10th place again? Argh. I can't get that out of my head. I sat through the season and saw enough good hockey that the thought of finishing in the basement really never crossed my mind. I still can't analyze all the reasons for it because I'm a bit shocked. So I noticed some things and put together this little list of rationalizations to make myself feel better.
1. The Seawolves were better than 34 other Division 1 teams.
I felt bad about 10th. I don't feel as bad anymore. Isn't rationalizing great?
1. The Seawolves were better than 34 other Division 1 teams.
KRACH is a pretty widely accepted ranking system and currently UAA is 25th. Higher than Cornell, Ohio State, Harvard, Northern Michigan, and UAF. Higher than than every team in the College Hockey America conference. Higher than every team in the Atlantic Hockey Conference. Higher than 9 teams in the East Coast Athletic Conference. Higher than 4 Hockey East teams. Higher than 7 teams in the Central Collegiate Hockey Conference. Outside of the WCHA there are only 14 teams that finished with a higher ranking than UAA.2. There really was parity in the WCHA.
UAA's 17 points for 10th is the highest total in the WCHA since the return to a 28 game conference schedule and Minnesota's 39 points for 1st is the lowest since 1990. And hey ... Gwoz and Eaves both said so.3. A mere handful of games was the difference.
A loss in OT to Wisconsin instead of a tie or a win on Nov 3rd. A one goal loss to MSU-M on Nov 11th. The 2-0 loss to DU on Dec 16th. The 4-2 loss to St. Bob on Jan 5th. And the 3-2 loss to Duluth. Wins in those 5 games would have had UAA finishing in 6th place. And only one of those games was in 07? This is why EVERY game is so important. Just a lapse or two and a couple of poorly officiated games can be the difference between the basement and decent showing.I'm not sure the 3rd one makes me feel much better but as this young UAA team (171 games played between 7 guys for an average of about 24.5 games per freshman) gets more experience they'll bag more of those "tight" games. I did a quick comparison with a couple of other random teams to see how many games their freshman played. CC's 7 freshman combined for an average of 18.7 games each. St. Bob's 6 freshman combined for an average of 22.6 games each. A quick look (without calculations) tells me DU and Minnesota's averages are probably the highest in the league. All of which means that the Seawolves are returning next year with a pretty experienced sophomore class.
I felt bad about 10th. I don't feel as bad anymore. Isn't rationalizing great?
4 comments:
yeah, rationalizing is great. you could also add the other denver game. if the brawl didn't happen, we would have beaten denver that first night. from what i remember, we were dominating the pioneers for the first 30 minutes of the game, then fatigue started to kick in.
Stop rationalizing and making excuses please. We sucked it up when it mattered. The boys let things get them down and didnt' show the fight till the end attitude that they had at the beginning of the season. With all the struggling back into games they probably just didn't have enough left come the end of the season. They needed to make some games easy on themselves.
And mostly STOP BLAIMING THE OFFICIATING!!!! I am sick of hearing at basically every game that its the officials fault. The physical game that we play is going to cause some penalties, but even if there are notrosious calls which there were, it does not mean they lost the game for us. The players did not react well to the positions they were forced into. How many times did we have a great PK and not turn it into momentum in our favor. That is what has to be done. So don't blame it all on the refs please and realize that a lot has to do with how the players react to those stupid calls that the refs pull out of who knows where.
and to add to that, and not sound so negative. We did double our win total kicked the nookies in the shins HARD. and won the Classic. A lot of promise and hard work this season, don't think i totally hate this team or anything, but just realistic that our guys probably could have played better at points and didn't and in this league it WILL cost you whoever you are playing.
Why would you want to insult very nice people by comparing them to Todd Anderson?
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