Did UMass-Lowell get screwed?

This week, an article emerged from the Lowell Sun claiming that the UMass-Lowell was a victim of the computer rankings.  The article took the NCHC to task for being awarded five at-large bids.

The author had no problem with the UND, Miami, and Denver making the NCAA tourney. However, the author wasn’t happy that SCSU, UNO and UMD qualified the NCAA tourney as at-large bids. The problem is, the said writer doesn’t understand the Pairwise Rankings.

You can read for yourself.

Dennis Whitton, Lowell Sun — No, my beef is that six out of the eight teams in the self-righteously named National Collegiate Hockey Conference got in. Wow. That Midwest conference ate up five of the 10 at-large openings. UML isn’t the only team that should be fuming about that — Bowling Green and Colgate were other bubble teams that have reason to complain.

Nebraska-Omaha?

Here’s the dope on the NCHC: Miami of Ohio beat St. Cloud State in the conference final, 3-2. So Miami is in. North Dakota won the regular-season title, so we’ll give them a spot, too.

But then there are four more:

St. Cloud was sixth in the regular-season standings (out of eight teams, not 12 teams like Hockey East) with an 11-13-1 record. Last I checked that’s under .500.

Nebraska-Omaha was a measly 18-12-6 overall during the season (Lowell was 21-11-6) and lost to mighty St. Cloud in the first round of the conference tourney.

Minnesota-Duluth was fifth in the standings, 20-15-3 overall and lost in the first round of the league tourney and Denver was fourth in the regular season and captured the consolation game for third place.

Again, for those that think UMass Lowell was wronged by not making the NCAA tourney. All you have to do is look at their record during the month of January and February. During those two months in question, Lowell was 6-7-3. Lowell had losses against conference foes Connecticut, Providence (X2), Merrimack and Massachusetts. That didn’t help their cause.

Finally,  if the River Hawks win one or two of those games in January or February; they’re probably in the tourney this weekend.