ECAC Tournament Choices Knocked

As a complicated athletic event initiated just last year, the new hockey tournament of the Eastern College Athletic Conference is naturally subject to certain administrative growing pains. But inexperience can neither explain nor justify the slovenly way in which this winter's competing teams were chosen.

Eleven full days before the start of the tournament and with several crucial conference games remaining to be played, the eight man selection committee surprised everyone with a premature announcement of its findings.

Boston College was seeded first on the strength of early season performances with Clarkson, Harvard, St. Lawrence, Providence, Colgate, Brown, and Army following almost in that order. Third and fourth place seedings were made conditional on last weekend's contest between the Larries and the Friars of Providence.

No such provisions were placed on the first, second, or third seedings even though B.C. was scheduled to play both Clarkson and St. Lawrence within 48 hours of the committee's placement decisions. When the top-seeded Eagles were thumped first by Clarkson (4-2) and then by fourth-seeded St. Lawrence (5-1), mild complaints gave way to vocal criticisms.

Earliest denunciations came from New Haven, where coach Murray Murdoch's Yalies were completely ignored by the selection committee. Pointing out that his neglected Bulldogs beat eighth-seeded Army on two separate evenings, Murdoch accused the committee of picking teams on their records alone.

St. Lawrence hockey fans were also upset by the committee's unpopular decisions. Earlier in the season, the Larries blasted Harvard 6-1. In spite of this decisive victory, St. Lawrence found itself fighting off Providence for a fourth place ranking while the Crimson languished idly in undisputed third.

Perhaps the loudest and most effective blast of all came from Boston University's Jack Kelley with no axe to grind. Pronouncing the "premature selection a severe mistake," Kelley indicated that the ratings would certainly have been different if the committee had bothered to wait for B.C. to finish its disastrous northern trip.

One of the larger mysteries of the selection fiasco concerns the committee's haste to decide the top berths as compared to its willingness to wait another weekend before giving St. Lawrence and Providence its final blessing.

The committee's behavior takes on new meaning only when it is realized that the entire process was conducted through individual telephonic conferences rather than collective committee meetings. One also suspects that the committee (made up entirely of athletic directors) was nowhere near as familiar with its subject as a comparable body of coaches or sports writers might have been in its place.