jimdahl

Edit -- Oh, I think I just figured out what you mean. You mean you preferred details pages like this over the new ones?

I agree. I try to check USCHO's table (that you linked to) now and then but didn't yesterday, but the PWR here had UND at #4 before last night's game and back up to #3 (unchanged from last week) after the win. The temporary drop was because our common opponents comparison with Denver went to Denver when the Sioux lost, but then back to UND when the Sioux won (Denver didn't play).

Man, even more pressure for the Sioux to pull this out. A sweep this weekend would put the Sioux in decent shape to take the Yale comparison in PWR, while anything less would doom it (due to COP).

Yeah, I don't know what's up with the change. SiouxSports still says 7:35MT because it's taking the game details from USCHO (where that's still what it says as of now... USCHO schedule). In the past, USCHO has usually done a pretty good job on the schedule/results, so I'm inclined to consider this a freak glitch unless it happens again.

Staal takes... WARD! (goes for his buddy) Lidstrom takes... Stamkos (no surprise there). Green (for Staal) takes... Ovie.

Only 10 minutes left until the All-Star draft. Looking forward to the schoolyard style pick-em. I don't really expect an answer, since the draft is only 10 minutes away, but what are the odds the first two picks are anything other than Stamkos and Ovie?

I think your "sure the Sioux wouldn't be able to play Minnesota or Iowa" is the key problem... A few schools (Wisconsin also) were developing policies of not playing UND because we were under NCAA sanctions, and (as much as Douple is to be believed) it was causing some aggravation with potential conferences. I wonder if a lot of schools who were happy to look the other way when the issue was unsettled would feel the need to blacklist UND once we were officially snubbing the NCAA and under active sanctions? But, you're right, we certainly could've waited for that to happen rather than hide from the mere threat of it. However, your question could also be extended to -- how much do we care about possibly being able to host a home FCS football game? Even in the Big Sky, if we kept the name we'd just have to give up home playoff games. I wonder how that would be handled -- would it automatically revert to the lesser team, or could we choose a neutral spot (e.g. Fargodome?) I suppose the former, because even if it weren't held at the Alerus, UND would still be "hosting".

It was mentioned a few weeks/pages back, but one PWR aspect of this weekend's series worth remembering- CC is the only common opponent scheduled between Yale and UND this year. Yale won the game, for a 1.000 COP record vs. UND. If UND does anything other than sweep CC, to also achieve a 1.000 COP record, Yale will take the COP comparison with UND. That would give Yale a 3-0 comparison lead, meaning that even if UND went on to take RPI it wouldn't be enough to win the comparison anymore. If UND sweeps CC, COP will be a wash for that comparison and UND will only need to take RPI to win the comparison with Yale.

I like where you predicted UND's 8th D-I championship. Will that be this year? Men's, I assume?

Well, we didn't restrict voting to Sioux fans, so I'm pretty sure that at least 22 people who read this thread want Hak fired, immediately!

Vikes fan, I cheer against the Packers the rest of the season, but would prefer to see them take it over the Steelers. I suppose I could look this up, but I feel like Superbowls lately have been sleepy, defensive affairs compared to the way I remember them in the 90s. It would be kind of fun to see Green Bay give the Steelers the Atlanta treatment, but I suppose that's pretty unlikely.

It's all good, it deserves a thread Plus, you found a version on YouTube, which is much handier than the "vimeo" I previously posted...

Though some prefer the Woog analogy, I always think of Denny Green and the Vikings. I was certainly among those calling for his head. Sure, he was bringing home 10 win seasons and making the playoffs every year, but he was never making it to the Superbowl. Green must just not be good at preparing them for the big games, I thought. Surely another coach could take this talented a team and get better results. That may have been true, Green may simply have been incapable of translating regular season success to playoff success, I really don't know. But, I did spend the next decade missing 10-win seasons and annual playoff appearances. Yeah, I know what you mean. I actually went into the game in Denver excited to see B.C., thinking surely UND would have them figured out. The loss to Denver in Columbus was just a bummer, but every loss since then has been sort of playing the same team.

You, my friend, get a +.

Yeah, that's the tweak that CHN broke a couple days ago. I hit briefly on the biggest impacts for UND here:: * The new TUCs gave UND an additional 4-0-1 in their vs. TUCs winning percentage, quite helpful * The new TUCs moved a lot of teams like Yale and Maine closer to meeting the threshold of 10 games vs TUCs, but that seems not to matter anymore

After learning about the TUC change, apparently the guys at USCHO pulled out the 2010 championship handbook and noticed that the 10 games vs. TUCs rule doesn't appear anywhere in the 2010 championship handbook (last year's), whereas the 2009 handbook still noted for TUC: "This category if used only if the two teams being compared have played a minimum of ten games versus “teams under consideration”." http://www.uscho.com/2011/01/19/committee-makes-another-change-to-ncaa-tournament-selection-criteria/ It never really mattered much, in that almost every team in serious contention played 10 vs TUCs (it was a weird patch put in place after one team from a lesser conference dominated the TUC comparisons because it had only played a few TUCs one year), and really doesn't matter anymore now that the definition of a TUC is so expanded. As I mentioned above... If TUC is finally in play vs. Maine, UND does now take the comparison, so is only losing the comparison vs. Yale. PWR (updated w/both CHN and USCHO's patches)

Yeah, check out the "share" button in the upper right. I do it with the KRACH predicts the NCAA tournament each year, like this: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aij8vsohBIXlcERONlBGclVwaTNjNzdPVE1IMk1DZlE&hl=en

