Around this time last year, the Oswego State Lakers came together to watch the NCAA Div. III Selection Show to see if the committee selected them for one of three at-large bids to the national tournament.
As Oswego State fans already know, the team was not selected to the tournament. Despite being ranked in the top 10 for most of the season, the Lakers fell out of favor with the committee after losing their last three games.
This season is different. The Lakers are set to face the No. 2/2 SUNY Geneseo Ice Knights in the SUNYAC finals, and even with a loss, the Lakers will have to face a much more objective deciding factor: the PairWise Ranking.
Starting this season, Div. III hockey will have a two-year trial run for the same system that Div. I uses. The system compares every single Div. III team with a record above .500 based on five categories. Whichever team wins more of those head-to-head categories receives one point for that “battle.” After all the teams have been compared, they are ranked by the number of points they have. Currently, the Lakers sit in fourth according to the PairWise rankings, with 79 PairWise points. This means the Lakers are better than 79 teams that qualify. One of these categories used is quality of wins index.
Formerly known as strength of schedule, this index assigns point values to wins and losses against teams with varying winning percentages. For example, a road win against a team with a winning percentage above .667 is the best possible outcome at 15 points. A win at home against the same caliber team is 14 points, and the scale continues down to zero points for a home loss against a sub-.333 team. The total number of points received is divided by the number of games a team plays, yielding a strength of schedule average.
Although Oswego State has the best strength of schedule, it seems that a slightly easier schedule may actually help mediocre teams in the PairWise. For example, a road win against the putrid 4-19-2 Morrisville State Mustangs is worth eight points. On the other hand, a loss to SUNY Geneseo, one of the best teams in the nation, is only worth seven.
For elite teams that can find a way to win against other good teams, the big point boost is huge for their PairWise case.
“We have the No. 1 strength of schedule in the country, and really, for us, it’s just based upon consistency over the years,” head coach Ed Gosek said. “You look at our non-league schedule, and this year, it worked out. We played Salve [Regina]. We could have elected not to play them … but we knew it would help our strength of schedule. We had Utica at home. We had Hobart at home. Those are two teams still in the mix.”
The other criteria used in the new selection process are much simpler including, winning percentage, head-to-head record among the two teams being compared and record against common opponents.
The fifth and final piece is record against ranked teams. Now, teams that go into this must be ranked at the end of the season, not at the time a different team had played them.
Perhaps one of the biggest discussion points of the PairWise Rankings is the fact that it does not take recency bias into account. Saturday’s playoff game against SUNY Geneseo is just as important as the game in December, according to the PairWise system. While an automatic bid to the national tournament is at stake, a loss counts just as much as it did at the beginning of the season.
Another benefit to this system is the objectiveness that it provides in comparison to last year’s selection committee.
“[Last year] there was a committee, but you don’t know how much emphasis they put on a category,” Gosek said. “There were many variables and how much emphasis the committee put on [that]… There was a lot of debate where those should be weighed more, which, with the PairWise, it is all laid out there.”
The PairWise system has been laying out its requirements over the last month, as that was when the first official rankings were announced. Because of this, there is a level of transparency that has never been present before.
“I think it’s good for the sport,” Gosek said. “I hope it goes beyond the two-year [trial]. That would be my recommendation. It takes out any of the so-called perceived bias. In my own opinion, having served on the NCAA committee twice, I think the transparency is good for college hockey.”
Graphic by Shea McCarthy | The Oswegonian
