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UMass secures last at-large NCAA berth as Hockey East puts four in national men’s tournament
Hockey East will claim four of the 16 spots in the upcoming NCAA Division 1 men’s hockey tournament, with UMass getting in under the wire via the last game of Saturday night to join conference champion Boston College, Boston University, and Maine.
It will officially become Hockey East’s best showing since it also landed four spots in 2017 when the field is announced Sunday. (That year, though, it was a fifth New England team that reached the Frozen Four: Harvard.)
The NCAA has long used an objective qualification system to determine the field for its hockey championship, sparing the sport of the snub debates that are commonplace in football and basketball. Called the Pairwise, its current iteration scores each of the 64 teams in Division 1 against every other based on three criteria: head-to-head record (if the teams played), record vs. common opponents, and the ratings percentage index — itself a formulaic comparison tool between teams.
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BC (31-5-1) and BU (26-9-2) had clinched the No. 1 and No. 2 spots in the Pairwise respectively prior to their Hockey East championship meeting, won in dominant fashion by the Eagles, and will be No. 1 seeds in two of the four regionals. The Black Bears (23-11-2), beaten, 4-1, by BU in Friday night’s semifinals, were No. 5 and similarly assured a tournament spot.
All the intrigue Saturday night involved the Minutemen (20-13-3), whose 8-1 loss to BC on Saturday was their sixth in their last 10 games. That left them 14th in the Pairwise — safely inside the top 16, but in danger due to each of Division 1′s six conferences getting an automatic bid for its tournament champion.
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Two conferences were guaranteed to have a winner from outside the top 16: The CCHA, won Friday night by Michigan Tech (No. 32), and Atlantic Hockey, won Saturday by RIT (No. 21) over Springfield’s American International. St. Lawrence — UMass coach Greg Carvel’s former team — could have made it a third and eliminated the Minutemen with a Saturday upset in the ECAC, but Cornell won that automatic bid, 3-1.
Through all the permutations, the final spot came down to the night’s final game, between two teams already locked into the NCAAs. When nine-time national champion Denver beat Omaha, 4-1, in the NCHC title game in St. Paul, Minn., UMass was in, hanging on to that final spot by an RPI sliver over Colorado College — .5497 to .5493.
Had Omaha won, it would have been the Tigers in by a few ten-thousandths of a point. Instead, it will be a virtual home game for UMass in its fourth NCAA appearance in the last five tournaments, as it is the host of the Springfield regional.
BC, as the top overall seed, will draw its shortest possible trip in Providence. BU, however, will likely be forced to either St. Louis or Sioux Falls, S.D., due to UMass’s qualification. The NCAA does not allow teams from the same conference to be paired in the first round, and as a No. 1 seed, the Terriers would be drawn against the Minutemen in Springfield.
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Also making the field as top regional seeds, according to the Pairwise, will be Denver and Michigan State, which beat Michigan in overtime for the Big Ten title on Saturday night. Following Maine are NCHC regular-season champion North Dakota, and Minnesota and Wisconsin from the Big Ten. Defending champion Quinnipiac is a potential No. 3 seed with Michigan, Omaha, and Cornell; with Western Michigan (the fourth team from the NCHC), UMass, RIT, and Michigan Tech rounding it out.
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