Yeah, I just saw that on CHN. Committee Tweaks Pairwise Criteria for 2011 CHN has historically been very reliable on PWR calculations and seems to have great inside scoops with the committee, so I believe them. Here it is -- PWR Updated to include RPI >= .500 as TUCs The biggest immediate impact for UND is that adding RPI ranks 26-34 (see RPI table) as TUCs expands the TUC field enough to virtually guarantee that TUC becomes a comparison criterion for all the top teams (remember that the "minimum of 10 games vs. TUCs" rule was recently added as a patch for the reduced number of TUCs brought about by the previous change from RPI >.500 to top 25 in RPI). Overall, UND gains 5 games vs. TUCs, in which the Sioux went a helpful 4-0-1 (.800). Versus Maine, for example, Maine gained two games in which it went 0-1-1. As TUC comes into play vs Maine, remember that UND has the tie-breaker, RPI, and is likely to hold onto it. So, once TUC comes into play UND will overcome the 0-2 head-to-head and take the comparison. The change does also give Yale 4 more TUC games, enough to bring the TUC criterion into play. As much as could be hoped for given Yale's record, those additions bring in a loss (3-1-0 overall), bringing Yale to a .900 record so far. The Sioux, with their additions, are now at .7200. BUT, keep in mind that there's no way UND can take the COP comparison with Yale, so TUC vs. them doesn't really matter, we simply need RPI. Bottom line -- at least looking at the comparisons with the two teams currently above UND, adding more TUCs helps UND. The story may be different if UND underperforms this Spring.

That's my fault, PWR isn't actually that tricky, I just have a tough time deciding how much detail to go into. My post pretty much assumed that you know how to calculate PWR and that you're following along with the Yale row in this table. I could have instead included full explanations of how PWR works, but feel redundant doing that every time. However, that's why I wrote the bold bottom-line sentence -- the interesting takeaway is that the comparison could flip with a single loss by Yale next weekend, but that in the long run the Sioux need to sweep CC to hold onto the comparison vs. Yale. The rest was just background supporting evidence for those statements, only of interest to people who like calculating PWR on their own.

Since Yale lost but there no was no movement in PWR, a few people have asked what it takes to pass Yale. Here's the short version: Flipping the comparison with Yale without taking RPI isn't currently possible. RPI is the only criterion currently in use in the comparison between UND and Yale. So, if UND didn't take RPI, it would need to win two other comparison criteria to get a 2-1 comparison win (remember that UND is currently losing 2 comparisons, Yale and Maine, to Yale's 0, so if UND just flipped one it would need the tie-breaker -- RPI). TUC is likely to come into play for Yale (it's current schedule and rankings have it meet exactly 10 TUCs, the minimum required number for the criterion to be used), but Yale has a commanding 1.000 record vs. TUCs compared to UND's .6750; Yale would pretty much have to lose all 4 for UND to take TUC, but it seems unlikely that Yale could lose those 4 while still beating UND in RPI. COP will come into play when UND plays CC, but Yale will then have a 1.000 record vs. TUCs. If UND sweeps CC, that will result in a tie for TUC, any other result will give the point to Yale. RPI is the shortest path to flipping the comparison, and probably necessary to keep the comparison through the end of the year (because of notes on TUC and COP above). What does it take to flip RPI? * A loss to Clarkson would likely result in an RPI around 0.5965, which would likely be enough for UND to take the RPI lead with a win over UNO. * A subsequent win over St. Lawrence would probably get dropped as a negative win, even with a loss to Clarkson; though a loss to St. Lawrence would also do the trick. Bottom-line: One more Yale loss, assuming UND keeps winning, is likely to be enough for UND to take the lead in PWR. The CC series is critical to UND's prospects of holding on to the comparison vs. Yale until the end, no less than a sweep will do.

SiouxU31 is right, Yale would be .6057 if not for the adjustments. But, in the spirit of teaching a man to fish... You can see the full details of the RPI calculation for any team by clicking "details" under the team name on the SiouxSports RPI page (when you lose this link, you can also get there by clicking rankings -> RPI under hockey on the front page). Here is Yale's RPI page At the top, it shows you the unadjusted calculation and the effect of the adjustments. One of the really cool things about those RPI details pages are the "future RPI" tables. The top part predicts the team's end-of-season RPI, based on how many of their remaining games they win. The bottom half shows the RPI value of each remaining scheduled game. Those that have the win column grayed out would be negative impact wins, if everything stayed the same. So, if Yale continued at its current pace, 4 more wins would be tossed out by the end of the season.

I actually think it's a funny idea to chant the name of the benched goalie instead of "sieve", but it's a little rough when the benched goalie is: 1) the best sv% in program history, and 2) out with a career-ending injury.

A good discussion of the recent NHL headshot injuries and what the rules actually are. Confusion reigns at Headshot Theater - SI NHL Red Light The NHL rules (particularly rule 48) are pretty clearly a mess. Given the recent attention in the NFL to concussions, and with Kariya out for the season and Crosby now sidelined due to one, will the NHL look at something like the IIHF's rule?

Wodon has a slightly different take... Eligibility of Yale Player questioned Sounds more like some anonymous whistle-blower tried to the stir the pot, but no one is interested in pursuing it, at this point.

Yep -- nothing cements an image of greatness like bringing home championships. Look how quickly Toews jumped up to be considered one of the league's most valuable players.