15 Augustana
3 North Dakota / 6 Providence / 11 Denver / 14 Wisconsin
4 Western Michigan / 5 Penn State / 12 Boston College / 13 St. Thomas.
So the very first question the committee asks — and the first question we have to ask — is, do we have any same-conference first-round matchups? And yes, we do. In the 2-7-10-15 pod, Cornell and Dartmouth would meet in the opening round, and both are ECAC teams. We know the committee avoids intra-conference first-round games whenever it can, and this is the kind of issue that needs to be fixed immediately.
Here’s where the logic matters this week, because it’s tempting to just swap Dartmouth with someone else and move on. But there’s another major constraint looming: site placement. Denver is a regional host in Loveland, and Denver is in the field this week. That means Denver is a hard lock to the Loveland Regional. So before we even start talking about “rewarding” teams with locations, we have to make sure we aren’t trying to do something that’s literally impossible. And that’s why I want to go a slightly different direction this week: instead of moving Augustana into Sioux Falls just because it looks good for attendance, I’d rather reward the higher seed and put the North Dakota pod in Sioux Falls — and then let Augustana fall where it falls.
You can’t do that if Denver is still stuck in North Dakota’s pod, because Denver has to be in Loveland. So the question becomes: can we fix the Cornell–Dartmouth issue and also free up the North Dakota pod from Denver at the same time?
The answer is yes. And the cleanest move is a swap within the 9–12 band: switch Dartmouth (10) with Denver (11). That accomplishes two things: It removes Dartmouth from Cornell’s pod, so we no longer have an ECAC-vs.-ECAC first-round matchup, and it moves Denver into the Michigan State pod, which is perfect because Denver is the Loveland host lock anyway.
And just to be clear: we’re not breaking bands here. Dartmouth and Denver are both in the 9–12 band, so this is exactly the kind of fix that keeps the structure intact.
After that swap, our pods become:
1 Michigan / 8 Minnesota Duluth / 9 Quinnipiac / 16 Bentley
2 Michigan State / 7 Cornell / 11 Denver / 15 Augustana
3 North Dakota / 6 Providence / 10 Dartmouth / 14 Wisconsin
4 Western Michigan / 5 Penn State / 12 Boston College / 13 St. Thomas.
Now we’ve eliminated the Cornell–Dartmouth issue without creating a new same-conference matchup elsewhere, and we’ve also solved the Denver problem, because Denver is now already in a pod that we can send to Loveland without touching anything else.
Moving to site placement — reminder, the regional hosts this year are Holy Cross in Worcester, Union in Albany, Omaha in Sioux Falls, and, as mentioned, Denver in Loveland.
Denver is the only host school in the field this week so we have exactly one hard lock: the pod with Denver goes to Loveland. That’s Michigan State / Cornell / Denver / Augustana.
And now we can finally get to the question I want to ask this week: instead of forcing Augustana and North Dakota into Sioux Falls for attendance, what if we simply reward the higher seed and put the North Dakota pod in Sioux Falls? That keeps the bracket integrity as close as it possibly can be.
Thus, North Dakota / Providence / Dartmouth / Wisconsin go to Sioux Falls. It’s clean, it respects the seeding, and it avoids the weird logic of saying the No. 3 overall seed doesn’t get the most logical site available when we can make it happen.
That leaves us with two pods and two eastern sites. So what helps Albany and Worcester the most? Either site feels like it may have attendance problems. But for this exercise, I will place the Quinnipiac and Bentley in Albany to drive some attendance and place Boston College in Worcester to help with attendance there. So we place Michigan / Minnesota Duluth / Quinnipiac / Bentley in Albany, and Western Michigan / Penn State / Boston College / St. Thomas in Worcester.
So the bracket this week looks like this:
Albany Region
1 Michigan
2 Minnesota Duluth
3 Quinnipiac
4 Bentley
Worcester Region
1 Western Michigan
2 Penn State
3 Boston College
4 St. Thomas
Sioux Falls Region
1 North Dakota
2 Providence
3 Dartmouth
4 Wisconsin
Loveland Region
1 Michigan State
2 Cornell
3 Denver
15 Augustana
Do I love this bracket? Nope. But I wanted readers to see what things look like when you make necessary minimal movement to maintain as much bracket integrity as possible.
Last team in: Augustana
First team out: Connecticut