Thursday, March 18, 2010

Bracket Prediction: Pre-Conference Tournament Edition

With this weekend’s conference tournaments coming up, I thought I would take a look at who would play who and where if the season ended today. The games themselves could completely screw this up, but here goes.


Rankings come from PWR. The top 16 looks like this:

1 Denver

2 Miami

3 Wisconsin

4t Boston College

4t North Dakota

4t St. Cloud State

7 Bemidji State

8t Ferris State

8t Cornell

10 Yale

11t Minnesota-Duluth

11t Northern Michigan

13 Alaska

14 Vermont

15 New Hampshire

16 Michigan

17 Michigan State


Bemidji was upset last week in the CHA championships, which makes the lame duck league a two-bid conference. Atlantic Hockey also sends their champ. Since neither of these guys are in the top 16, Michigan and UNH are out, leaving inactive UNH as the last one out (They could get back in if teams ahead of them, like Vermont, were to lose early in their tourneys). If we add the lower auto-bids to the fold we get this for a seeding:


1 Denver

2 Miami

3 Wisconsin

4 Boston College

5 North Dakota

6 St. Cloud State

7 Bemidji State

8 Ferris State

9 Cornell

10 Yale

11 Minnesota-Duluth

12 Northern Michigan

13 Alaska

14 Vermont

15 Alabama-Huntsville (CHA champ)

16 RIT (projected AHA champ)


Matching these guys up and putting teams closest to home to ensure attendance, we get this bracket:

Northeast Region (Worcester)

  1. BC
  2. North Dakota
  3. Yale
  4. Alaska

East Region (Albany)

  1. Wisconsin
  2. Bemidji State
  3. Cornell
  4. RIT

Midwest Region (Fort Wayne)

  1. Miami
  2. Ferris State
  3. Northern Michigan
  4. Vermont

West Region (Minneapolis)

  1. Denver
  2. St. Cloud State
  3. Minnesota- Duluth
  4. Alabama-Huntsville


This is what I THINK the bracket should be. This would cut down on travel for everybody and keep all of the seeds intact. It would not, however, ensure a 1-16, 2-15 deal, but this is better for the fans. Alaska is the only team that gets screwed here, but they are used to traveling all the time anyway. This weekend could knock this thing silly, especially if an unranked team like Maine or BU wins Hockey East. Then they would get an auto bid and BC would be the sole at large from the league. There is also a scenario that if BC beats UVM, they could be the only HE school in the tourney. This would be music to the ears of people out West, but the Worcester regional wouldn’t be the same without another HE team. We’ll see how it plays out.


Up later, a preview of Hockey East final four.

No comments:

Post a Comment