The 1 seeds
These teams have a shot at 1-seed:
North Dakota (lock)
Quinnipiac
St Cloud St
Providence
Boston College
Denver
Extracted from PWR Possibilities:
| Team | Result | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UND | Win 0 | 34% | 41% | 21% | 4% | |||||
| Win 1 | 63% | 30% | 7% | < 1% | ||||||
| Win 2 | 100% | |||||||||
| Quinnipiac | Win 0 | < 1% | 35% | 39% | 25% | < 1% | < 1% | |||
| Win 1 | 4% | 46% | 38% | 12% | < 1% | |||||
| Win 2 | 57% | 42% | 1% | |||||||
| SCSU | Win 0 | < 1% | 29% | 40% | 24% | 7% | ||||
| Win 1 | 8% | 18% | 48% | 25% | 1% | |||||
| Win 2 | 62% | 27% | 11% | |||||||
| Providence | Win 0 | 1% | 58% | 32% | 9% | |||||
| Win 1 | 7% | 44% | 41% | 7% | ||||||
| Win 2 | 14% | 51% | 30% | 5% | ||||||
| Boston College | Win 0 | 82% | 18% | |||||||
| Win 1 | < 1% | 4% | 81% | 15% | ||||||
| Win 2 | < 1% | 29% | 41% | 29% | < 1% | |||||
| Denver | Win 0 | 98% | 2% | < 1% | ||||||
| Win 1 | 1% | 3% | 93% | 2% | ||||||
| Win 2 | 31% | 36% | 8% | 24% | < 1% |
UND will finish in the top 4 and get a 1-seed.
Quinnipiac, St Cloud St, and Providence are each guaranteed a top 4 finish, and a 1-seed, if they win their conference tournament.
Quinnipiac is nearly (but not quite!) a lock for a 1-seed regardless of outcome, and St Cloud St is nearly (but not quite!) a lock for a 1-seed if they win 1.
Boston College and Denver each need at least one win, preferably two.
BC to #1 overall
An example:
http://pwp.uscho.com/rankings/pairwise-predictor/?uniq=pwp_56e6c9fa056fc
Obviously Boston College needs to win and North Dakota, Quinnipiac, St Cloud St, and Providence need to lose enough to be passed by BC. Finally, it takes an unusual combination of other outcomes to give BC a small RPI advantage over those teams (note, for example, that the linked scenario actually has Providence win one then lose one to give BC just enough of an RPI edge; note also that the top 4 in that example end up within .0003 in RPI).
This is pretty unlikely, occurring only in about 1 of 940 scenarios in which Boston College wins its conference championship.
Quinnipiac missing a 1 seed
An example:
http://pwp.uscho.com/rankings/pairwise-predictor/?uniq=pwp_56e8cbd15d592
Even with a win, it’s possible for Quinnipiac to fall to 5th and miss out on a 1 seed. Success by other teams eligible for #1 is a key, in this case Boston College, Denver, and St Cloud St. Note how unusual this scenario is, with a 3-way tie in pairwise comparisons and the RPI tie-breaker settled by just .001 between the three teams.
This is pretty unlikely, occurring in only about 1 of 1900 scenarios in which Quinnipiac wins one, or 1 in 210 scenarios in which Quinnipiac loses its first game.
