The show is now available!
http://achanationals.com/view/achanationals/mens-d2/M2-reveal-show
Not a bad looking show. I would suggest working on the public delivery for next year. Very little communication on how the show would be released and where to find it. I think the ACHA facebook page posted it out at like 12:07 EST when the expectation was that it was going to be a live show starting at noon. So you had a lot of people trying to find this thing when it was no where to be found. What you could of done is had the facebook page post yesterday or even this morning giving an update of when and where to find it. Not sure how do it logistically, but if you pre-tape the show again next year, maybe try to find a way to play it out on Facebook Live in the evening. I feel like if you spent a week advertising the event, you could of had a pretty good audience with alot of chatter going on.
As for the analysis, Iâll give these guys a lot of props. Youâre asking guys who have never seen 95% of these teams to try to speak intelligently on them, which is a suicide mission. All they have is leading scorers and records to go off of, and even doing the proper research on that would be very time consuming to do on 40 teams. My suggestion for next year in a pre-taped setting, do skype interviews with each of the regional commissioners. These are the guys that really know the teams and how the season played out. They could give some very interesting insight into how they think the regional tournaments will play out.
But once again, very impressive broadcast. Itâs nice to see the ACHA growing and taking chances.
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Goober,
Thanks - credit to both commissioners, and all the folks at Liberty U. We chatted about this more than a year and a half ago at the Liberty M1 Kick-off Show to include the entire ACHA. Nice to give birth to a project like this - know we still have to chat up the ACHA Women as well, but âbaby stepsâ.
Also, we really appreciate the quick hot wash on the show and PR leading up to the show. All of your suggestions are spot on and weâll place in our log for next year. I particularly like the Skypeâd interviews with the Regional Commishes. Would even like to see the Commissioners as well, if we can break them away from the work on Nationals.
Again, thanks to Rett and the folks from LU - would not have been possible without a great deal of work behind the scenes. Any other feedback most welcomed.
S
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I completely agree that the ramp up to the event could/should be improved with more communication and promotion in the future. Great suggestions on how to improve the broadcast as well! Love the skype idea.
We hadnât received any feedback that people were having a difficult time locating it. Articles were published on both websites (achahockey.org and achanationals.com) at 12pm ET. But it appears we couldâve improved on the social media delivery.
Response thus far has been overwhelmingly positive and I believe we are heading in the right direction!
Solid first effort with room for improvement.
One suggestion I have is to do the reveal with a nicely formatted list of the final rankings (1 thru 10, or 15, or whatever). Then you can move on to the bracket and matchup discussion. I found myself hunting frantically with my eyes for the various seeds spread out across the matchup calendar before it disappeared.
Also, most of the analysis seemed to focus on the national autobids. Those are obviously important topics, but I think there is a lot of drama at the backend of the rankings that sort of got overlooked.
Loved the show, it was a lot of fun to watch. And yes it will only get better as the ACHA D2 is getting better. My only thoughts would be to have the host maybe get with some of the teams in each region and get a little info from them. All in all great show and looking forward to next years. Thanks
Terrific job by the ACHA with the reveal show. The end product was quite professional with the graphics and the commentators.
I agree with some of the comments about the public delivery. I know there was a press release to the teams last week, but make that thing public for all to see.
Hopefully, the league can keep up the momentum with regional tournament coverage. The Sunday of regionals, when 8 teams advance to Nationals, may be the most exciting day of the season for the league.
Great show. My question about rankings is how Grand Valley isnât number #1 when they swept #1 LU-B?
Aurora & Mckendree have proven there relavance in the central with the move up. Do some homework on the hardest region in the country. That would be my only complaint. Neither of those 2 have proven anything, computer rankings have helped them and kudos to them for getting those games on the schedule. But when you donât play over 20 games in a season the win loss record is always going to be a question.
Your bracket crashers was a run down of 4 teams who still had league playoffs. No real insight given like the super 8 conference out east. Thereâs 2 teams that have a real legit shot of sending SLU packing. Both ranked #14 & #15 and have beat teams already going to the tournament. Iâd be nervous if I was a Billkens follower.
I thought it was greatâŚ1 thing I would have liked. MAking it more dramatic in announcing the top 2 direct bids. It showed the 8 teams quite quick. I know those 8 teams will be talked about more, but could of added some drama?
Also, will there be another show as a preview for nationals?
This thread seems to be the most constructive.
@Sheriff, I prefer the computer rankings over the âGood olâ boysâ ranking that used to occur, but I do have some feedback.
