The teams that will compete for the 2015 PAC-8 Championship title have been decided as the final PAC-8 KRACH Rankings were released on Monday, January 26, 2015.
With the final weekend of the conference schedule in the books, six of the eight teams have been invited to Lake Tahoe, CA to battle it out for the 2015 Conference Championship.
The six teams were decided by the PAC-8 KRACH Rankings, a computer algorithm that valued strength of schedule and win percentage.
Arizona State regained the top spot in the ranking, finishing with a 9-1 conference record and is the regular season PAC-8 champions. ASU was co-champion of the regular season in their first season last year along with Utah.
Despite qualifying for the PAC-8 Championships, the Sun Devils have announced that they will not be attending the conference tournament due to internal disciplinary issues. “The Arizona State PAC-8 team has declined the invitation to participate in this year’s tournament due to a team rule violation. The team is working to regain their standing within the Sun Devil Hockey program so that they may participate in the Western Regional Tournament,” Colleen Hayes, an ASU Representative, said in a written statement.
Utah finished second in the ranking with a 7-1 record while USC finished third after posting a 10-5 record in the conference.
In fourth is Oregon, who held the top spot in the third PAC-8 KRACH Rankings. The Ducks finished the season with a 6-4 record in PAC-8 play.
Thanks mostly in part to their wins over Cal last weekend, the Washington Huskies jumped to the fifth spot and finished with a 5-11 record in the conference. After losing to USC last weekend, UCLA dropped to sixth with a 5-10 conference record.
California finished seventh in the conference but earned the final spot in the tournament with a 3-9 record while Washington State rounded out the conference with a 0-6 record.
With the final rankings being released, the seedings for the PAC-8 tournament have now been determined. The championships will be a single-elimination tournament which will have first round games on Friday, semifinal games on Saturday, and the Championship game on Sunday afternoon.
With Arizona State not attending the tournament, Utah and USC will be the number one and number two seeds respectively and have earned automatic byes into the semifinals on Saturday, February 7th.
The first round of the PAC-8 Championship will have two games on Friday, February 6th. The first game of the tournament will be #3 seed Oregon against #6 seed Cal which will start at 5pm PT. Game two on Friday will be #4 Washington taking on #5 UCLA which will start at 8pm PT.
In the semifinal round, #2 USC will play the winner of Oregon and Cal at 1pm PT on Saturday. The other semifinal will be #1 Utah against the winner of the Washington-UCLA game at 4pm PT.
The winners of the two semifinals will meet in the 2015 PAC-8 Championship Game on Sunday February 8th at 12pm PT.
Below is the full schedule for the tournament. Stay tuned to pac8hockey.com and like our Facebook page for the latest updates for the tournament.
PAC-8 Championship Tournament Schedule (team named first is home team)
Friday, February 6th:
Game 1: #3 Oregon vs #6 Cal – 430pm PT
Game 2: #4 Washington vs #5 UCLA – 730pm PT
Saturday, February 7th:
Game 3: #2 USC vs winner of Game 1 – 1pm PT
Game 4: #1 Utah vs winner of Game 2 – 4pm PT
Sunday, February 8th
Game 5: Winner of Game 3 vs Winner of Game 4 – 12pm PT
(highest seeded team will be home team)
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