No. 4 seeds<\/em><\/p>\nOne more time, taking No. 16 vs. No. 1, No. 15 vs. No. 2, etc.<\/p>\n
No. 16 RIT is sent to No. 1 Yale’s regional, the East Regional. \nNo. 15 Dartmouth is sent to No. 2 Minnesota-Duluth’s regional, the Midwest Regional. \nNo. 14 Nebraska-Omaha is sent to No. 3 North Dakota’s regional, the West Regional. \nNo. 13 Union is sent to No. 4 Denver’s regional, the Northeast Regional.<\/p>\n
The brackets as we have set them up:<\/p>\n
West Regional: \nNebraska-Omaha vs. North Dakota \nWestern Michigan vs. Michigan<\/p>\n
Midwest Regional: \nDartmouth vs. Minnesota-Duluth \nMerrimack vs. Wisconsin<\/p>\n
East Regional: \nRIT vs. Yale \nNotre Dame vs. Rensselaer<\/p>\n
Northeast Regional: \nUnion vs. Denver \nNew Hampshire vs. Boston College<\/p>\n
Our first concern is avoiding intra-conference matchups. We have a West Regional with two of them, and a UNH-BC matchup in the Northeast.<\/p>\n
Let’s take care of the UNH-BC matchup first. We can’t move UNH because the Wildcats are the host institution, so BC must be moved. The next ranking after BC at No. 5 is Michigan, No. 6. So we switch those two teams.<\/p>\n
We’ve now solved two of our intraconference matchup problems.<\/p>\n
The last one to solve is UNO-North Dakota.<\/p>\n
With three WCHA teams at the No. 1 seed band, we can switch UNO only to a matchup against Yale. So that’s what we do.<\/p>\n
So our tournament now becomes:<\/p>\n
West Regional: \nRIT vs. North Dakota \nWestern Michigan vs. Boston College<\/p>\n
Midwest Regional: \nDartmouth vs. Minnesota-Duluth \nMerrimack vs. Wisconsin<\/p>\n
East Regional: \nNebraska-Omaha vs. Yale \nNotre Dame vs. Rensselaer<\/p>\n
Northeast Regional: \nUnion vs. Denver \nNew Hampshire vs. Michigan<\/p>\n
Do we like the way this looks? We have no intraconference matchups, so we are OK. Bracket integrity seems to be OK.<\/p>\n
Do we have an attendance issue? I would say that there are some shaky issues there.<\/p>\n
Can we make it better? Of course we can.<\/p>\n
Let’s go back to our original bracketing.<\/p>\n
West Regional: \nNebraska-Omaha vs. North Dakota \nWestern Michigan vs. Michigan<\/p>\n
Midwest Regional: \nDartmouth vs. Minnesota-Duluth \nMerrimack vs. Wisconsin<\/p>\n
East Regional: \nRIT vs. Yale \nNotre Dame vs. Rensselaer<\/p>\n
Northeast Regional: \nUnion vs. Denver \nNew Hampshire vs. Boston College<\/p>\n
Now, remember, we have to switch out Boston College first. This is a must. But if you switch BC with the next ranking, you send BC out west and bring Michigan east, which creates a little bit of an attendance issue.<\/p>\n
So how can we change that?<\/p>\n
We can avoid the UNH-BC matchup by swapping BC with Rensselaer. That way, two big fan bases stay in the East.<\/p>\n
Let’s look at it now.<\/p>\n
West Regional: \nNebraska-Omaha vs. North Dakota \nWestern Michigan vs. Michigan<\/p>\n
Midwest Regional: \nDartmouth vs. Minnesota-Duluth \nMerrimack vs. Wisconsin<\/p>\n
East Regional: \nRIT vs. Yale \nNotre Dame vs. Boston College<\/p>\n
Northeast Regional: \nUnion vs. Denver \nNew Hampshire vs. Rensselaer<\/p>\n
The East and Northeast look good now. We’ve maintained our attendance and straightened out our intraconference matchup.<\/p>\n
Now on to the other matchups.<\/p>\n
As we mentioned, UNO has to play Yale in the first round to avoid the WCHA-WCHA matchup. So we have to make that switch.<\/p>\n
West Regional: \nRIT vs. North Dakota \nWestern Michigan vs. Michigan<\/p>\n
Midwest Regional: \nDartmouth vs. Minnesota-Duluth \nMerrimack vs. Wisconsin<\/p>\n
East Regional: \nNebraska-Omaha vs. Yale \nNotre Dame vs. Boston College<\/p>\n
Northeast Regional: \nUnion vs. Denver \nNew Hampshire vs. Rensselaer<\/p>\n
But, at the moment, RIT is not in the top 16, therefore, should be paired with the highest seed. In this case, that’s Minnesota-Duluth.<\/p>\n
And then to take care of the WMU-Michigan matchup, we swap WMU with Merrimack.<\/p>\n
West Regional: \nDartmouth vs. North Dakota \nMerrimack vs. Michigan<\/p>\n
Midwest Regional: \nRIT vs. Minnesota-Duluth \nWestern Michigan vs. Wisconsin<\/p>\n
East Regional: \nNebraska-Omaha vs. Yale \nNotre Dame vs. Boston College<\/p>\n
Northeast Regional: \nUnion vs. Denver \nNew Hampshire vs. Rensselaer<\/p>\n
So let’s look at our brackets now. It looks pretty good.<\/p>\n
In Green Bay we have UMD and Wisconsin, great bracket for attendance.<\/p>\n
In Bridgeport we have Yale, BC and Notre Dame. I like that as well.<\/p>\n
In Manchester we have New Hampshire and Rensselaer, a nice draw.<\/p>\n
In St. Louis we have Michigan and North Dakota, not bad either.<\/p>\n
Anything else we can switch up?<\/p>\n
I think that I can make a case for one more switch — swapping Dartmouth and Union.<\/p>\n
A Manchester regional with two New Hampshire teams? No offense to Union, which may draw fans, but Dartmouth playing in New Hampshire? That sounds like a no-brainer to me.<\/p>\n
West Regional: \nUnion vs. North Dakota \nMerrimack vs. Michigan<\/p>\n
Midwest Regional: \nRIT vs. Minnesota-Duluth \nWestern Michigan vs. Wisconsin<\/p>\n
East Regional: \nNebraska-Omaha vs. Yale \nNotre Dame vs. Boston College<\/p>\n
Northeast Regional: \nDartmouth vs. Denver \nNew Hampshire vs. Rensselaer<\/p>\n
That is it. My bracket for the week.<\/p>\n
More thoughts and education and plain wit on the blog. We’ll see you here next week for the next Bracketology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Who’s going to go where for the NCAA tournament? It’s never too early to ask Jayson Moy, who starts off our weekly Bracketology feature for the 2010-11 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Bracketology: A first try at predicting the NCAA pairings - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n