What Games/Scores are included in the Ranking for D2?
I am under the impression that all scores are included this year. In the past for D2, rankings were only based on scores between 2 ACHA D2 teams.
If this has changed, what is the reason?
I can rationalize that doing it this way allows for the most âobjectiveâ rating for a team since it takes in more information and data points.
On the flip side, the universe of teams has become so large, that teams like Williston have a rating that is âpoisonedâ by non-ACHA-M2 teams and furthermore non-ACHA teams in general.
Their rating is now based partly on how teams like Briercrest (A Canadian college), Bottineau (a JUCO), Jamestown/Minot State (ACHA D1) teams perform against the teams in their leagues. Extrapolating even further, Jamestown has games against the Manitoba Bisons (a CIS level school), whoâs results in CIS now affect Jamestownâs rating, which in turn affects Willistonâs rating.
It just doesnât make sense.
The ACHA also has no control over what games these non-ACHA teams are reporting. At the end, Williston loses two games on the road against Bottineau, but I guess they donât count because Bottineau is the home team and it doesnât look like the scoresheets were ever turned in to the ACHA.
So do these types of games count or not? Because sometimes they are included in the rankings, then at other times, they are no where to be seen.
This isnât meant to be an indictment of Williston as things like this occur throughout the system. Williston just happens to be the best case study at the moment.
My point is, you have bubble teams who are 0.1 ranking points away from getting into regionals or getting the autobid to nationals, but non-ACHA scores, and missing scores in general, are potentially causing the computers to get it âwrongâ.
SoâŚis there any plan to address this?
And if I have it all wrong, please let me know. Thank you!
The D2 rankings take only games that have been played against ACHA teams. We couldnât possibly factor all the non-ACHA teams into the ranking. This having been the first year of using computer rankings we have learned a great deal.
You are right about the missing scores. We are counting on all the teams reporting all the scores and with over 200 teams that almost always never happens. We made it possible that visiting teams could also input the scores with the hopes of increasing the possibility of getting the game in on time. That worked to some extent but it wasnât perfect. For a game to be scored, all of the data from the game must be put into the Pointstreak website before a score is generated. We need to come up with a better faster system for that and I think we have.
Please understand, Williston is an excellent team, but they havenât played the top teams in D2. Their schedule is loaded with difficult D1 competition. In theory D1 should be more difficult than D2 but some of the top D2 teams can compete very well with the top D1 teams. All in all it will be fun to see Williston in Columbus. I am really looking forward to it. Hope this helps explain a little bit.
Just for the record, I donât want people to mistake my use of Williston as an example as a vote against them. They have definitely shown their ability against some quality opponents.
My questions are more academic and directed toward the future.
So if the universe of teams for the rankings is only ACHA clubs (of all levels M1/M2/M3), the Official rankings provided by the ACHA each week (and those used to determine regional selection) are calculated using different data than the rankings on the MyHockeyRanking.com website. Correct?
Iâm asking because if you compare the final ranking spreadsheet with the MyHockeyRankings.com ranking some of the easily calculable #s like AGD are the same.
Iâll use Williston as an example again for consistency. Both the spreadsheet and the MHR website say their AGD was 1.75, but you only get that # if you include the Briercrest (non-ACHA) and Bottineau (non-ACHA) scores. If you remove them it goes from 1.75 to about 2.05. Shouldnât that be the # on the Offical ACHA spreadsheet? That being said, the SoS and Overall Rating are different. So is that the only thing that is changing?
I guess this is now just a transparency issue. If you look at the MHR website you can see all of the scores that are going into the algorithm so you can make some sense of it.
If itâs true that we are using a different dataset for the ACHA official rankings, we should be able to see that dataset as well. Maybe MHR can have an âACHA only ratingâ that is separate from the overall rating.
Iâm not suggesting there is anything nefarious going on, but we should be able to see what is actually giving us these rankings and not just give it blind trust. Especially with an iterative algorithm, even a tiny mistake can compound over and over again and drastically change the results.
If your trying to model D2 after D1 then do it they way they do it.
1st ranking is coaches panel (and for good reason).
2nd ranking starts the computer and so forth.
âThe good olâ boy clubâ as somebody in this thread called it is extremely important and should be held in tact. Correct me if Iâm wrong but havenât those teams grinded there teeth for years to get where there are? âThe newbiesâ coming should prove themselves first before getting the credit.
yes you will have a few anomalies every year, but overall the top teams are there every yr. computer rankings or âgood ol boy clubâ
Agent_X your biased against ânewâ teams is odd.