ASU and the ACHA vs NCAA Debate

[mattkaminski15]

With the news that Arizona State University was admitted as an NCAA D1 team, I think it's time to bring up the Debate between ACHA D1 and NCAA schools.

Obviously not all ACHA D1 schools are able to play NCAA D1 level hockey, but There are a large majority of ACHA teams that would be able to compete with NCAA D3 teams. Previously, this argument always ended with NCAA fans/players shunning ACHA fans/players for thinking they'd have the ability to compete with NCAA teams. I think the most positive report I've found on this debate was an NCAA player saying that, at best, the top 2 or 3 ACHA programs would only be able to compete with the bottom half of the NCAA programs.

I'm not the most highly educated on this topic, so please share your insight and opinions.

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[Andre Poodle Lussier]

With the news that Arizona State University was admitted as an NCAA D1 team, I think it's time to bring up the Debate between ACHA D1 and NCAA schools.

Obviously not all ACHA D1 schools are able to play NCAA D1 level hockey, but There are a large majority of ACHA teams that would be able to compete with NCAA D3 teams. Previously, this argument always ended with NCAA fans/players shunning ACHA fans/players for thinking they'd have the ability to compete with NCAA teams. I think the most positive report I've found on this debate was an NCAA player saying that, at best, the top 2 or 3 ACHA programs would only be able to compete with the bottom half of the NCAA programs.

I'm not the most highly educated on this topic, so please share your insight and opinions.

I talked to a guy a couple of nights ago who refs ACHA hockey about this very thing and he stated there are about five teams who could play D-1 and be respectable because they'd have the booster pockets and resources to pull it off.

Liberty
Arizona State
Stony Brook
Ohio
Syracuse

The biggest issue for guys like Liberty will be travel - they want to move up but the closest schools to them that play hockey are Miami of Ohio, PSU, and Princeton. Apparently Liberty is hot and heavy about building their program for inclusion in NCAA by 2020.

He's reffed it for about 10 years. Mentioned 10 years ago that the players were nowhere as good as they are now down there and that the skill across the board has improved.

 

[mattkaminski15]

I talked to a guy a couple of nights ago who refs ACHA hockey about this very thing and he stated there are about five teams who could play D-1 and be respectable because they'd have the booster pockets and resources to pull it off.

Liberty
Arizona State
Stony Brook
Ohio
Syracuse

The biggest issue for guys like Liberty will be travel - they want to move up but the closest schools to them that play hockey are Miami of Ohio, PSU, and Princeton. Apparently Liberty is hot and heavy about building their program for inclusion in NCAA by 2020.

He's reffed it for about 10 years. Mentioned 10 years ago that the players were nowhere as good as they are now down there and that the skill across the board has improved.

how about teams that could compete with d3 teams? surely there are more of them.

 

[CrazyEddie20]

There is no debate.

Club hockey people always talk about how their teams are competitive with Division I and Division III teams. They aren't, previous results have show that, and the few rare victories that club teams do have were against teams trotting out guys from the bottom of the depth chart that never see the ice otherwise.

In 2012-13, Alabama-Huntsville played a schedule that included Division I, Division III, and club teams that was cobbled together at the last minute because the powers that be wanted to drop hockey. Against Division I competition that year, the Chargers went 1-20-1, the lone win coming against Lake Superior State. Against Division III teams, they went 2-1, outscoring their opponents 11-7. Against club teams, they went 5-0-0, outscored their opponents 40-2, and only Oklahoma was able to keep it "close," losing 3-1 and 4-0. Granted, Alabama and Vanderbilt were the other two opponents, but UAH - then a bottom-of-the-barrel Division I team, was just way, way better than the club teams.

Arizona State will cut 80 percent of the guys from the club team next year. There's a reason for it - they aren't good enough to play Division I hockey. It's just reality.