What does it take to win USTA League Nationals? Roster make-up of the 18+ 3.5 Men semi-finalists

I just took a look at the rosters of the 18 & over 3.0 Men semi-finalists where we saw over 50% of the rosters were self-rated, so I had to look at the 3.5 Men to see if that trend continued.

The semi-finalists here are from Intermountain, Florida, Texas, and Southern.

The Intermountain team played 12 players in their flight, 5 of them self-rated.  Of the 7 computer rated players, all were 3.5s last year, although a few were self-rated then.

Florida also played 12 in their flight, just 3 of them self-rated.  None of their 9 computer rated were higher than 3.5 last year, although several again were self-rated then.

Twelve is a popular number as Texas played that many in their flight too.  Only 2 of these were self-rated, but a full 6 of the other 10 were 4.0s last year.

Southern played just 10 players in their flight, just 3 were self-rated, but two of these appears to have had a 4.0 mixed-exclusive rating and self-rated at 4.0 then appealed down somehow to 3.5.  They had just one computer rated player that was a 4.0 last year and he appealed down from his 4.0C 2015 year-end rating.

So we see far fewer self-rates at the 3.5 level than at 3.0, but we do see, from Texas at least, what may be players managing their ratings down as half their players at Nationals were a level higher last year and somehow all got bumped down.  Having only a single case on the three other teams is certainly a big difference.

What do you think?