NCAA Women's Hockey Tournament Bracket Announced

After a disappointing loss in the Hockey East championship game, the Eagles will advance to the NCAA tournament.

The committee met this afternoon following the tournament championships to discuss the bracket, and here's what we got:

RIT @ 1 Minnesota
Clarkson @ 2 Boston College
Quinnipiac @ 3 Harvard
Boston University @ 4 Wisconsin

There was a big decision that had to be made among the committee, as we broke down in our final Bracketology earlier today, which might have been what necessitated a half hour delay in the announcement—BU and Quinnipiac were extremely close in the Pairwise rankings, and there was an argument to be had to put Quinnipiac ahead of the Terriers to make a better bracket.

The resulting bracket would have eliminated all intraconference matchups—not a directive of the handbook, but desirable nonetheless—and minimized flights as required.

The argument for Quinnipiac over Boston University came from the fact that the tiebreaker for the BC vs. QU comparison is RPI, but RPI is separated by just 0.0005 points. BU does have a head to head win over QU, but the Bobcats have a huge lead in record against Teams Under Consideration: 10-7-1 to 3-5-3.

This in and of itself isn't a huge impetus to flip the teams, but with the committee's unwritten desire to avoid intraconference matchups, it could have given them the excuse they needed.

This means that the Terriers are "rewarded" for their Hockey East title by getting shipped across the country to Wisconsin, instead of heading down the road to Harvard for a much easier trip.

BC missed the opportunity to play RIT, the weakest team in the field, by falling to the Terriers. But that is, of course, their own fault. They can get back on their feet next weekend by taking down the Golden Knights at home for a berth in the Frozen Four.