{"id":1354,"date":"2014-01-15T15:00:29","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T21:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/bracketology\/?p=1354"},"modified":"2014-01-15T15:00:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T21:00:29","slug":"nine-weeks-out-and-we-can-get-a-good-regional-bracket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/2014\/01\/15\/nine-weeks-out-and-we-can-get-a-good-regional-bracket\/","title":{"rendered":"Nine weeks out, and we can get a good regional bracket"},"content":{"rendered":"
It’s time once again to do what we like to call Bracketology, college hockey style. It’s our weekly look at how I believe the NCAA tournament will wind up come selection time.<\/p>\n
It’s a look into what are the possible thought processes behind selecting and seeding the NCAA tournament teams.<\/p>\n
Those of you that are veterans of the college hockey scene know that it is all about the PairWise Rankings<\/a>. This is USCHO’s numerical approach that simulates the way the NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Committee chooses the teams that make the NCAA tournament.<\/p>\n The criteria are tweaked every so often — every so often being every year lately — in order to give what the committee believes will be the best tournament.<\/p>\n There were some major changes this year to the selection criteria. In short:<\/p>\n • PairWise comparisons are now done against all teams. There is no cutoff for the amount of teams, so the most PWR comparison wins that a team can have is 58 since there are 59 teams.<\/p>\n • There is now a home and away wins weighting applied to the Ratings Percentage Index<\/a>. In calculation of the index, wins on the road and losses at home have a weighting factor of 1.2. Wins at home and losses on the road have a weighting factor of 0.8. All neutral-site games have a weighting factor of 1.0. A tie is one-half of a win and one-half of a loss, so home\/road ties are treated accordingly for the teams involved.<\/p>\n • There is a quality wins bonus for wins against teams in the top 20 of the RPI. A win against the No. 1 team in the RPI is worth 0.05 points, and is scaled down by 0.0025 points for each place until you reach No. 20, where a bonus of 0.0025 points will be given.<\/p>\n The changes are a little complicated, so it is best to check out our FAQ<\/a>.<\/p>\n Since USCHO has begun the PairWise Rankings, we have correctly identified all of the teams that have been selected to the NCAA tournament.<\/p>\n For the past three years, I am the only prognosticator to have correctly predicted the exact brackets for the NCAA tournament, meaning that I have predicted how the committee thought when putting together the brackets.<\/p>\n This is the next installment of our Bracketology, and we’ll be bringing you a new one every week until we make our final picks before the field is announced on March 23.<\/p>\n If you want to skip the inner workings and get to the results of the analysis, then click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here are the facts:<\/p>\n • Sixteen teams are selected to participate in the national tournament.<\/p>\n • There are four regional sites<\/a> (East — Bridgeport, Conn.; Northeast — Worcester, Mass.; Midwest — Cincinnati; West — St. Paul, Minn.)<\/p>\n • A host institution that is invited to the tournament plays in the regional for which it is the host and cannot be moved. There are four host institutions this year: Yale in Bridgeport, Holy Cross in Worcester, Miami in Cincinnati and Minnesota in St. Paul.<\/p>\n • Seedings will not be switched. To avoid undesirable first-round matchups, including intraconference games (see below), teams will be moved among regionals, not reseeded.<\/p>\n Here are the NCAA’s guidelines on the matter, from the 2014 pre-championship manual<\/a>:<\/p>\n 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 regional site. For this model, the following is a basic set of priorities:<\/p>\n 1. Once the six automatic qualifiers and 10 at-large teams are selected, the next step is to develop four groups from the committee’s rankings of 1-16. The top four teams are No. 1 seeds and will be placed in the bracket so that if all four teams advance to the Men’s Frozen Four, the No. 1 seed will play the No. 4 seed and the No. 2 seed will play the No. 3 seed in the semifinals. The next four are targeted as No. 2 seeds. The next four are No. 3 seeds and the last four are No. 4 seeds.<\/p>\n 2. Step two is to place the home teams. Host institutions that qualify will be placed at home.<\/p>\n 3. Step three is to fill in the bracket so that first-round conference matchups are avoided, unless it corrupts the integrity of the bracket. If five or more teams from one conference are selected to the championship, then the integrity of the bracket will be protected (i.e., maintaining the pairing process according to seed will take priority over avoidance of first-round conference matchups). To complete each regional, the committee assigns one team from each of the remaining seeded groups so there is a No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 seed at each regional site.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n