Bracketology

Week 2 of Bracketology for 2011 stresses thinking outside the box. While the Pairwise has been pretty stagnant for awhile, there are some opportunities for teams on the 2 line to move up and some teams from outside of the current NCAA field who can sneak in with good playoff weekends.

A reminder of procedures: my bracket below is how I believe the field will look when it is announced, not how it would look if the season ended today.

Conference tournament champs get an automatic bid (obviously).

Teams who host a regional must be slotted into their host region if they make the field.

This year’s hosts are:

West: CCHA

Midwest: Michigan Tech

East: Yale

Northeast: New Hampshire

This week’s bracket under the jump:

East

1. Yale

4. Wisconsin

2. Minnesota-Duluth

3. Miami

Northeast

1. Boston College

4. RIT

2. Union

3. New Hampshire

West

1. North Dakota

4. RPI

2. Merrimack

3. Notre Dame

Midwest

1. Denver

4. Dartmouth

2. Michigan

3. Nebraska-Omaha

This one actually took a little mental gymnastics to do. New Hampshire falling to a four seed would really mess up the bracket because it would force Boston College out west, but for now I think they’ll have enough to hang on given that they should be able to flip their comparison with RPI given their games over TUC and common opponents remaining.

Also I actually had Minnesota in in the first draft of this bracket, and think they have a decent shot to get in because I think they could flip their BU comparison and Dartmouth comparisons just by winning their WCHA playoff series, and then it comes down to whomever has a better championship weekend.

My projected Frozen Four this week: Miami, Boston College, North Dakota, Denver

last week’s projected Frozen Four: same