All sorts of cosmic tumblers had to click into place over the weekend for the University of Wisconsin men's hockey team to get a berth in the NCAA tournament.

The last unlikely batch saw three specific outcomes in three different conference tournaments come to life Saturday, enabling UW to move up in the Pairwise rankings and put it in the 16-team field.

Believe it or not, now comes the hard part.

The Badgers will host the NCAA Midwest Regional at the Kohl Center Saturday and Sunday wearing perhaps the biggest target of any team in the field.

Third-seeded UW will face Western Collegiate Hockey Association rival and second-seeded Denver in one regional semifinal, while top-seeded North Dakota, another WCHA entry, takes on fourth-seeded Princeton from the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference in the other.

The winners play Sunday to advance to the NCAA Frozen Four April 10 to 12 at the Pepsi Center in Denver.

By all rights, the Badgers should be thrilled at their good karma and energized by the fact they will be playing before a packed Kohl Center with so much on the line.

But in the court of public opinion, UW might have more to prove than any other school in the tournament.

Many in the college hockey world are questioning the latest Pairwise results and whether UW has a valid stake in the national tournament field.

The Badgers became the first team to receive an at-large berth with a losing overall record (15-16-7) since the field expanded to 16 teams in 2003.

UW is one of a record six schools from the WCHA to make the field, but many are chagrined because a seventh club makes a more convincing case for inclusion.

Minnesota State-Mankato finished slightly ahead of the Badgers in the WCHA standings, won more games overall (19-15-5), won the season series (2-1-1) and had the upper hand in the Pairwise comparison.

UW coach Mike Eaves expressed sympathy for Mankato counterpart Troy Jutting because the Badgers had a very similar oh-so-close experience at this time last season, which prevented them from defending the NCAA title won in 2006.

"There's a hole in your stomach that lingers for several days," Eaves said.

Just the same, Eaves emphasized the four-part Pairwise equation is designed to tell a specific tale and the Badgers emerged because of their strength of schedule and the overall strength of the WCHA.

"The Pairwise is a formula and the objectivity of it is out," he said Sunday night while a players-only practice was being conducted at the Kohl Center. "There's a formula and we were ranked 12th, so that's tough to argue against."

The Badgers were 3.5 seconds away from being ousted Friday night, but Miami (Ohio) tied Notre Dame and won their Central Collegiate Hockey Association semifinal in overtime.

On Saturday afternoon, UW needed Northern Michigan to beat the Irish in the CCHA consolation game. The Wildcats obliged despite using not one, but two backup goaltenders.

That night, the Badgers needed Princeton to beat Harvard in the ECAC final and Boston College to knock off Vermont in the Hockey East Association final. Both dominoes fell.

"That's exactly why you don't want to leave it up to other people because you have to sit on the edge of your seat and wait and watch and you have no control over it," UW senior defenseman and captain Davis Drewiske said. "We're just lucky it turned out the way it did."

Drewiske got four messages on his cell phone while sitting at his parent's home in Hudson Saturday night.

"No one said a word in any of the voice mails," he said. "It was just a bunch of screaming."

After his team practiced three days last week, Eaves attended the WCHA Final Five and followed the games through updates from his staff.

"If you're a betting man, you wouldn't have bet on us in terms of the beginning of (last) week," he said.

But all bets are off because everyone in the NCAA tournament is starting at ground zero, including the Badgers.

"That sliver of hope turned into a ray of sunshine, and here we go," Eaves said.