2013-14 OUA realignment

[11111]

With Waterloo and UQTR set to battle for the Queen's Cup, the OUA season is just about done. That said, it's worth considering what next year's realignment is going to look like with Laurentian rejoining the league.

It's been said in the forums here that Laurentian will be joining the east division, and that this will cause "big changes" in the schedule.

I figure it's probably worth looking at this using the old "far" and "mid" divisions (instead of just the east and west) since the schedule matrix in the east is mostly constructed that way anyway (west is a little more balanced).

Old alignment (with Nipissing):

Far West
Western
Waterloo
Laurier
Lakehead
Windsor

Mid West
Brock
York
Guelph
UOIT

Mid East
Toronto
Ryerson
Queen's
RMC
Nipissing

Far East
McGill
UQTR
Concordia
Ottawa
Carleton

Obviously Laurentian belongs in the same division as Nipissing. Problem is, the the only one with an open slot is the Mid West, not the Mid East. Since "big changes" are supposed to take place, I don't think it's out of the question that we'll see a dramatic re-shuffling of those two divisions...perhaps something like this:

Mid West
Toronto
Ryerson
York
Brock
Guelph

Mid East
Queen's
RMC
Laurentian
Nipissing
UOIT

This way, rivals U of T and Ryerson don't get split up between conferences, all 3 Toronto teams end up in the same division, Laurentian gets to be with Nipissing and UOIT finally gets put in the east, where they belong.

Scheduling-wise, this alignment would also work across the entire league, now that all four divisions have the same number of teams:

The 28 games would be:
4 games x 2 division opponents = 8
3 games x other 2 division opponents = 6
2 games x the 5 teams in the other intra-conference division = 10
(i.e. mid east vs far east, and mid west vs far west)
and the usual 4 cross-over games against the opposite conference

Click to read more...

 

[AdamMcg83]

I get the feeling that they will try to stick with the two-division system, rather than back to four. Not basing that on anything more than a hunch though.

Wouldn't be surprised to see the two Toronto schools come to the west, with UOIT and Laurentian added to the east. That would give each division 10 teams, with the same 1-8 playoff format.

Again, this is a total guess.

 

[northvanman]

I get the feeling that they will try to stick with the two-division system, rather than back to four. Not basing that on anything more than a hunch though.

Wouldn't be surprised to see the two Toronto schools come to the west, with UOIT and Laurentian added to the east. That would give each division 10 teams, with the same 1-8 playoff format.

Again, this is a total guess.

What you've described in terms of east and west placement of teams makes the most sense to me, whether they do it with two or four divisions. Personally I prefer the two divisions - in the old four division format, the Mid East was perennially much weaker than the other three divisions, and the Mid West was always weaker than the Far West. What happened many years is teams in the Far West and Far East missing the playoffs when teams with worse records in one or both of the Mid divisions getting in.

The snag may be UOIT. When this topic was discussed on these boards last summer, someone commented that when UOIT joined, the OUA committed to them that they'd play on the west.

 

[11111]

What you've described in terms of east and west placement of teams makes the most sense to me, whether they do it with two or four divisions. Personally I prefer the two divisions - in the old four division format, the Mid East was perennially much weaker than the other three divisions, and the Mid West was always weaker than the Far West. What happened many years is teams in the Far West and Far East missing the playoffs when teams with worse records in one or both of the Mid divisions getting in.

The snag may be UOIT. When this topic was discussed on these boards last summer, someone commented that when UOIT joined, the OUA committed to them that they'd play on the west.

Ya, I remember that as well. I still don't understand why. If that's actually true and the OUA absolutely won't move them, then the only other choice is to split up U of T and Ryerson, and send only one of them to the west (assuming Laurentian and Nipissing will be together in the east). And I just can't see that happening.

As for how many divisions there will be, I was only using the four division system from a scheduling standpoint. Although it will probably stay at just two, if you look at the schedule for the teams in the east, it is pretty much constructed along those lines (west is more balanced I assume because the teams are, with the exception of Lakehead, not as far distances from each other as in the east). Mid east teams only play the far east ones twice, while they play the teams within their groups either 3 or 4 times.

 

[SnipeShow91]

Hudes89, you are just a little bit off on the schedule based on the rough drafts I saw with RMC's schedule.

 

[11111]

Hudes89, you are just a little bit off on the schedule based on the rough drafts I saw with RMC's schedule.

