Small sample size and all that, but I wonder if there is something systematic that he's doing that doesn't wear well when the opponents have more of a history?
On numerous occasions, Syracuse outperformed a low seed, and I believe it is at least partially attributable to teams not being familiar with their defense.
but what I find impressive is it is in every season he's taken a team to the NCAAs. No matter the turnover in players he's never a one and done. I don't know what it is, but it has to be something Sandelin is specifically doing.
UMD has also been pretty patient with him (as they were with his predecessor). They allowed him a couple of bad seasons to get his feet wet, and then did not go overboard when a FF trip in his 3rd season was followed a few years of mediocre or bad hockey. They've been rewarded with 3 FFs and 2 NCAA titles, to go along with 7 overall NCAA bids in the last 10 seasons. Not too shabby.
The record of 1 seeds vs. lower seeds in the semifinal and final games since 1981 (when it went to 8 teams) is 33-32. In the NCAA basketball tournament, by contrast, the record of 1 seeds vs. lower seeds since 1985 (when it went to 64 teams) is 34-15. That suggests a higher degree of parity and/or randomness to me.
The gap between 1 and 16 varies for each college sport but when we’re talking about SPORT variation...there’s just too little margin in hockey for single game elimination.
There was a MUCH bigger gap between SCSU and Aur Force in this hear’s Tourney and AF handled them no problem.
We were playing the last at large team in but we were also playing last year’s runner up. We were undoubtedly the better team over the course of the year but they were more ready for that game and likely would have been over any other team too.
Morons
I’d also call UND morons for giving Hakstol the job over Sandelin
Berry...we’ll see