Cornell's Season, By the Numbers

I was watching a few minutes of SportsCenter this morning, and their college basketball analyst (no, not Andy Katz) was breaking down several "bubble" teams' chances of making the NCAA tournament. ESPN looks at factors like RPI, strength of schedule, good wins, and bad losses.

Applying some of the same factors to the Cornell hockey team, one is not impressed.

Cornell's record is 16-8-3, which is good for the seventh-best in the country. So far, so good.

But dig a little deeper, and there are some serious problems.

Cornell's wins have come against teams ranked, on average, 39th in KRACH. That's out of 58 teams in D-1 college hockey. Cornell's strength of schedule is 37, and they've beaten a whopping two teams ranked in the top 32 (#5 North Dakota and #10 UNH). Five number summary for wins: 5, 36, 42, 48, 50.

Against teams in the top 32, which you'll remember is more than half of the teams in college hockey, Cornell is 2-4-2. Losses were to #5 North Dakota, #6 Colorado College, and #14 Yale (twice). Cornell tied #22 BU and #26 Union.

Against the bottom 26 teams, Cornell is 14-4-1. Those four losses have come against Quinnipiac, which was a top-10 team when Cornell played them, Princeton (twice), and Dartmouth.

Phrased another way, Cornell has played only eight games against teams in the top half of Division 1, and has won twice. One of those games (NoDak) required Ben Scrivens to stop all 28 shots to steal a 1-0 victory, and the other (UNH) is generally regarded as Cornell's best performance of the season. Also keep in mind that UNH is horrendous (1-5-1) in non-conference games this season, with the one win coming against Dartmouth.

In the SportsCenter breakdown, Cornell's RPI (14th) and strength of schedule (37th) might hurt its case for a bid to the 16-team NCAA tournament. Good wins would be @UNH, vs. NoDak; bad losses would be to #40 Princeton (twice) and #49 Dartmouth.

There are obviously plenty of ways to spin these statistics, but I don't really see this as an affirmation of Cornell's season.