The case for Calgary centres on an unblemished ramble through an entire conference season; the case for Carleton is almost everything else.

The latter is what matters more, and it might have been the iceberg that yours truly was ignoring during this whole exercise. Historically, overall record does not have the heaviest sway with the Final 8 seeding committee. So, Carleton's good, and thorough, almost-in-doubt-but-never-really-close 20-point win in the Wilson Cup, the Ravens are force-feeding some crow. Whether Carleton really wants to go in as the No. 1 seed — while there is no cause-and-effect, they have done better as a 2 or a 3 — is another story.

It feels like the last two decades of university basketball were summed up in one basket in the fourth quarter. Down 18 in the fourth quarter, Ryerson gets a little careless with the inbound pass. Carleton's Munis Tutu steals and bats the ball back into court to create the extra possession. A ball screen, two dribble drives and a tight block-to-block bounce pass later, Mitch Jackson lays it in.
The invaluable U Sports Hoops site that Martin Timmerman compiles includes five rankings: the contentious Elo Rating that the university sport's branding office has embraced, Ratings Percentage Index, Simple Ranking System (through games on Feb. 23), Points Per Possession Differential and last week's Top 10 coaches' poll. (There is a longer explanation on the five at the bottom.)

Here is how the 11 teams in tournament consideration — Alberta, Laurier, New Brunswick and Ottawa are listed as candidates for the at-large berth — are rated at this writing.


Elo RatingPPPDiffSRSRPITop 10
CarletonCarletonCarletonCalgaryCarleton
CalgaryRyersonRyersonCarletonCalgary
RyersonCalgaryCalgaryRyersonRyerson
UBCUBCUBCSMUUBC
SMUSMUAlberta*Alberta*SMU
Alberta*Alberta*Ottawa*UBCAlberta*
DalDalSMUDalDal
Ottawa*Ottawa*Laurier*Ottawa*Laurier*
Laurier*Laurier*ConcordiaConcordiaOttawa*
ConcordiaUNB*DalUNB*UNB*
UNB*ConcordiaUNB*Laurier*
*not qualified

The only ranking Calgary tops is the RPI, the system that greater mathematical minds most disdain.


Haley McDonald of Acadia had a conference-record 51 points, and that has some competition for Saturday's most impressive stat.

Someone, somewhere, is none too surprised by how the last 24-ish hours have played out; that is the perk of a perpetually underexposed and underappreciated strata of basketball. Put another way: I want to be wrong about which teams are in which slots; the real goal is just that people understand the regionally and politically compromised process that is nationals seeding. (On a related note, please stop making sense about just seeding everyone 1 through 8 based on quality, or SRS.)

Long story short, there was a weekend of the mild upset in the Maritimes, as McDonald turned it up to 11 — hey, Saturday was the 35th anniversary of the release of This Is Spinal Tap — to advance Acadia to an AUS final against Memorial, which was under .500 during conference play.



If it seemed odd that Ottawa had ascended to a No. 1 ranking ahead of the Laval team that it lost to twice in the fall, then McMaster has validated that skepticism by winning the Critelli Cup with a 79-75 win against the host Gee-Gees. Taking nothing away from the feat of McDonald and how her teammates facilitated it, the Marauders played a perfect game on Ottawa's floor. Sarah Gates and Hilary Hanaka each hooped at least 20 and were charged with zero turnovers, combined, geek out on that.

Rather than just do the usual back-of-an-envelope bracketing, I made a chart.
Next PostNewer Posts Previous PostOlder Posts Home