As I stared at the legal pad on which I detail how the teams in last week’s USCHO.com\/CBS College Sports poll fared last week, the debate in my head went something like this:<\/p>\n
Point: Air Force has the best record in the country.<\/p>\n
Counterpoint: Who have the Falcons played?<\/p>\n
Point: They’re leading all the number-driven rankings like RPI and PairWise.<\/p>\n
Counterpoint: Do those rankings matter in November and early December?<\/p>\n
Point: They beat Colorado College, fairly convincingly.<\/p>\n
Counterpoint: They then lost to Denver and only got a split of their first two games against those who probably will be considered teams under consideration.<\/p>\n
Point: They had a 39-29 shots on goal advantage on Denver.<\/p>\n
Counterpoint: That happens all the time.<\/p>\n
Point: Air Force is a top-five team and should be ranked there.<\/p>\n
Counterpoint: Air Force showed it’s a top-10 team, and let’s stop before we get ahead of ourselves.<\/p>\n
So as I typed the e-mail that sent in my rankings, I put the Falcons at No. 10. I felt bad about not giving them enough credit for beating Colorado College, but then I didn’t feel bad because they could have made an even bigger statement by following it up with a win at Denver.<\/p>\n
This is how the poll usually works, at least the way I see it. You move up for good wins. You move down for losses — maybe a little less for losses to good teams.<\/p>\n
I am convinced that Air Force is one of the best teams in the country. I am not convinced, however, that we’ll ever get an answer to one of the biggest questions that exists in my mind: How would the Falcons do playing a WCHA, Hockey East or CCHA schedule?<\/p>\n
You play the hand that you’re dealt, so there is no fault assigned to Frank Serratore or his players. From all appearances, it looks like they’re a skilled group with the kind of moxie it takes to win a bunch of games.<\/p>\n
But we’ve seen that mostly against a collection of teams that won’t come close to sniffing the teams under consideration criteria. My guess — the best that I’m able to offer — is that they wouldn’t be 13-1 if their schedule had a few more games against Miami, Notre Dame, Michigan, Boston College, Boston University, Minnesota and the like.<\/p>\n
The Falcons have, for the most part, hammered their Atlantic Hockey foes. A good team should.<\/p>\n
Atlantic Hockey has the worst record against the other five conferences. It’s 2-2 against the CHA, 5-8-1 against the ECACHL, 2-9 against the CCHA, 1-5 against the WCHA and 0-5-1 against Hockey East for a 10-29-2 non-conference record.<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s unfair for Air Force to pay for the rest of the league’s shortcomings. But in the world of subjective rankings, that’s one of the factors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I stared at the legal pad on which I detail how the teams in last week’s USCHO.com\/CBS College Sports poll fared last week, the debate in my head went something like this: Point: Air Force has the best record in the country. Counterpoint: Who have the Falcons played? Point: They’re leading all the number-driven […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1425],"tags":[1444],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n