2018 Big Ten Tournament Playoff Scenarios

Entering the final day of the regular season, the Gophers still don't know whether they'll be home or away for the first round of the Big Ten tournament.  Because the Gophers are 13-5-1 at home and 4-9-1 on the road, it'd probably be good if they could have home ice for the first round.

The scenarios for who the Gophers could play are below:

• If Minnesota loses to Penn State Saturday, they play Penn State at Penn State next weekend in the first round of the conference tournament.
• If Wisconsin does not win Saturday against Ohio State, they'll lock in sixth place and will play Michigan.  Wisconsin can move into fifth place with a win and a PSU regulation loss.  In this scenario, Wisconsin would travel to Mariucci to take on the Gophers in the first round.
• If Minnesota gets at least one point Saturday, they will play at Mariucci for the first round of the B1G Tourney and could end up playing either Penn State (with any number of points or with a Wisconsin loss/tie), or Wisconsin (UW win + PSU loss).

2015 NCAA Tournament Bracketology

By virtue of their B1G Conference Playoff title, the Minnesota Gophers will be playing in the NCAA Tournament as a #3 seed.

Now that all of the other conference tournament results are in, let's take a stab at predicting the brackets the NCAA Selection Committee will unveil tomorrow afternoon.

The field of 16 breaks down like this:

1 Seeds
Minnesota State (#1 Overall)
North Dakota
Boston University
Miami

2 Seeds
Denver
Minnesota-Duluth
Michigan Tech
Nebraska-Omaha

3 Seeds
Harvard
Minnesota
Boston College
St. Cloud State

4 Seeds
Yale
Quinnipiac
Providence
RIT

The first step of the Bracketology process is to place host teams in their own regionals.

North Dakota is placed in the Fargo regional as the only host team that made the tournament.

Next, starting with the #1 overall seed (Mankato), #1 seeds are placed in the regional closest to them - Mankato is placed in the South Bend regional, Boston University is placed in the Manchester regional, and Miami is placed in Providence (BU is about as close to Manchester as Providence, and this makes things easier down the line).

Now we place the remaining teams in their regionals based on ideal seed bands (1 vs 16 and 8 vs 9, 2 vs 15 and 7 vs 10, 3 vs 14 and 6 vs 11, 4 vs 13 and 5 vs 12):

When we do that, we get the following:

South Bend
Mankato vs RIT
Nebraska-Omaha vs Harvard

Fargo
North Dakota vs Providence
Michigan Tech vs Minnesota

Manchester
BU vs Quinnipiac
Minnesota-Duluth vs BC

Providence
Miami vs Yale
Denver vs St. Cloud State

Now, we're looking to eliminate first-round intra-conference matchups.  We have only one in Providence with Denver playing St. Cloud.  Because the NCHC has three #2 seeds, the only way to avoid this matchup is to swap Minnesota and St. Cloud State.  Now we're left with:

South Bend
Mankato vs RIT
Nebraska-Omaha vs Harvard

Fargo
North Dakota vs Providence
Michigan Tech vs St. Cloud State

Manchester
BU vs Quinnipiac
Minnesota-Duluth vs BC

Providence
Miami vs Yale
Denver vs Minnesota

Now, what can we do to maximize attendance at these sites?  One thing we can do is swap Minnesota and Harvard, to bring the Crimson out East and the Gophers back West.