What did RMC's schedule look like? And since you saw the sched, is the alignment we've been speculating on in this thread (Ryerson/Toronto to the West and UOIT/Nipissing/Laurentian in the east) correct?

 

[11111]

The realignment is official:

Laurentian and UOIT join the east, Ryerson and U of T go west

http://www.ryersonrams.ca/ViewArtic...14&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=22300&ATCLID=207129560

 

[Rob]

The realignment is official:

Laurentian and UOIT join the east, Ryerson and U of T go west

http://www.ryersonrams.ca/ViewArtic...14&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=22300&ATCLID=207129560

Makes sense to have all the Toronto teams in one division.

 

[WilcoxHound]

Makes sense to have all the Toronto teams in one division.

Isn't UOIT in Oshawa? If you fart in Toronto you smell it in Oshawa.

 

[leafhky88]

The realignment is official:

Laurentian and UOIT join the east, Ryerson and U of T go west

http://www.ryersonrams.ca/ViewArtic...14&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=22300&ATCLID=207129560

Did not read the article until now.

I think the move makes the OUA West tougher than last year. UOIT was near the bottom. Toronto had moments in the Top 10 last year, and Ryerson has had good recruiting with its new facilities, it just needs time to reap the benefits.

This is a major change in schedule as well.

You now play:
-9 home games (one against each divisional opponent)
-9 away games (one against each divisional opponent)
-10 crossover games (one against each cross-divisional opponent)

This is somewhat interesting, as now every team in the OUA will be play every other team in the OUA at least once. This also will add travel for most teams, with the travel zone potentially encompassing Thunder Bay in the North West, to Winsdor in the South West to Trois-Rivieres in the East (depending on whether you are home/away).

 

[northvanman]

Did not read the article until now.

I think the move makes the OUA West tougher than last year. UOIT was near the bottom. Toronto had moments in the Top 10 last year, and Ryerson has had good recruiting with its new facilities, it just needs time to reap the benefits.

This is a major change in schedule as well.

You now play:
-9 home games (one against each divisional opponent)
-9 away games (one against each divisional opponent)
-10 crossover games (one against each cross-divisional opponent)

This is somewhat interesting, as now every team in the OUA will be play every other team in the OUA at least once. This also will add travel for most teams, with the travel zone potentially encompassing Thunder Bay in the North West, to Winsdor in the South West to Trois-Rivieres in the East (depending on whether you are home/away).

While what the article says in terms of scheduling makes sense in principle, it's impractical - it will be interesting to see if what's described in the article holds up when the schedule is released. I can't see a team travelling all the way to Thunder Bay to play one game.

When the league was last at 16 teams (prior to UOIT, Carleton, and Nipissing joining), every team was paired up for travelling purposes (Western with Waterloo, Laurier with Guelph, RMC with Queen's, McGill with Concordia, and so on). So if RMC played at Western, Queen's played at Waterloo (usually the same night), and then they'd flip it the next night. It actually made scheduling very easy. The only exceptions were Lakehead and Windsor - they were also paired up in a sense, but played double headers - so in the example above, Queen's would play a double header at Lakehead, and RMC would play a double header at Windsor on the same weekend, but Lakehead would not play RMC and Windsor would not play Queen's. The number of teams and schedule format is now set up for something similar.

 

[SnipeShow91]

While what the article says in terms of scheduling makes sense in principle, it's impractical - it will be interesting to see if what's described in the article holds up when the schedule is released. I can't see a team travelling all the way to Thunder Bay to play one game.

When the league was last at 16 teams (prior to UOIT, Carleton, and Nipissing joining), every team was paired up for travelling purposes (Western with Waterloo, Laurier with Guelph, RMC with Queen's, McGill with Concordia, and so on). So if RMC played at Western, Queen's played at Waterloo (usually the same night), and then they'd flip it the next night. It actually made scheduling very easy. The only exceptions were Lakehead and Windsor - they were also paired up in a sense, but played double headers - so in the example above, Queen's would play a double header at Lakehead, and RMC would play a double header at Windsor on the same weekend, but Lakehead would not play RMC and Windsor would not play Queen's. The number of teams and schedule format is now set up for something similar.

That's probably what is going to happen. We don't play Windsor this season but play Lakehead in Lakehead. We also have a home weekend series against Laurentian instead of a home and home.

 

[11111]

Looks like the OUA schedule will be out on Monday:

https://twitter.com/OUAsport/status/336920412367753217

https://twitter.com/LakeheadSID/status/336918378948210688