I've been forced to take a few days off. The cause wasn't physical. I simply had nothing to say about playing the Badgers that seemed worth writing. Nothing I'm thinking today seems worth writing either but hey ... it's Thursday afternoon and not a peep from me? There's six regular season games left. I'm not sure if there is any chance for UAA to get home ice. The remaining six games are all against the three other teams that occupy the bottom four league spots with UAA. A sweep of Bucky and UAA will have 19 points. If UND gets swept by MSU-M that helps UAA but keeps MSU-M three points ahead of UAA. The if UAA were to sweep the Mavericks they'd be close to fifth (depending on other results of course) with just one series remaining. Then if the Seawolves take 4 points from UMD in the last series they would finish with 27 points and who knows? I suppose they aren't eliminated per se yet but is any of that worth considering?
With 4 of the remaining 6 games on somebody else's ice I'm hardly optimistic about any of the above happening. I want to believe that it's possible. In the grand scheme; not any of it matters. If the Seawolves want to get into the NCAA's they'll have to win the WCHA Final Five league tournament. That's reality. Winning the remaining 6 games won't do anything dramatic for their Pairwise rating since they won't have beaten anyone with a substantially higher rating. I hate to sound like I'm down on the team. I'm really not. They've accomplished some nice things this season. But unless and until this program consistently makes the NCAA's (2 out of 3 years or better) then I'm not going to be jumping up and down calling it the best thing since sliced bread. Perhaps that's a bit too high of an expectation at this point. I'm both hopeful and optimistic though that we're seeing the beginnings of that.
For the remainder of the season the team has to look back to the early part of the season when their goal was to improve steadily through the year and try to make noise at the end. They have to look to Saturday's game against the Gophers and remember that is the sort of effort they'll need every remaining game. With that sort of consistent high level effort the rest of the way they could get to the Final Five in St. Paul; without it they'll be watching on TV with the rest of us.
See ... I really didn't have anything worthwhile.
With 4 of the remaining 6 games on somebody else's ice I'm hardly optimistic about any of the above happening. I want to believe that it's possible. In the grand scheme; not any of it matters. If the Seawolves want to get into the NCAA's they'll have to win the WCHA Final Five league tournament. That's reality. Winning the remaining 6 games won't do anything dramatic for their Pairwise rating since they won't have beaten anyone with a substantially higher rating. I hate to sound like I'm down on the team. I'm really not. They've accomplished some nice things this season. But unless and until this program consistently makes the NCAA's (2 out of 3 years or better) then I'm not going to be jumping up and down calling it the best thing since sliced bread. Perhaps that's a bit too high of an expectation at this point. I'm both hopeful and optimistic though that we're seeing the beginnings of that.
For the remainder of the season the team has to look back to the early part of the season when their goal was to improve steadily through the year and try to make noise at the end. They have to look to Saturday's game against the Gophers and remember that is the sort of effort they'll need every remaining game. With that sort of consistent high level effort the rest of the way they could get to the Final Five in St. Paul; without it they'll be watching on TV with the rest of us.
See ... I really didn't have anything worthwhile.
3 comments:
Just so you know, Donald, you will not be getting 4 points out of UMD. You will beg for a split and God will laugh.
Glad to hear that "I" won't be. That will allow the Seawolves to thrash them and I'll laugh at god.
Well we were real inspiring tonight.
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