Alas, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a PWR for Division III this season. The NCAA has published its criteria for selecting teams for the national tournament, but has not, and, according to sources, will not say how they are weighing the criteria. One source indicated to me that the weighting is not written in stone and may be altered by the committee during the selection process. In other words, it’s going to be more subjective than ever. One would hope that the committee will do its best to get the right teams in the tournament, and I think that is their goal.
But last year, they didn’t. Wisconsin-Stout (and to a lesser extent Neumann) got screwed, plain and simple. The numbers did not match the teams selected. One way to remedy that situation is not to publish the numbers. One can infer things from the rankings published by the NCAA but where things will wind up is anyone’s guess. So that’s what I’m going to be doing – guessing. Why the committee is not using the D-I selection process is beyond me.
Here’s why they should:
1. It’s cut and dried. Everybody can understand it, and it removes 95% of the subjectivity (the committee has the right to move seeds and teams around to avoid certain matchups or get teams into certain buildings).
2. It counts every game. This in-region stuff is ridiculous. End it. Now. We don’t need two distinct subcommittees and two national polls. It’s one sport.
3. Every league has an AQ. There’s no logical reason why the MCHA and ECAC West don’t have auto-bids. Heck, the five-team CHA gets a bid in D-I.
There. I feel better. Stay tuned for posts as the regular season winds down (and, in the cases of the MCHA, NCHA and SUNYAC, playoffs start) with my best estimates of who is in, who’s out, and who’s on the bubble.
