Cool, thanks.

Also fwiw, the Tournament Selection Show is on right now on ESPN2!

i dont have cable

SHIP THE #1 OVERALL SEED!

Meh with Michigan being in the same region, especially after Friday....

tell me wisco's regional when you find out please.

Sure only have the Midwest so far

#1 - Miami
#2 - Bemidji State
#3 - Michigan
#4 - Ala.-Huntsville

East:

#1 - Denver
#2 - New Hampshire
#3 - Cornell
#4 - RIT

NH/Cornell may be swapped seedwise but that is the East Region

West:

#1 - Wisconsin
#2 - St. Cloud St
#3 - N. Michigan
#4 - Vermont

Northeast:

#1 - BC
#2 - North Dakota
#3 - Yale
#4 - AK Fairbanks

thanks

Bumping for the magic man ldo. Seriously, I won't be surprised at all if they ship a Frozen Four appearance now.

It's a 44k seat venue. Scalping outside at the last minute shouldn't be much of an issue if that's what it comes down to.

If Miami makes it there will certainly be a bunch of fans coming up from Oxford...but not THAT many. I mean, can you see more than 5k fans for this one? That sounds high to me. Miami hoops made the Sweet 16 in 1999 in St. Louis which isn't that far and there wasn't much of a Miami presence for that huge event.

Regardless, Miami has to get there first and the Ft. Regional is hardly a gimmie in a crazy single-elimination tourney. This team was capable of losing to Robert Morris back to back so not even UAH is a lock. Remember they also lost one of their playoff games to OSU as well and barely won in game 3.

No way you can take any hockey game for granted in a single elim tourney when all it takes is a hot goalie or crazy bounce to make the difference.

Anyway, if Miami makes it then that means Michigan is not going to be there. No Michigan or Michigan State already helps attendance. Northern Michigan Univ is further from Detroit than Miami is and it's not a very big school.

I'll be interested to see the turnout for this event in a 44k seat venue especially with some teams that might not be traveling an excessive amount of fans.

Denver nor UNH will bring out a huge number. North Dakota would bring in their share as would Boston College or Wisconsin but I'm still not exactly able to picture too many making some long caravan over from Madison or Bismarck for this.

With such a big place I have to think tickets will be somewhat do-able given the teams likely to make it.

Also - Really happy for the folks at Alaska Fairbanks. This is a huge deal for them in their only D1 sport out there. It's so tough on them going through the insane travel schedule that they put up with in the CCHA and I honestly never thought I would see the day where they would be able to overcome all that and make it to the NCAA tournament.

That whole town/area is going to go nuts for this and will really enjoy their games on TV and radio. BC isn't exactly a lock to win that 1st round game either. Go Nanooks!! (inuit/eskimo word for Polar Bears).

Also congrats to Ala-Huntsville for making it. I guess they're going to try to go independent because the CCHA denied their entry. Would be rooting for the Chargers too if they weren't playing Miami. Between the upsets or near-upsets pulled by teams like Niagara, Holy Cross, Air Force and Bemidji over the past 10 years or so there just isn't really such a thing as a first round Cinderella like there is in the hoops tourney. In basketball, 16 v 1 upsets have had some close calls but have never happened while 15 v 2 and 14 v 3 are extremely rare.

In hockey, the 1st seed vs. the bottom team of the whole field is a lot closer. As I mentioned before, Miami got swept by RMU back in January. That's out of the same conference as UAH and they had a better record than RMU even though they have a losing record.

Hockey is simply more conducive to upsets than basketball imo.

most of the games on ESPNU. other games will be shown on ESPN360 (the internet only channel) which I actually get now so I'm kind of happy about that. Obviously they'll cut around for close finishes on ESPNU as they deem appropriate. And I assume the ESPNU games will be shown on ESPN360 too which is typical for most of their TV games (I really hope so because I won't be at home to watch on ESPNU).

Albany
Fri 3:00 - Denver vs. RIT (ESPNU)
Fri 6:30 - New Hampshire vs. Cornell (ESPNU)
Sat 6:30 - Regional Final (ESPNU)

St. Paul
Fri 5:30 - St. Cloud vs. Northern Michigan (ESPN360)
Fri 9:00 - Vermont vs. Wisconsin (ESPNU)
Sat 9:00 - Regional Final (ESPNU)

Worcester
Sat 1:30 - Alaska vs. Boston College (ESPN360)
Sat 5:00 - North Dakota vs. Yale (ESPN360)
Sun 5:30 - Regional Final (ESPNU)

Ft. Wayne
Sat 4:00 - Miami vs. Ala-Huntsville (ESPNU)
Sat 7:30 - Michigan vs. Bemidji St (ESPN360)
Sun 8:00 - Regional Final (ESPNU)



Frozen Four - Detroit
Thu, Apr 8 at 5:00 and 8:30 (I'm not sure what channel yet...I think it's usually ESPN2)
Sat, Apr 10 at 7:00

Didn't realize the frozen four is going on the same time as Opening Day for the Tigers.. No games on Friday and opening day Friday will make a great atmosphere for people traveling in for the games.

