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For some reason I hadn't put 1 and 1 together yet and saw that if the season ended today the NCHC would only send 1 team to the tourney, while the ECAC would send 5 and the Big10 3.

In my humble opinion the NCHC is better top to bottom than either of those conferences. However, with the Pairwise simply being a math equation based on results it doesn't matter what anyone thinks on the strength of the conference.

While there is a bonus for beating top teams it seems like it is better to simply build your record up with wins against low teams. WMU strength of schedule is 24 versus a Yale at 44, or a Clarkson at 43 who are each in. My quick count puts half of the teams getting at a lower SOS than WMU. So do we need to schedule a few out of conference road trips to Alabama-Huntsville and Sacred Heart to help build up the win total before the brutal NCHC season starts?

You swap are convert the Notre Dame sweep of us to 2 wins and that is a big jump in our win % and it seems like enough to make the PWR work in our favor.

(01-23-2014 07:21 AM)Bronco2000 Wrote:  For some reason I hadn't put 1 and 1 together yet and saw that if the season ended today the NCHC would only send 1 team to the tourney, while the ECAC would send 5 and the Big10 3.

In my humble opinion the NCHC is better top to bottom than either of those conferences. However, with the Pairwise simply being a math equation based on results it doesn't matter what anyone thinks on the strength of the conference.

While there is a bonus for beating top teams it seems like it is better to simply build your record up with wins against low teams. WMU strength of schedule is 24 versus a Yale at 44, or a Clarkson at 43 who are each in. My quick count puts half of the teams getting at a lower SOS than WMU. So do we need to schedule a few out of conference road trips to Alabama-Huntsville and Sacred Heart to help build up the win total before the brutal NCHC season starts?

You swap are convert the Notre Dame sweep of us to 2 wins and that is a big jump in our win % and it seems like enough to make the PWR work in our favor.

We already scheduled some cup cakes (2-AK, 2-NM) and failed to sweep those. These game hurt us in the pairwise. We are 3-1-2 vs WCHA

ND should be an annual home-home, and they should never drop them, because they are in the HE and if we play well against ND, it will help us in the pair wise becasue of all ND games in HE. ND has also struggled in conference play so far, so this isn't helping either. We are 0-2-1 vs HE

Same with annual games vs Mich and MSU as it relates to the BIG Ten. Now if Mich (with only 4 games so far in the BIG) can have some success in the second half vs MN and WI, this should help us in the pair wise. We are 3-0 vs the BIG

Northeastern, Mich Tech and Alabama Huntsville games weren't really scheduled, but only came about due to the cross overs.

That leaves the ECAC and AHA, two conferences we have not played an opponet from. What is really hurting us right now is our conference has not faired well vs the ECAC and HE this year. The NCHC is 4-7-3 vs ECAC and 5-10-5 vs HE. This puts our mighty NCHC with only the 4th highest win % and the WCHA and AHA are the only conferences below us.

WMU needs to continue to winning at home and at least split on the road. We also need to cheer on Mich, MSU, NE, ND, SCSU and NMU, as with their success our pair wise will also improve.

It's far too early to be thinking about the PairWise. There's going to be a ton of movement now conference play is well under way in the B1G and ECAC.

Those conferences will start to eat their own and we'll see more movement in the coming weeks

^
This.

CC and UNO are also dragging the conference down with poor non-conference showings (CC is winless non-conference), but in the Big6 their 2 worst teams (PSU and tOSU) both have non-conference wins that are really helping the rest of the Big6.