Yesterday we took a look at what had to happen on Friday for PSU to get back into the thick of the race for an at-large bid to the NCAAs (basically beat Michigan). Today we’ll take it a step further by extending our look into Saturday.
As a refresher, what we are inspecting are the six teams in the Pairwise hunt for the last couple of at-large NCAA bids. Currently, those six teams sit at 13 through 18 in the Pairwise with the last bid projected to go to the #14 ranked team.
Here’s how the top 18 sit as off the moment.
- North Dakota
- Quinnipiac
- St. Cloud State
- Providence
- Boston College
- Denver
- Yale
- Michigan
- Boston University
- Notre Dame
- Harvard
- Mass.-Lowell
- Minnesota-Duluth
- Michigan Tech
- Nebraska-Omaha
- Cornell
- Minnesota
- Penn State
In yesterday’s analysis, we looked at what would happen if PSU topped Michigan, but the home team won all of the other Friday games. The results look like this, with Penn State now inside the bubble (by virtue Michigan Tech belonging to a likely one-bid conference).
- Minnesota-Duluth
- Michigan Tech
- Penn State
- Nebraska-Omaha
- Minnesota
- Cornell
For starters, let’s assume Friday repeats itself on Saturday, i.e. PSU tops Michigan, but the home team wins all other games. In that case, things would look even better for PSU because we’d pass Michigan Tech and move solidly into the 14th spot.
- Minnesota-Duluth
- Penn State
- Michigan Tech
- Nebraska-Omaha
- Minnesota
- Cornell
In an absolute perfect world, Miami would knock off Duluth and PSU would move up into the 13th spot. Were that to happen, we’d have some other interesting shuffling going on. Specifically, Michigan would drop all the way to #12 and would have PSU breathing down their neck (a couple of other teams would move onto the bubble also). Here’s how the bubble would look.
- Michigan
- Penn State
- Michigan Tech
- Minnesota-Duluth
- Minnesota
- Robert Morris
- Miami
- Nebraska-Omaha
- Cornell
That’s pretty much a best case scenario.
But now let’s take a look at what would happen if we turned around and lose to Michigan on Saturday. Again, we’ll assume that the home team wins all the games and thus they have series sweeps.
- Minnesota-Duluth
- Michigan Tech
- Penn State
- Minnesota
- Nebraska-Omaha
- Robert Morris
- Cornell
Somewhat surprisingly, we don’t give up all the gains we made. We stay in the #15 spot and again, because of the Michigan Tech one bid conference factor, we would be inside the bubble. Plus, there’s always the possibility that Miami will knock off Duluth to move us up into the #14 spot.
That said, we undoubtedly would lose any buffer that we would have built up with our Friday win. If we split, we most certainly would have to at least get to the finals of the Big Ten tournament to have any chance at getting an at-large bid.
If we step back and take a big picture look for a moment, these scenarios tell me one thing. Simplistically, we are pretty much looking at a three game series with Michigan (two in Ann Arbor, one in St Paul) where if we take two of three, we’ll have a pretty good chance of getting an NCAA bid.
If we win two in Ann Arbor, we’ll get the second seed in the BTT with a chance that we might actually be able to afford a loss and still get an NCAA bid (Michigan would also be reeling, with the distinct possibility that they could miss the NCAAs entirely with a first round loss to Wisconsin in the Big Ten tournament). If we split in AA, I think we’re still in a solid enough position where a win over Wisconsin, coupled with a win over Michigan in the Big Ten tournament, could be enough to get us an at-large.
There are also some additional side stories to the big picture view here. There are too many games left to actually work the numbers yet, but I could see very interesting long shot scenarios. As I said, if we do split with Michigan in AA, then win the BTT semifinal game, it’s possible that we could afford a loss and still hold onto the 14th spot. Unfortunately, though, if we are actually playing Minnesota in the championship game, the 14th spot probably won’t be good enough. In that case, a loss to Minnesota would also give them the official Big Ten bid and would likely bump the 14th team out of the tournament. So there’s definitely a possibility that we’d still have to win the title outright.
I also think there’s a real long shot scenario where all three of us, Minnesota, Penn State, and Michigan could get in. It would require Minnesota winning the tournament with PSU and Michigan getting at-large bids. I’ll look closer at that after the weekend is over to see if that scenario is still in play.
One last note, in order for us to get the second seed in the tournament we need to win two games in Ann Arbor, but they can’t both be shootout wins. We’re three points behind Michigan but two shootout wins would only give us two more points, so we’d fall a point short. One regular win and one shootout win, on the other hand, gives us five points which would be enough to pass Michigan (how exciting would it be to see it come down to a shootout on Saturday night with the second seed, and maybe an NCAA bid, on the line?).
So, the long and the short of it is that, over the next ten days, we will likely face Michigan three times needing to win two to move on to the NCAAs. Certainly a challenge, but not a hopeless one.