College Hockey News: NCAA Tournament Pairwise Comparison Ratings
Source: College Hockey News: NCAA Tournament Pairwise Comparison Ratings
HV Note: Penn State is right on the bubble. The NCAA tournament selection committee uses the Pairwise rankings to distribute bids to the NCAA tournament come March. Conference tournament champs get first bids then the committee hands out the at-large simply by going down the list. Currently, there are two conferences who are not represented in the Pairwise top 16. Those conferences will get one and only one bid to the tournament and will bump the #15 and #16 pairwise teams out of the NCAA.
What that means is that if the bids were handed out today, Penn State would get one. As long as PSU can hold onto that 14th slot, and, as long as there are no upsets in the conference tournaments, Penn State will go dancing – oops, I mean skating. 🙂
PSU has a solid hold on the 14th slot. There’s a very good chance that we will end the season right there. Should that happen, there’s a very good chance that the Nittany Lions NCAA chances will boil down to who wins the Big Ten tournament. Should Michigan win, both Penn State and Michigan would likely get bids. Should Minnesota win, they would most likely bump Penn State out with Michigan getting an at-large bid.