Quote from: Matthew Webb on February 21, 2018, 12:25:05 pm

Probably should have put this here right away....

 Men's Bracketology: Week 2

Thanks for this thorough analysis. Are you going to do a forecast every week?

Yup, every Tuesday evening after each of the three sets of regional rankings, and then another on the evening of March 4 after all conference championships are decided.

This made me smile "... the overall weakness of the UCHC is a complete anchor ..." which, until a couple years ago, was the buoyancy factor which helped the ECAC/W get previously thought "undeserved" bids.  My how things have changed, and not for the better.

This league seems to have the kiss of death, and motivates every team (with an option), to flee.

Ha, yeah. And to be clear I'm speaking specifically to its non-conference performance this year, which was not good and thus drags down the entire league's SOS. 23-45-11 (.361) as a league, which is worst of any conference.

Bound to improve though considering there are four new/newer teams in there...

 Men's Bracketology: Week 1

Do you guys publish playoff capsules or predictions on each round / who makes the Frozen Four, etc.?

Big expanded previews for the Frozen Four along with what has been a massive amount of output once we're on-site at FF (like the Thursday features), though not sure of what exactly we'll do for the first two rounds. Recaps for sure, and with just two of us to handle it all we're working on getting everything planned. I believe Ray is planning a podcast with R.J. Tolan this week, but as far as previews go there will be...something. How elaborate I'm not sure yet.

Ray will be at one of the games this week and one next and I know I'll be in Point next weekend.

It's times like this I wish we had one more me or Ray and/or we could do this full-time. The output would be incredible. Ugh.

As for the bracket itself, I legitimately don't believe anything resembling a credible complaint can be made about it. It's funny to see comments that I'm serving as some mouthpiece of the committee. Me. The same guy who spent nearly a decade trashing it for its self-serving bull****. Yeah, sure.

But hey, if you call it out when it's pulling ridiculous stunts you also must give the new guys who have come in over the past 4-5 years credit for doing it right. Which they did. Again.

An argument of "I like me some team X and thus don't like the bracketz" does nothing to change that, and that's about all any complaints I've seen can be boiled to.  And I'm not trying to be obnoxious, but this really is the best possible thing that could have been done and if people still want to ignore that and pop off because they choose not to want to learn anything, that's their right, but it's also their problem to deal with at this point as nothing is going to be said that convinces them otherwise.

 Episode III

I hope people understand the simplified SOS point I'm trying to prove. The point isn't to wrangle about explaining OOWP while pointing out that if you really played the same team 25 times in a year you'd both have an SOS of zero.

The point is, simply, that gaps in SOS that have been historically deemed large often don't actually tell us anything meaningful about the quality of the teams in question.

Which puts me in a tough spot when we end up with something like this morning's final Pool C comparison. There always comes a point where I'm forced to guess or make assumptions, and when that time comes do I do what I think is "right" or do I hedge a bit and try to mimic the committee based on historical precedent, some other things I know, nudges we've received, etc? It's a tough call and it's something I've been weighing and haggling over for years. Which route actually represents the process better: my best interpretation thereof or my best interpretation of the committee's interpretation thereof? That is a very difficult question to answer. The former might be more true to the word, the latter more true to observed reality.

Regardless, the goal is to illustrate the process, and that's a goal I take seriously. The goal is not try to predict the bracket on a wing and a prayer so when it's right I can go home, take off my socks and smell them while thinking about how awesome I am. That sort of behavior might pass muster for some fanboys at RIT who have nothing better to do with their lives, but I prefer to live in the real world.

The great irony here is that a lot of the confusion exists thanks to former committee members themselves who bastardized the process for their own self-gain. Trying to beat down the (at the time warranted) belief that nonsense goes on takes time. A lot of time. The committee members over the past 4-5 years have done a great job of rectifying this and I like to think our shift to being illustrative as opposed to predictive has helped as well. While some discussions elsewhere continue to leave me bewildered, I do know that our columns get read more than ever and the complaints about them have gone from fairly routine/expected to almost zero.

That tells me that while a few people who like hearing themselves talk for the sake of talking seem unwilling (which is infinitely worse than incapable) to comprehend some basic things, that there a lot more people out there who are probably getting it. As usual the vocal minority does not represent all.

And that, is a wonderful thing.

So how can you hand the MIAC tourney to UST when both polls have Augsburg moving up one spot and the Auggies ranked in the west region and UST unranked? I don't see the logic unless you think UST has the experience factor in thier favor.

For the purpose of the exercise we have to assume Pool A teams based on...something. Thus we defer to whichever team is leading the conference at the time, was regular season champ, etc. In this case that's St. Thomas. There is no perfect way but that's the most (and perhaps only) consistent way to do it. Things like that are why though bracketology can be (hopefully) educational and interesting to analyze, nothing much really matters until this Sunday.

That said, I concede that I believe Augsburg has been the best team in the MIAC this year and would consider it a slight favorite on Saturday despite the fact St. Thomas is hosting.

If Hobart wins, that's probably true, but if Utica wins, it's possible they both get in. We'll be able to make better guesses about that after tomorrow's set of rankings.

I'd wager Hobart is pretty safe regardless and will likely even pull Pool B with a win and a Point loss. Should still be fine with a loss. Utica is a far more interesting case. Obviously a win would be huge, but there's a lot going on in Pool C at the moment and I'll have to see what things look like once I walk through it all. TBD...