NCAA Men's Hockey Bracketology: January 28, 2016

It remains (as always) far too early to meaningfully look at the Pairwise rankings. But with the Beanpot getting underway next Monday and with nonconference play largely over, it certainly feels like the tournament push is well underway in college hockey. Let's have some fun and talk through what the bracket might look like if the season ended today.

Step One: Choose the 16 Teams who make the field

We start with the autobids, which I'm going to pick based on who is the highest ranked team in the PWR from each conference. Obviously the conference tournament champion isn't always the highest ranked regular season team, so things could get mixed up here.

#1 Quinnipiac... ECAC
#2 St. Cloud State... NCHC
#4 Providence... HEA
#6 Michigan... B1G
#19 Bowling Green... WCHA
#23 Robert Morris... AHC

Following a sweep of Alaska Anchorage, Bowling Green has moved ahead of Minnesota State for the top spot among WCHA teams, at #19 in the PWR. Robert Morris remains the highest ranked AHC team down at #23.

And now the ten at large teams based on the Pairwise rankings...

#3 North Dakota NCHC
#5 Harvard ECAC
#7 BC HEA
#8 Notre Dame HEA
#9 Omaha NCHC
#10 Yale ECAC
#11 BU HEA
#12 Lowell HEA
#13 Denver NCHC
#14 Cornell ECAC

The same teams are in who would have been in last week, but there are some small changes around the bubble. Denver and Lowell move up slightly to avoid the particularly perilous #14 spot, especially susceptible to being knocked out if one more upset team wins a conference tournament (which feels like a near certainty to happen in the B1G given its wide open format and the fact that Michigan is the only team in the top 16 as of now).

The first teams OUT as of this week are Minnesota, Penn State, RPI, and a red hot Dartmouth team. Bowling Green, Minnesota Duluth and Minnesota State are your next three. There's a pretty decent drop after Dartmouth in the rankings, so that next grouping of teams has its work cut out for it.

Hockey East would be fairly comfortably putting 5 teams in at this point

Step Two: Put host institutions in their respective regionals

Right now, no regional hosts would make the tournament, preventing the silliness of forcing a host in to a certain region regardless of what seed they are. One slight clarification from last week: while the ECAC is the host of the Albany regional, Union and RPI (in that order) will be treated as "hosts" for seeding/placement purposes. So if RPI gets in to the tournament, they'll definitely be in Albany, unless Union somehow gets in also.

The other hosts are Miami, Holy Cross and Minnesota.

Step Three: Assign the #1 seeds to regions based on geography

The #1 overall seed would be Quinnipiac, by rule assigned to their closest regional which would be Worcester.

#2 St. Cloud State goes to St. Paul, Minnesota.

#3 North Dakota goes to Cincinnati.

#4 Providence makes the not too bad trip to Albany.

Step Four: Assign the other 12 teams to regionals based on seeding bands

Your #2 seeds are Harvard/ECAC, Michigan/B1G, Boston College/HEA and Notre Dame/HEA.
Your #3 seeds are Omaha/NCHC, Yale/ECAC, BU/HEA and Lowell/HEA
And your #4 seeds are Denver/NCHC, Cornell/ECAC, Bowling Green/WCHA, and Robert Morris/AHC

We'll start by seeing how the bracket looks with straight bracket integrity (1 v 16, 2 v 15, etc)

WORCESTER
1] QU vs. 16] Robert Morris
8] Notre Dame vs. 9] Nebraska Omaha

ALBANY
4] Providence vs. 13] Denver
5] Harvard vs. 12] Lowell

CINCINNATI
3] North Dakota vs. 14] Cornell
6] Michigan vs. 11] BU

ST PAUL

2] St. Cloud State vs. 15] Bowling Green
7] BC vs. 10] Yale

The first thing we'd have to correct from these brackets is any in conference matchups. There aren't any. Wow!

The next consideration would be to adjust the field to improve attendance by swapping teams within seeding bands (so one 2 seed can replace another, one 3 seed can replace another, but you can't make a 3 a 2 in order to improve attendance).

Worcester is in OK shape with Quinnipiac there but I suspect a move would be made to firm this one up.

Albany would probably like to have Cornell but having Harvard, Lowell and PC would give them a decent crowd.

Cincinnati is probably as good as it's going to get with Michigan there, plus NoDak fans travel well.

St. Paul benefits from having the only Minnesota team there.

My guess is that the one move the committee would make here would be to take the BC vs Yale matchup and swap it to Worcester in place of the  Notre Dame/Nebraska Omaha matchup, which will move to St. Paul. The difference between BC and ND in the pairwise is small enough that the committee would likely feel more comfortable making that move than they would swapping the BU/Michigan matchup over to Worcester, the other attendance-saving possibility.

I would be pretty stunned if at the end of the day at least one of BC or BU isn't in Worcester. The committee will likely get creative if necessary in pursuit of making this happen. Given the way things shake out this week, moving BC there seems likeliest.

My predicted bracket for this week is...

WORCESTER
1] QU vs. 16] Robert Morris
7] BC vs. 10] Yale

ALBANY
4] Providence vs. 13] Denver
5] Harvard vs. 12] Lowell

CINCINNATI
3] North Dakota vs. 14] Cornell
6] Michigan vs. 11] BU

ST PAUL

2] St. Cloud State vs. 15] Bowling Green
8] Notre Dame vs. 9] Nebraska Omaha

This would be a winnable but challenging bracket for BC. Quinnipiac is good but not looking like world beaters the way they were back in November and parts of December.

This bracket sets up some interesting potential matchups. There's the possibility of QU vs. Yale happening in Worcester, which would be intriguing. Providence vs. Denver is a rematch of last year's East regional final; you could also see PC and Lowell go toe to toe with a FF spot on the line. BU vs. Cornell would be a possibility in Cincy.

Overall, this is a pretty solid bracket and wouldn't be too tough a decision for the committee.