2015 40 & over 3.5 women USTA Pacific Northwest Seattle area local playoffs preview

The regular season has ended for the 40 & over division in USTA League play in the Seattle area and local playoffs are coming up next weekend, May 29 thru 31.  This is the first of several previews I plan to write-up, this one taking a look at the 3.5 women.

In these previews, I'll be looking at the top-8 Estimated Dynamic NTRP Rating average for each team as that should be a pretty good comparison between teams as you'd expect each team to field their best players.  This will avoid lower averages you'd see by averaging the entire roster if you had big rosters with some lower rated players pulling the average down.

So, here are the top-8 averages for the eight teams headed to playoffs.  The playoff seed is before the team name.

Team	Average
4 - MI-Ko	3.48
3 - CP-Goldberg/Stanford	3.44
8 - PL-Buetow	3.43
7 - CP-Buckingham	3.40
6 - CAC/SL-Caponigro/Rockwell	3.40
1 - HBSQ-Smalley	3.38
5 - MC-Wyer	3.33
2 - EDG-Kainz	3.33

This is quite jumbled with the top two seeds rated 6th and 8th.  And with a full quarter finals, any team is going to have to win three rounds.

Right off, an 8 beating a 1 seems possible as does the 7 beating the 2.  The others look to follow form but the 3 vs 6 is close and happens to be the third time these two teams are meeting this year.

But as always, average ratings for a team does not tell the whole story, who specifically plays and the match-ups and how each player plays on the given day goes a long way to determining who is going to win the team match.

Good luck ladies, may the best team win!