South Bend
Mankato vs RIT
Nebraska-Omaha vs Minnesota

Fargo
North Dakota vs Providence
Michigan Tech vs St. Cloud State

Manchester
BU vs Quinnipiac
Minnesota-Duluth vs BC

Providence
Miami vs Yale
Denver vs Harvard

You'd like to get Providence in Providence, so let's swap Yale, Quinnipiac and Providence to try and preserve bracket integrity as best we can.  So now we've got:

South Bend
Mankato vs RIT
Nebraska-Omaha vs Minnesota

Fargo
North Dakota vs Quinnipiac
Michigan Tech vs St. Cloud State

Manchester
BU vs Yale
Minnesota-Duluth vs BC

Providence
Miami vs Providence
Denver vs Harvard

Okay.  All four regionals look pretty good from an attendance perspective here.  South Bend is probably the weakest of the four, but Minnesota usually travels pretty well and Mankato isn't that far either.  We'd love to get Miami to South Bend, and the committee in the past has said that "a flight is a flight" and sent a higher-ranked team farther in favor of a bus ride for a lower team.  However, the committee also likes to keep the 1 vs 16 matchup intact, and moving Mankato to Providence would screw up our whole "Providence in Providence" idea.

So, the question is: does the committee care more about preserving the 1/16 match up, or about attendance?  If they care about attendance more I could see Mankato going to Providence, but in the past they've been sure to protect that 1/16 matchup so I can't see them changing that now.  Here's my final bracket:

South Bend
Mankato vs RIT
Nebraska-Omaha vs Minnesota

Fargo
North Dakota vs Quinnipiac
Michigan Tech vs St. Cloud State

Manchester
BU vs Yale
Minnesota-Duluth vs BC

Providence
Miami vs Providence
Denver vs Harvard

NCAA Tournament: Final Bracket and Predictions

Here is the Final Bracket for the 2014 NCAA tournament:

St. Paul

1 Minnesota vs 16 Robert Morris

8 Notre Dame vs 9 St. Cloud State

Worcester

2 BC vs 15 Denver

7 UMass-Lowell vs 10 Minnesota State

Bridgeport

3 Union vs 13 Vermont

6 Quinnipiac vs 11 Providence

Cincinnati

4 Wisconsin vs 14 North Dakota

5 Ferris State vs 12 Colgate

The bracket turned out really nice this year, almost perfect bracket integrity and nearly perfect as far as attendance goes.  Now, some predictions:

St. Paul - Minnesota beats Robert Morris handily in the first game, St. Cloud State beats a hot Notre Dame in a close one, Minnesota edges St. Cloud to advance to the Frozen Four

Worcester - Denver gives BC a tough game but the Eagles prevail, Lowell beats Mankato in front of a home crowd, Lowell beats BC in overtime

Bridgeport - Union handles Vermont, Providence upsets Quinnipiac, Union beats Providence

Cincinnati - Wisconsin over North Dakota, Colgate beats Ferris State in OT, Wisconsin beats Colgate

Frozen Four - Wisconsin beats Minnesota in a low-scoring game, Union beats Lowell.  Union beats Wisconsin to win the national championship.

Thoughts on Minnesota: I know they've struggled lately, but Minnesota has what teams need in the playoffs - defense and goaltending.  The question is whether they've got enough goal scoring to be able to steal wins in tight, defensive games.  I like Minnesota in games where the other team plays a more wide-open, offensive style of hockey, but they've shown that they struggle against teams that play the trap and clog up the middle of the rink (like Wisconsin).  The Gophers have shown that they can beat anybody in the country if they play well, and lose to just about anybody if they don't show up.  They didn't show up on Friday and got beat by a good-enough Ohio State team - a team just as good as any team the Gophers will play in the NCAA tournament.  Will Coach Lucia have the team ready to show up for the regional?  I hope so.

Saturday Night / Sunday Morning Bracketology: UND Made It (Barely)

Now that the dust has settled, let me tell you who is "in" and who is "out" of the NCAA Tournament.

As you remember, there were just a few teams left fighting for the remaining spots in the 16-team field.  North Dakota needed a win and some help in order to reach the tournament, and they got just that, beating Western Michigan 5-0 in the NCHC 3rd Place Game before sweating out a UMass-Lowell triumph over UNH and a thrilling 5-4 overtime win for Wisconsin.  The UW and UML wins gave North Dakota the last At Large bid.

