Understanding PairWise ratings -- a little bit

PAIRWISE BASICS

There will be a quiz later.

You will hear a lot of talk (or read a lot of words) about the PairWise ratings the next week and a half until they are finalized after the conference tournaments.

Sure, there is a selection show on Sunday morning, March 20, at 10:30 am, on ESPN2, but the field for the NCAA tournament will be known the night before.

Winners of five conference tournaments get automatic bids -- Atlantic Hockey, CCHA, ECAC, Hockey East and the WCHA -- and then the NCAA, in effect, looks at the PairWise ratings and starts taking 11 at-large teams from the top.

Now as many as four of the top 16 are in already as conference champions -- Atlantic Hockey won't have any team in the top 16. So the NCAA will go 15 deep at most. And if there is a conference tournament upset, and an underdog not in the top 15 sneaks in, NCAA will go only 14 deep.

So to be safe, to be doubly safe in case there are two upsets in the conference tournaments, a team wants to be in the top 13, or at least top 14 in the PairWise ratings on Sat. night, March 19.

The Gophers, going into games this weekend, are tied for No. 18, but seem to be in a position to move up at least a lilttle, or a lot with some upsets in the Hockey East tournament and elsewhere.

Now there is nothing subjective about the PairWise rankings. They are pure numbers-crunching. It doesn't help -- nor hurt -- the Gophers that the Frozen Four is at the Xcel on April 7 and 9.

The two western regionals are in Green Bay and St. Louis two weekends before.

The PairWise compares teams with RPIs above .5000. There are currently 30 of them. RPI is determined by a team's winning percentage and strength of schedule.

So take the Gophers, they are compared to the other 29 teams on four criteria:

* record head to head

* record vs. common foes

* record against the 29 other teams with .5000-plus RPIs, they are usually called teams under consideration or TUC for short (only if both teams being compared have played at least 10 games against TUC teams)

* and RPI, the most important criteria because it breaks ties.

The Gophers win comparisons against 13 TUC teams, which puts them in a tie for No. 18 in the PairWise ratings with Maine. They are clearly out of the NCAA tournament right now, but with enough games (as many as six, as few as two) to play themselves back in. Especially if the right teams around the country win or lose.

That's enough PW talk for now.