The NCAA formally approved the expansion of the the women’s hockey tournament to 11 teams for the 2021-22 season yesterday. But two big changes to the women’s bracket selection process were also quietly made.
The women’s hockey pre-championship manual has always included a stipulation to prioritize cost reduction and fewer flights when setting up the quarterfinal matchups. “Pairings in the quarterfinal round shall be based primarily on the teams’ geographical proximity to one another, regardless of their region, in order to avoid air travel in quarterfinal-round games whenever possible.” (View the 2019 pre-championship manual here. Criteria on pages 13-14.)
As first reported by Todd Milewski in the Wisconsin State Journal, that criteria has been removed from women’s hockey championship selection criteria.
Per Mark Bedics, NCAA Associate Director of Championships and Alliances and championship manager for National Collegiate women’s ice hockey, the verbiage about women’s hockey bracket selection has changed to match the verbiage for the men’s ice hockey tournament: “In setting up the tournament, the committee begins with a list of priorities to ensure a successful tournament on all fronts, including competitive equity, financial success and the likelihood of a playoff-type atmosphere at each first/second round site.”
This particular criteria was a point of contention for many in women’s hockey, as saving money was prioritized and the words “bracket integrity” did not appear anywhere in the women’s hockey selection criteria, whereas it was the primary directive for selecting the men’s bracket.
Importantly, this does not remove any consideration of travel from the selection criteria, but does bring the process in line with what happens in the men’s tournament, said Bedics. The directive is no longer to avoid flights at all costs. However, that doesn’t mean every lower seed will be flown to a quarterfinal host site, just as not every men’s team is flown to the four regional sites. Avoiding intra-conference matchups and creating a championships atmosphere – items already in the men’s selection criteria – will be part of deciding how teams are seeded and therefore where they will play.
A requirement to avoid first-round intra-conference matchups is also new to women’s hockey selection criteria. This was a particular issue that went hand-in-hand with the travel stipulation and was exacerbated by the geographical limitations of where women’s hockey programs are located.
These early-round conference meetings have been a contentious issue for years. The bracket for the cancelled 2020 national championship had Ohio State traveling to play fellow WCHA member Minnesota. In 2018, Wisconsin hosted Minnesota in the quarterfinal. Minnesota Duluth traveled to play Minnesota and Clarkson hosted Cornell in the 2017 quarterfinal. The next year, the first round featured two intra-conference matchups as Boston College hosted Northeastern and Quinnipiac hosted Clarkson.
The new criteria says avoiding intra-conference games in the first round is now a requirement unless the group of teams receiving the sixth-11th seeds contains four or more teams from the same conference.
The report showed major spending disparities between men’s and women’s hockey championships that have not yet been addressed, but in the two months since the report was shared with the public, the NCAA has corrected two of the biggest problems by reconsidering expansion and removing the cost savings stipulation on women’s hockey.