Minnesota State was another team fighting for a spot, and they secured it by winning the WCHA Championship against Ferris State by a 4-1 score.

Denver bested Miami (OH) 4-3 to claim the NCHC's autobid and reach the tournament.  Same for Robert Morris, who beat Canisius 7-4 to win the Atlantic Hockey championship.

So, the NCAA Tournament field is set:

1 Minnesota

2 BC

3 Union

4 Wisconsin

5 Ferris State

6 Quinnipiac

7 UMass-Lowell

8 Notre Dame

9 St. Cloud State

10 Minnesota State

11 Providence

12 Colgate

13 Vermont

14 North Dakota

15 Denver

16 Robert Morris

So, let's go through the bracketology here.  First order of business, place host teams in their own regionals.  Minnesota is the only host team that made the field, so they are placed in St. Paul.  Next, place the remaining 1-band seeds (teams 1-4) starting with the highest-ranked team, as close to home as possible.  BC gets placed in Worcester, Union in Bridgeport, Wisconsin in Cincinnati.

Now we place the teams so that the seedings follow bracket integrity: the #1 overall seed should have #s 8, 9, and 16 in their region; #2 overall should have 7, 10, 15; #3 should have 6, 11, 14; and the #4 seed's region should contain 5, 12, and 13.

Therefore, our "preliminary" brackets look like this:

St. Paul

1 Minnesota vs 16 Robert Morris

8 Notre Dame vs 9 St. Cloud State

Worcester

2 BC vs 15 Denver

7 UMass-Lowell vs 10 Minnesota State

Bridgeport

3 Union vs 14 North Dakota

6 Quinnipiac vs 11 Providence

Cincinnati

4 Wisconsin vs 13 Vermont

5 Ferris State vs 12 Colgate

At this point, we look to see if we have any first round interconference matchups - those need to be avoided as well as possible.  Luckily, though, there are none.

What about attendance?  Can we swap any teams around to help out attendance?  One easy move would be to swap North Dakota with Vermont.  We'd love to swap Minnesota State with Colgate, but that would create an all-WCHA first round matchup with Ferris State so we can't do that.

St. Paul

1 Minnesota vs 16 Robert Morris

8 Notre Dame vs 9 St. Cloud State

Worcester

2 BC vs 15 Denver

7 UMass-Lowell vs 10 Minnesota State

Bridgeport

3 Union vs 13 Vermont

6 Quinnipiac vs 11 Providence

Cincinnati

4 Wisconsin vs 14 North Dakota

5 Ferris State vs 12 Colgate

This bracket looks pretty good.  This is the same thing that USCHO's Jayson Moy came up with tonight.  I could foresee one more potential change, though: Denver to St. Paul and Robert Morris to Worcester.  The committee has usually tried to "protect the #1 overall seed" by making sure they play the #16 overall seed, but in this case the #15 and #16 seeds are both autobid teams from outside the top 16 in the PairWise Rankings.  I could see the committee maybe thinking that because both Denver and Robert Morris came from outside the top 16 that they could tweak those matchups for attendance purposes as well.  I still think the above brackets are the ones we'll end up with, but if it's anything different than the above, I have to wager the only change will be DU to St. Paul and Robert Morris to Worcester.

Saturday Morning PWR Roundup: Who's In, Who's Out, and Who Has a Chance

Things are starting to solidify in the PairWise Rankings (PWR) as the season winds down.

As a reminder, the PWR is the mathematical formula which picks the NCAA Tournament field in college hockey.

Here's the way it looks to me:

The following 13 teams are "locks" (as far as I can tell) to make the 16-team NCAA Tournament field:

Minnesota

BC

Union

Ferris State

Wisconsin

Quinnipiac

UMass-Lowell

Notre Dame

St. Cloud State

Colgate

Providence

Denver / Miami (whoever wins the NCHC)

Robert Morris / Canisius (whoever wins AHA)

There are three spots remaining, and there are three autobids still out there to be claimed by:

Ohio State, if they win the B1G.  If they do not win tonight, they are out.

