sahayman@watcgl.UUCP (Steve Hayman) (03/01/85)
With the 4 CIAU regional tournaments only a week away, it's time for the ranking committee to start 'adjusting' things so the right teams wind up in the right regionals. Recall last year - in the OUAA West final, #5 Waterloo lost to #8 Western, who then lost to #3 York. But Waterloo was hosting one of the 4 regionals, so lo and behold, the Warriors moved up to #4. Hey great, you have to make sure that there's one top-4 team at each regional... Anyways with one more week of - often meaningless - playoff action, the top 10 are as follows: This week Last week 1 Waterloo 1 2 PEI 2 3 Acadia 3 4 Victoria 6 5 Manitoba 5 6 Lethbridge 4 7 York 8 8 Winnipeg 7 9 McMaster - 10 Saskatchewan 9 The regional picture is something like this: 4 schools, 3 of which I can't remember but let's call them SomebodyWayOutWest, SomebodyInManitoba, Toronto and SomebodyDownEast, host a 4 team regional and qualify automatically for their own. The 6 conference winners also automatically qualify, along with enough other schools that probably don't deserve to go any further to make a total of 16 teams. The 4 winners go on to the Final 4 in Halifax. The situation is somewhat complicated by the fact that Brandon - the leaders in the Great Plains Ath Conference, and Concordia - the leaders in Quebec, are each under some sort of suspension for (gasp!) PAYING the players to play ball! Shame! Those schools can still qualify for a regional if they win their division, which is likely in both cases. In fact Brandon just might be the second best team in the country, but they're barred from appearing on TV so let's hope they don't make it to the final, which is supposed to be televised. There are also a number of rules about who goes to what regional - conference winners are supposed to go to the regional in their own conference, if any; no more than 2 schools from one conference are to be at any one regional; at least 3 conferences should be represented at each. There should be a 'total rank' of 34 ( = (1+2+...+16)/4 ) at each regional. And so on and so on. It's NP-complete. One of PEI or Acadia will get shafted and have to travel far from home. It's unfortunate, but they keep changing the playoff format every year... The matchups will be announced Monday after this weekend's playoff games. In one game of no importance at all, Waterloo plays York (the greatest post-season chokers in history) for the Undisputed Championship of Ontario. Should be a typical intense game before another full house at the PAC. By the way, can anybody explain why talented basketball players would ever want to attend the University of Prince Edward Island, or Brandon, or Lethbridge (a university totally contained in one building)? PEI has an amazingly successful program (they are also ranked near the top in hockey and soccer) in spite of having only 1600 students. They must be putting something in the potatoes. ...Steve Hayman ...Totally Biased Reporter who Fully Expects Waterloo to Win It All ...And Doesn't Care What Else Happens So Long as Waterloo goes ...to the Toronto Regional