College Hockey:
Volatility on the edge of TUC

By Ed Trefzger • Senior Writer • Feb. 3, 2011

Robert Morris’ loss Thursday night to Canisius had a big effect on North Dakota’s PairWise ranking. The Colonials dropped as a Team Under Consideration (TUC) when their RPI fell below .500 in the 5-4 defeat. That cost the Fighting Sioux two wins against TUC (causing them to lose that comparison against Denver) and a few decimal points in RPI (causing them to lose the RPI comparison vs. Boston College), moving North Dakota to fifth in the PairWise and out of an NCAA regional No. 1 seed.

Why does this matter now? Because it has implications for the final few games of the season. Robert Morris is likely to stay right around .500 in the RPI as it battles for its first AHA title. The Colonials could return as a TUC with a decent regular-season finish and a successful Atlantic Hockey playoff run.

North Dakota fans may find themselves keeping tabs on Atlantic Hockey playoff results to see whether those two wins against RoMo at the Ralph in January will help the Sioux or not.

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Frostbitten Toes
The Great Fighting Sioux relying on the success of lowly Robert Morris…… pretty pathetic, kind of like getting frostbite again…
- Siouxbetcha
  That’s probably the most ignorant comment I’ve heard. Do you really think the Sioux need to “rely” on Robert Morris. The Sioux are in the DANCE and will have plenty of oportunities to improve their already stout TUC record . Seedings only matter to teams who are host institutions or those near one. The Sioux fans will follow their team over seas if thats where the game is played. I think any true fan can understand the parody involved in the tourney and that all 16 teams are contenders. Whether your the 1 seed or 16, there will be no easy wins. The Sioux will make their own luck.
  As for the PWR, the only thing stupid about it is that H2H wins aren’t considered as a TUC win in that comparison. All TUC games should be counted in all comparisons.
Scott
Once again showing the stupidity of the Pairwise.
Mountainman
I wish they would change the term “RPI”. Everytime I see it all I can think of is Rennselear Poly.
bombsaway
Something else for the Sioux fans to whine about.
Dick
Who are these posts written for? I would guess any hockey fan visiting this site knows the ins and outs of the season, maybe even more in depth. Hell, I could write this. I guess it’s un biased fwiw. Just wasted 5 mins reading this and another 2 commenting geez. gimme some real news. Merry Xmas
- Paula Weston
  Merry Christmas to you, too, Dick!
- Anonymous
  I don’t pay that much attention to the CCHA. I now considered myself briefed.
Yooper
Indeed NMU hasn’t scored much so far with Vijier, Gron, and Florek leading the way.
However, when your strength of schedule has been the toughest in the nation, you probably won’t score much anyway. NMU has a history of being outshot 40-20 and winning the game late 2-1 etc. Please note that Notre Dame has had an intense
schedule as well and their third best scorer only has 5. There is clearly much more to winning hockey than goal scoring. I don’t see NMUs 6 CCHA home games and 8 CCHA road games as a significant hindrance during the rest of the season. They did get soundly beaten at OSU but their other road games (WMU and LSSU) were
close contests. Watch out for Reed Sekel… he’s better than the stats show.
81GRRBRONCO
Dick….Might want to work on those typing skills if it took you 2 minutes to “Post” your meaningless comment.