New Hampshire, if they win HE.  If they do not win tonight, their season is also done.

Minnesota State, if they win the WCHA.  If they do not win, they've still got a pretty good chance of earning an At Large bid (explained below).

Unless all three of the above teams win tonight, there will still be at least one more At Large bid to be determined.  Things are still fluid with games left to be played, but I think these teams still have a chance to make it, in order of likelihood:

Vermont - they need one of Mankato, Ohio State or New Hampshire to lose tonight to squeak in.  If all three of those teams win, it looks like they'll be the last team out.

Mankato - they are in with a win, but if they lose they'll need at least one of Ohio State or New Hampshire to lose tonight to get in with the last bid.

North Dakota - they need to win today in the NCHC third place game, and then need Ohio State and New Hampshire to lose.

Michigan - they need a North Dakota tie or loss in the NCHC third place game, and they need Ohio State and New Hampshire to lose.

That looks like all the teams left standing.  Here's what some of the seeds look like:

Minnesota is guaranteed the #1 overall seed.  They will be at the St. Paul regional and should play the #16 overall seed, which this year will be the winner of the Atlantic Hockey autobid - that's the winner of Canisius / Robert Morris tonight.

BC is almost guaranteed the #2 overall seed (I was able to find one scenario where Union jumps them into the #2).  They will be in the Worcester regional and SHOULD play the #15 overall seed, unless that team is Miami (because Miami is the "host school" at the Cincinnati regional, they must be slotted there if they make the tournament) or New Hampshire / Vermont (those teams play in Hockey East together, and the committee avoids first round inter-conference matchups where possible).  I think it's most likely that BC matches up against Denver or Ohio State if either of them wins tonight, and if neither does they'll face North Dakota, Michigan or Mankato

Union is guaranteed the #3 overall seed.  They will be in the Bridgeport regional and should play the #14 overall seed, which will likely be New Hampshire or Ohio State (if they win their tourneys), and if not then probably Vermont, Michigan or North Dakota.

The #4 and #5 overall seeds (the #4 being the last #1 band seed available) will likely go to Ferris State and Wisconsin.  Ferris State is guaranteed the #4 seed with a win tonight or a Wisconsin loss.  Whomever it is, this seed will play at the Cincinnati regional, and will play Miami (OH) if they win tonight, and if not they'll play whichever #4 band seed is left standing - my guess is Mankato.

The #5 seed (Ferris State or Wisconsin) should also be in Cincinnati.

Quinnipiac should be the #6 seed and should get slotted in Bridgeport.

UMass-Lowell looks like the #7 seed and would go to Worcester.

Notre Dame is the #8 seed and will be in St. Paul.  They'll face #9 seeded St. Cloud State in the first game.

(Note: these brackets are shaping out PERFECTLY for the committee so far.  UW and Ferris in Cincinnati, Minnesota and SCSU in St. Paul, BC and Lowell in Worcester, Union and Quinnipiac in Bridgeport is just about how you'd draw it up attendance-wise).

The #10 seed looks like Colgate at this point.  They would be slated to play Lowell in Worcester, all else equal.  However, it looks like Mankato could move all the way up to the #10 spot with a win tonight, which would bump every other team down one spot.  I think they'd probably send Mankato to Cincinnati anyways, unless Ferris State is the #2 seed there...

#11 looks like Providence to me.  They'd head to Bridgeport to play Quinnipiac.

The rest is where it gets interesting, with those last teams fighting for their spots.

For what it's worth, here's how the brackets shape up so far:

St. Paul

1 Minnesota vs 16 Robert Morris / Canisius (AHA Winner)

8 Notre Dame vs 9 St. Cloud State

Worcester

2 BC vs ??

7 Lowell vs 10 Colgate

Bridgeport

3 Union vs ??

6 Quinnipiac vs 11 Providence

Cincinnati

4 Ferris State / Wisconsin vs ??

5 Ferris State / Wisconsin vs ??

Again, those question marks will be filled out by four of the following: Denver or Miami (whoever wins the NCHC), Ohio State, New Hampshire, Vermont, Mankato, North Dakota, Michigan.

