{"id":24483,"date":"2002-03-07T22:09:40","date_gmt":"2002-03-08T04:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2002\/03\/07\/division-iii-womens-tournament-explained\/"},"modified":"2010-08-17T19:54:24","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T00:54:24","slug":"division-iii-womens-tournament-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/2002\/03\/07\/division-iii-womens-tournament-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"Division III Women’s Tournament Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"
The NCAA Division III Women’s tournament has recently drawn criticism and fire due to the non-inclusion of Wisconsin-Stevens Point as one of the teams playing for the championship.<\/p>\n
While unfortunate, the selection committee had a tough decision to make based on the rules that they were given.<\/p>\n
According to the NCAA Division III Women’s Championship Handbook:<\/p>\n
Pool A will be compromised of the team champions from each conference that meets the requirements for automatic qualification.<\/p>\n
Pool B will comprise of independent institutions and institutions that are members of conferences that do not meet the requirements for automatic
\nqualification.<\/p>\nPool C will be reserved for institutions from automatic qualifying conferences that are not their conference champion.<\/p>\n
Berths from Pool B and C will be selected on a national basis, using regional selection criteria. There will be no predetermined regional allocations for Pools B and C.<\/p>\n
Pools B and C will not be combined.<\/p>\n
There will be no maximum or minimum number of berths from one region.<\/p>\n
For the 2002 championship, no conference will receive more than one automatic berth.<\/p>\n
2002 berths:
\nPool A= 3 institutions
\nPool B= 1 institution
\nPool C= 2 institution<\/p><\/blockquote>\nPool A conferences this past season were: ECAC East, NESCAC and MIAC<\/p>\n
This means that five of the six berths were coming from those three conferences, and one team, the Pool B selection, would come from all of the other conferences.<\/p>\n
The NCHA and ECAC West fell into the selection criteria as Pool B teams.<\/p>\n
When the selections were announced, the selections went as follows:<\/p>\n
Pool A: Manhattanville, Bowdoin and St. Mary’s
\nPool B: Elmira
\nPool C: Gustavus Adolphus and Middlebury<\/p>\nNote that this was according to the criteria laid out. Pool A were the automatic qualifiers due to winning the conference tournament. Pool B was a team that was not a member of an automatic qualifying conference. Pool C teams
\nwere both members of automatic qualifying conferences that did not win the automatic berth.<\/p>\nPool A is pretty clear. Pool C was also pretty clear, the two teams selected were the best of the remaining teams in the three qualifying conferences according to PWR and RPI.<\/p>\n
Therefore, the source of the controversy lies in Pool B where Elmira was selected ahead of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.<\/p>\n
If one did a head-to-head comparison of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and Elmira, what would one see?<\/p>\n
Once again, from the NCAA Division III Women’s Championship Handbook:<\/p>\n
The committee will select three at-large teams based on conference and regional competition using the following primary selection criteria (in priority order):<\/p>\n
1. Winning percentage, head to head results and results against common opponents;<\/p>\n
2. Strength of schedule as determined by opponent’s winning percentage,<\/p>\n
and<\/p>\n
3. Results against teams already in the tournament.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Let’s take a look at a comparison:<\/p>\n
Winning percentage<\/b>: Elmira – 94.2%, Wisc.-SP – 96.3%
\nHead To Head<\/b>: None
\nResults Against Common Opponents<\/b>: No games played
\nOpponents Winning Percentage<\/b>: Elmira – 55.01%, Wisc,-SP – 51.61%
\nResults Against Teams In Tournament<\/b>: Elmira – 1-0 (over Manhattanville), Wisc.-SP – 2-0 (over St. Mary’s and Gustavus Adolphus)<\/p>\nIt’s a tough call. Break it down even further and let’s use the PWR.<\/p>\n
Elmira is first in the PWR, Wisconsin-Stevens Point second. But what about the
\nindividual comparison?<\/p>\nElmira vs Wis.-Stevens Point
RPI 0.6790 1 0.6735 0
L16 15- 0- 1 1 15- 1- 0 0
TUC 10- 1- 1 0 12- 1- 0 1
H2H 0 0
COP 0- 0- 0 0 0- 0- 0 0
===============================================
PTS 2 1<\/pre>\nElmira wins the comparison.<\/p>\n
Is this how Elmira got chosen? No one but the committee really knows.<\/p>\n
But the bottom line is it was a tough choice, but as one can make the case as to why Wisconsin-Stevens Point should have been in the tournament, you can also make the case that Elmira should have been in the tournament for the same reasons.<\/p>\n
This isn’t meant to justify Elmira getting into the tournament, or Wisconsin-Stevens Point being left out of the tournament. This is just a thought process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As usual, the NCAA’s tournament selection has drawn criticism. But the selection process in hockey is normally a formulaic, easily-explained, step-by-step process. And that is the case here, too, for the first NCAA Women’s Division III tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"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":[5],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Division III Women's Tournament Explained - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n