Competitive equity among the teams in the NCAA hockey tournament field was the justification used by the NCAA selection committee in sending the University of Maine to the Midwest Regional for Saturday’s first-round game.

Maine fans were hoping their Black Bears would play in one of the two eastern regionals. Instead, 24-9-5 Maine was the only one of the four Hockey East teams sent to the west.

Maine plays in the Midwest Regional as the No. 2 seed and faces third seed Michigan at the Wolverines’ Yost Ice Arena in Saturday’s 3:30 p.m. game.

Boston University and top seed New Hampshire are in the Northeast Regional at Worcester, Mass., while Boston College is playing in the East Regional at Providence, R.I., where ECAC regular-season and tournament champ Cornell is the top seed.

BU was tabbed the host school at Worcester, so it was predetermined if the Terriers qualified, that’s where they were going. New Hampshire’s Wildcats were a top seed, which helped them stay in the east.

So why wasn’t Boston College, rated eighth in the PairWise Rankings, sent west since it finished lower than Maine (sixth) in the PairWise?

“It was a matter of competitive equity. We wanted to balance the brackets,” said Ian McCaw, the chairman of the NCAA Ice Hockey Committee.

The committee also mandated teams from the same conference wouldn’t play in the first round.

Since Cornell is the top-rated team in the PairWise and BC was the lowest-rated No. 2 seed, it made sense to put them in the same regional in case they meet in the second round. Thus, Cornell would avoid potentially having to play a higher-rated team such as Maine in the second round.

Michigan tied BC for eighth in the PairWise and Colorado College, the No. 2-rated team overall, is the top seed at the Midwest Regional and will play Wayne State (Mich.), the College Hockey America titlist.

McCaw, the athletic director at UMass and former Maine associate AD, said fan support was discussed since Maine has drawn a lot of fans to regionals in the northeast.

“We had to make a hard decision,” said McCaw, reiterating that it boiled down to competitive equity.

The fact the two western regionals are at the home rinks of the hosts, Michigan and the University of Minnesota ( Mariucci Arena), isn’t an ideal situation, according to McCaw.

“Down the road, we’d prefer to have them in neutral buildings. We want to create the most neutral environment possible,” said McCaw. “But all of the viable bids submitted in the west were at campus rinks.”

He said the Ann Arbor bid was the only viable one they entertained back when there was a two, six-team regional format (one regional in the east, one in the west).

Once the tourney was expanded from 12 to 16 teams for this season and an extra regional site was required in each region, the Mariucci bid was chosen over other bids from Grand Forks, N.D., and Denver.

Next year’s regionals will be held in Manchester, N.H., and Albany, N.Y., in the east and Colorado Springs and Grand Rapids, Mich., in the west.

McCaw said they will entertain regional bids for 2005 and 2006 since only two were previously awarded for each season because the bids were submitted when the two-regional format was used. The bids are due in early May, as are bids for the Frozen Fours beginning in 2007.

Worcester and Minneapolis are regional sites for 2005 and Albany and Grand Forks are regional sites for 2006.

This year’s Frozen Four is in Buffalo with the ensuing sites being Boston (2004), Columbus, Ohio (2005) and Milwaukee (2006).

McCaw said he has heard from Maine coach Tim Whitehead that there is a possibility administrators at Portland’s Cumberland County Civic Center will submit a bid to host a regional.

“That would be a viable site,” said McCaw.

Bears begin prepping today

The Bears had Monday off but they will hit the ice Tuesday in preparation for their game against Red Berenson’s Wolverines.

“It has been a three-step process ever since we were knocked out of the Hockey East Tournament [quarterfinals by UMass],” Whitehead said. “The first week, we got away to recharge our batteries. The second week, we fine-tuned how we play the game. This final week, we’ll break down our opponent and prepare for them.”

Hockey tickets on sale

A limited number of tickets in the University of Maine fan section will be available for Black Bear Club members and UMaine ice hockey season ticket holders to purchase on Tuesday at the Alfond Arena Ticket Office. Tickets can also be bought by phone at 1-800-756-8326 or 581-2327.

Pep rally for Maine hockey

The University of Maine will hold a pep rally for the hockey team Wednesday in the Memorial Union’s Maine Marketplace at 12:15 p.m. Coach Tim Whitehead and school officials will address fans at the rally.