Some interesting notes to consider: in the first round, BC cannot play UNH or Vermont, Ferris can't play Mankato, and Wisconsin can't play Michigan or Ohio State.  If Miami wins they will have to play in Cincinnati as the host school there.

That's the way it looks to me!  I'll try to throw together a final bracketology once the dust settles tonight.

NOTE: I have found some scenarios where the seeds don't 100% match what I wrote above.  It looks like there are scenarios where there is a three-way tie for #5 overall between Wisconsin, Quinnipiac and Lowell that would change the seedings slightly.  However, I think that the committee will likely set the brackets up like the above - the seeds are close enough and the attendance is near perfect.

Bracketology: Gophers Versus North Dakota in St. Paul Regional Final?

When it comes to NCAA tournament time in College Hockey, the Pairwise Rankings are king.

For the uninitiated, the Pairwise Rankings (abbreviated PWR) is a system that mimics the formula that the NCAA Committee uses to select and seed the NCAA Hockey Tournament.  You can find the PWR HERE.  The committee takes the 16 qualifying teams (the six teams that win their conference tournament, and then the next 10 teams in the PWR that did not already qualify) and ships them out to their regional sites with their first round matchups based on several different factors:

• The "Host Team" of each regional is automatically placed in that region, if they make the tournament field.  The regionals this year are in St. Paul (Minnesota is the host), Cincinnati (Miami-OH), Worcester (Holy Cross) and Bridgeport (Yale)
• The seedings are then placed so that the #1 overall seed plays #16, #2 plays #15, etc.
• Teams will be broken into seed "bands" and placed in the regionals so that the #1 "band" seed in the region plays the #4 "band" seed, and #2 plays #3 in the first round.

From there, the committee has a couple more rules to follow:

• Teams from the same conference cannot play against each other in the first round unless there is no way to avoid it.
• Teams can be moved around if it doesn't hurt the bracket integrity too much to try and maximize attendance (you cannot swap a #3 band seed and a #2 band seed).

So, based off of that, here's what we have (PWR taken from USCHO.com):

PWR Rankings as of 3/3/14

1. Minnesota

2. BC

3. Union

4. SCSU

5. Wisconsin

6. Ferris State

7. Quinnipiac

8. UMass-Lowell

9. North Dakota

10. Notre Dame

11. Providence

12. Michigan

13. Cornell

14. Vermont

15. Northeastern

16. Colgate

17. Mankato

AQ: Mercyhurst (AHA Winner)

For the purposes of this blog, I'm going to assume that Mankato either jumps ahead of Colgate and Northeastern to make it into the top 15 of the PWR or wins their conference tournament to qualify automatically.  They've been really hot lately, and I think they'll squeak in.

From here we place the teams in regions starting with the #1 band seeds:

Minnesota is placed in the St. Paul regional, BC is placed in the Worcester regional, Union is placed in Bridgeport, and SCSU is placed in Cincinnati.

Now we place the 2-4 band seeds based on bracket integrity (perfect brackets would have 1-8-9-16, 2-7-10-15, 3-6-11-14, 4-5-12-13 seeds grouped together).  When we do this, our brackets are:

St. Paul

1 Minnesota vs 16 Mercyhurst

8 Lowell vs 9 UND

Cincinnati

4 SCSU vs 13 Cornell

5 Wisconsin vs 12 Michigan

Worcester

2 BC vs 15 Mankato

7 Quinnipiac vs 10 Notre Dame

Bridgeport

3 Union vs 14 Vermont

6 Ferris St vs 11 Providence

How does this look?  For starters, we have an intraconference matchup in Cincinnati with Wisconsin/Michigan, so we need to swap something there.  To keep bracket integrity as sound as possible, let's switch Providence and Michigan around.  Now we've got:

