Simulating 2018 USTA League Nationals - 18 & Over 5.0+ Women

My tenth simulation of USTA League Nationals using the new format for 2018 is the 18 & Over 5.0+ women.  You can see all simulations here.

This event has the just 14 teams, Hawaii, Caribbean, and Missouri Valley seem to be missing.

Using my ratings' top-7 averages (5.0+ plays three courts so using top-7 rather than top-10), the actual schedules, and running things through a million iterations, the following is observed.

The range of top-7 averages is very large for this group, 4.49 to 4.99, and those aren't outliers as there are others in the 4.90s and 4.50s.  That is a big range!

With the actual schedules the USTA set up, there are ways for more than 4 teams to finish undefeated, meaning a team that doesn't lose could be sent home without making the semis.  The chances are exceedingly slim though, just 0.01% for 5, and there is just a 3.1% chance for four to be undefeated.  With just 14 teams, it would have been possible to guarantee no more than four teams could be undefeated but that wasn't done.

In an ideal world, there are the 4 undefeated teams and there is no controversy, but as noted above, there is just a 3.1% of this.

This helps result in an 95% chance of having a tie for 4th place.  The most likely number of teams in the tie is 3 (30%), and the chances 4 are also very good at 28%, so there is a good chance of a good sized tie, 5 even has an 11% chance.  The largest number the simulation shows is "just" 8 with just 14 rather than 17 teams.

When there is a tie for 4th, the first tie-breaker is courts won/lost and in 14% of the cases the 4th and 5th teams will be tied on courts meaning it will go to head to head, but the teams are unlikely to have played, so it will go to the sets tie-breaker probably most of that 14% of the time.  The number of teams in this tie-breaker will usually be two 92% of the time.

It is also interesting to see how many wins the 4th place team has most often, and 97% of the time they'll have 3 and just 3.2% of the time they'll have 4, and in 15 of the million simulations, 4th place had just 2 wins!

That is a lot of interesting but unspecific information, so lets just get to it to see who the simulation says the favorite is.  That would be Texas, SoCal, and Florida.

If you'd like to get more details of the simulation and each team's chances, or are interested in a flight or team report to help scout your opponents, contact me.