Day 2 Update: 18 & Over 5.0+ Women USTA League Nationals

Day 2 is complete, and we now know the semi-finalists for the 18 & Over 5.0+ women.

And with the new format for Nationals, we get to see how the ties play out, how large the group tied is and what tie-breakers are ultimately used, and how equitable they are.

Here are the standings for the top-4 and ties teams listed in the order TennisLink shows. You'll note I'm including schedule strength (using my top-7 average ratings for opponents through all matches played), sets won, and games won, all not included on TennisLink.

Section	Record	Schedule	Courts	Sets	Games
Texas	4-0	4.85	12-0	24-0	144-31
SoCal	4-0	4.72	11-1	22-4	137-53
Mid-Atlantic	4-0	4.80	8-4	16-11	111-96
NorCal	3-1	4.63	8-4	19-8	124-80
MoValley	3-1	4.77	8-4	18-11	124-31
Pacific NW	3-1	4.89	7-5	17-10	124-31

We see there was a 3-way tie for first at 4-0 and it was pretty easily broken by the individual courts won/lost tie-breaker.

But the last spot to make the semis had a 3-way tie for 4th where NorCal and MoValley were tied on courts, and NorCal won having lost fewer sets, 8 vs 11.

One observation is that Texas did very well against a reasonably tough schedule.  But SoCal had an easier schedule and NorCal had the benefit of the easiest schedule of all 6 teams and that was likely a big reason they were able to win the tie-breaker.

PNW had the toughest schedule of them all, including playing Mid-Atlantic, and was perhaps a stronger team, than either NorCal or MoValley, but since the schedules were so out of balance, the extra court they lost against tougher opponents is what kept them out of the semis.

Even MoValley's schedule was significantly tougher than NorCal's and they were virtually tied.  They very well could have been the stronger team all things being equal.

Mid-Atlantic actually gave the 3 4th place teams their losses so they did well despite their tough schedule, but they aren't rewarded getting just the 3rd seed.

So schedule strengths are a huge deal, especially in this flight where the teams had such varying top-7 averages.