St. Paul

1 Minnesota vs 16 Mercyhurst

8 Lowell vs 9 UND

Cincinnati

4 SCSU vs 13 Cornell

5 Wisconsin vs 11 Providence

Worcester

2 BC vs 15 Mankato

7 Quinnipiac vs 10 Notre Dame

Bridgeport

3 Union vs 14 Vermont

6 Ferris St vs 12 Michigan

What do we think here?  No intra-conference matchups, but we can move things around a bit to help attendance out.  Let's go back to our original brackets:

St. Paul

1 Minnesota vs 16 Mercyhurst

8 Lowell vs 9 UND

Cincinnati

4 SCSU vs 13 Cornell

5 Wisconsin vs 12 Michigan

Worcester

2 BC vs 15 Mankato

7 Quinnipiac vs 10 Notre Dame

Bridgeport

3 Union vs 14 Vermont

6 Ferris St vs 11 Providence

What if instead of swapping Michigan with Providence, we swapped them with Notre Dame?

St. Paul

1 Minnesota vs 16 Mercyhurst

8 Lowell vs 9 UND

Cincinnati

4 SCSU vs 13 Cornell

5 Wisconsin vs 10 Notre Dame

Worcester

2 BC vs 15 Mankato

7 Quinnipiac vs 12 Michigan

Bridgeport

3 Union vs 14 Vermont

6 Ferris St vs 11 Providence

This is looking a bit better, but we'd like to move Lowell out east.  Let's do that by swapping them with Ferris State.

St. Paul

1 Minnesota vs 16 Mercyhurst

6 Ferris State vs 9 UND

Cincinnati

4 SCSU vs 13 Cornell

5 Wisconsin vs 10 Notre Dame

Worcester

2 BC vs 15 Mankato

7 Quinnipiac vs 12 Michigan

Bridgeport

3 Union vs 14 Vermont

8 Lowell vs 11 Providence

Okay, we're almost done here.  That last swap resulted in an intra-conference matchup in Bridgeport which we'll need to alleviate.  The options here are to switch Quinnipiac and Lowell, or to switch Providence and Michigan.  I like Lowell in Worcester more than I like Providence in Worcester, I love Quinnipiac in Bridgeport, and I like the idea of making BC's region easier instead of harder (the #2 overall seed should have an easier road than #3 overall Union), so let's swap Quinnipiac and Lowell:

St. Paul

1 Minnesota vs 16 Mercyhurst

6 Ferris State vs 9 UND

Cincinnati

4 SCSU vs 13 Cornell

5 Wisconsin vs 10 Notre Dame

Worcester

2 BC vs 15 Mankato

8 Lowell vs 12 Michigan

Bridgeport

3 Union vs 14 Vermont

7 Quinnipiac vs 11 Providence

No intra-conference matchups here, but is there anything more we can do to help with attendance?  The committee usually protects the #1 overall seed's matchup with the #16 seed, so that rules out swapping Mercyhurst for Mankato.  But what about swapping Cornell and Mankato?

St. Paul

1 Minnesota vs 16 Mercyhurst

6 Ferris State vs 9 UND

Cincinnati

4 SCSU vs 15 Mankato

5 Wisconsin vs 10 Notre Dame

Worcester

2 BC vs 13 Cornell

8 Lowell vs 12 Michigan

Bridgeport

3 Union vs 14 Vermont

7 Quinnipiac vs 11 Providence

Above are our final brackets.  Attendance looks pretty good in all of the regions, and there are no intra-conference matchups to speak of.  This sets up a potential matchup between the Gophers and North Dakota in the St. Paul regional final, as well as some other interesting matchups.

This post is very much inspired by the amazing Jason Moy over at USCHO.  He's gotten everything exactly right in the tournament the past three years.