Yeah, if it werent for this, "all four #1s in the FF" might be a favorite over the field this year, on a relative scale it seems like there is MUCH more separation between #1 and the rest this year than I can recall. Except in Bucky's bracket but lets not kid ourselves, its SCSU, they arent winning it.

vhawk - I don't think there's much more separation between the 1's and the 2's and 3's this year really. Maybe slightly more over the 4's because of UAH making it in and also an RIT team that I think is pretty weak despite their record (I like UAH's chances against Miami better than RIT's just based on how UAH seems to play).

But to the idea of the 1's vs. the rest: Denver has 27 W's and 11 games they didn't win. Miami has 27 W's and 14 games they didn't win. Hardly dominant really. I think about teams back in the day that used to have 15 or 20 game win streaks and were TRULY dominant and you just don't have that anymore (or least not lately).

Alaska absolutely could knock off BC and the same definitely holds true for UVM vs. Wisc. Michigan, Cornell and Yale are all very decent 3 seeds. Michigan comes red-hot for a team that finished in freaking 7th place in the CCHA regular season.

All 4 of the WCHA entrants aren't exactly interchangeable in strength as is often the case. I think Cheverie in net gives Denver and advantage, then Wisconsin not far behind, then St. Cloud and No-Dak a half-notch back. But it's still pretty close for any of those teams playing against each other.

Miami has to be pissed with this draw I'd think. You have to potentially play Michigan in the regional final at a stadium that is equidistant from Oxford, OH and Ann Arbor, and Michigan is playing better right now than any team in the CCHA since the CCHA tourney started. Not sure what other teams out there are hot. If Michigan makes the final, people will travel to the game on Sunday and try their hardest to make it a home-type atmosphere in Fort Wayne.

North Dakota will win it all.

zimmer - It will not be too tough for them to make it a home-ice atmosphere in Ft. Wayne. Michigan fans would vastly outnumber the Miami fans in FTW. Within the FTW community itself I'm guessing there is a pretty high percentage of Michigan alums and fans. I don't think that's really THAT big a deal. But certainly Miami would have a slight advantage of crowd support in their first game against UAH or if they played Bemidji in the next game that they definitely would not have if they played Michigan.

Detroit should be interesting too. Even though that's close-ish to Miami and maybe also Wisconsin I just don't see it being that much of a "home" advantage for anyone. Most of these kids have never played in a building that big before, they'll have Frozen Four butterflies. the crowd stuff just won't matter that much even if there are slightly more Wisconsin fans than Miami fans or anything like that. Michigan is the only team that could turn that into a marginally better support in terms of overall cheering and momentum from that.

Slight advantage to Miami in some potential mathcups and their young goalies for having been to the Frozen Four before and being better prepared to handle that kind of crazy hoopla.

If Michigan makes it to the Frozen Four, it will be overwhelmingly Pro-Michigan imo. Kinda like how last year at the Final Four it was 70% Michigan State fans at the final game.

All I know is I wouldn't want to play Michigan right now.

Not that it matters for the matchups, but Cornell is a #2 seed. UNH is the #3.

Right. Whoops. And I had already previously pegged Cornell as the #2 seed I think I like making a splash in the FF the most. I've seen a couple Denver games on TV and they are a good team who racked up some wins this year but not exactly the peak of consistency.

UAH or RIT would be pretty big upsets. Beyond that there's nothing in there that would really be THAT surprising which includes the other 4 seeds of Alaska and Vermont.

Vermont is a pretty weird one in that they finished in 8th place in the Hockey East at 9-11-7 but their non-conference wins were enough to land an at-large bid to the NCAA tourney after getting knocked out in their conference semis. Beating UNH 2 out of 3 in the opening round of the tourney made a big difference for them as well. UVM split with Denver earlier in the year, beat UNH twice out of three, etc. No way this is an easy game at all for Wisconsin.

Alaska finishes 5th in the CCHA and 18-11-9 overall yet they go to the NCAA's over 3rd place Ferris State who were 21-13-6 which also struck me as weird. Alaska went 8-0-2 to finish the regular season and essentially come out of nowhere and get the bid. Only one win vs. an NCAA qualifying team and that was on opening night back in October vs. Michigan. Barely any wins at all against teams with winning record. BC should be able to handle them fine I suspect although it shouldn't be a blow out.

It seems way less likely we'll have any 4 seeds making it to the FF like we did last year. Miami was a pretty legit threat when they qualified as a #4 and pretty much everyone knew that. Wasn't really surprising to anyone that they made the championship game. Bemidji State last year was obviously a different story. Nobody expected that out of them but now they're not exactly a secret anymore.

Post is full of fail when you write about 10,000 words without even mentioning the eventual champion North Dakota.