In the past week there has been a lot said and written about 2 of the at large selections for the NCAA Tournament in women's ice hockey. In this post, I will focus on the Penn State vs Providence comparison.
One of the arguments against Penn State has been that the CHA is not magically better this year, and does not all of a sudden deserve two bids. Robert Morris grabbed the CHA auto bid with an upset in the conference tourney. The question then becomes, is Penn State worthy of an at large bid? The question is not, is the CHA worthy of two bids?
Fans argue that Hockey East is stronger than the CHA. While I agree that on average Hockey East is stronger than the CHA, that's not the question. The question is, in a Providence vs Penn State comparison, who meets more of the stated criteria? Ultimately the committee felt Providence did.
If we look strictly at criteria below, as printed in the Championship Manual, I try to do an analysis of who meets each criteria. I'm not sure how the committee does this, but am trying to make sense of it.
The criteria to determine selections are as follows (in no particular order):
Won/Loss Record - Penn State wins point
Strength of Schedule - Providence wins point
Head to Head Results (when available) - na
Results versus Common Opponents - na
Quality Wins - I can't find definition of this (and suspect it's full of math I don't want to learn how to do), but likely Providence gets this point considering 2 wins over BC. Penn State did not get the chance to earn any quality wins due to their schedule not containing any games against teams in the top 10. It's very unfortunate if this is what it came down to, but it also feels unfair to not give Providence credit for their wins. If the committee took the stance they didn't want to disregard the Providence quality wins, it also seems they took the stance they COULD disregard the head to head wins of Minnesota over UMD. This seems inconsistent. If the committee wants to strictly go by criteria in one comparison, they open themselves to criticism by being subjective in another. I included subjective arguments for Penn State, further in this post.
Home / Away Weighting - not considered by me
Eligibility and Availability of Student Athletes - na
Penn State had the better Won/Loss Record, while Providence had a stronger strength of schedule. The only other relevant criteria is Quality Wins. I wonder if that's the point that Providence got that Penn State didn't. Since Penn State may not have got the chance to earn quality wins, when BC did, it feels a bit unfair but maybe this is the best the committee could do.
I didn't consider Home/Away weighting because that's getting pretty nitty gritty and I can't believe the analysis came down to that. Hopefully eventually an explanation will come from the committee, and hopefully the criteria are consistently applied to both the scenario above, and the Minnesota UMD scenario.
Two final points:
It's not a criteria for NCAA Tournament Selection, but Penn State versus Providence comparison of previous years reveals that Penn State has been .500 against Hockey East in recent years, and has a winning record versus Providence specifically. Providence has a losing record against Penn State, and has been .500 against CHA in recent years. For the purpose of this year's NCAA Tournament it's a moot point, but for the purposes of speaking factually about the accomplishments of Penn State and the CHA versus Providence, it's relevant. It is disingenuous for knowledgeable college hockey fans to speak of a team as though it is nothing more or less than the general reputation of its league. There's nuance that should be considered, and the committee could have chose to do that.
If the pairwise existed this year, it's entirely possible that Penn State would have earned an at large bid. I looked at Mercyhurst’s results the last time they earned an at large bid. It was 2014 and their results were eerily similar to what Penn State did this year, including a late season tie to Lindenwood and getting knocked out of CHA tourney by RIT. Reg season results were 15-3-2 (Penn State was 16-2-2 this year) and non conference was 7-5 (na this year). Mercyhurst made the tourney as an at large on strength of their pairwise. Of course their were 3 auto bids then, not 4, but also there was more teams because everyone was playing. So assuming there was a pairwise this year and assuming Coach Kampersal hadn’t loaded up Penn State's schedule with six games against best WCHA teams...Penn State really might have made the tourney as an at large based on math or if not they would have been very close.
