Specifically, Nationals generally has 17 teams (one per section) and each team playing 4 matches, and this is enough to have some potential disasters such as very large groups of teams going into standings tie-breakers to see who advances, or even undefeated teams not advancing.
NorCal appears to have used this format with as many as 22 (!) teams and each team only playing 3 matches. In my mind, this is a recipe for disaster as with that many teams, there is no way to avoid the possibility of 5 (or more) undefeated teams (and only 4 move on to Sectionals), and it is hard to get meaningful differentiation in the standings playing only 3 matches, especially given teams would have wildly different strengths of schedule.
But instead of me just raising the warning flag, let's take a look and see what actually happened.
Men's 4.0
This flight had a whopping 22 teams and disaster did occur here with five teams finishing undefeated at 3-0 and it appears, one of them not advancing on to Sectionals. Teams 3 thru 5 were all tied at 10-5 on courts and they obviously didn't play each other, so it went to sets lost and one team had lost 13 sets vs 12 and 11 for the other two teams, so they were the one left out. FWIW, my proposal I submitted to the USTA of using sets won/lost differential would have yielded the same order in this case.
But this is still brutal for the team that is left out. You go to Districts and don't lose a team match, and aren't going on to Sectionals. They very well could have had a tougher schedule than the other four teams and that is why they lost an extra court or set or two. It is hard to understand why a format would be chosen like this with the likelihood of this happening so high.
Update: See this where I looked at the possible and expected scenarios for this scenario and a few other flights.
Men's 3.5
"Only" 18 teams and the standings ended up with three undefeated teams at 3-0 and a seven way tie for the fourth spot at 2-1. This meant the flawed tie-breakers used kicked in, although in this case one team had a clearly better courts record at 12-3 vs the next best 9-6, so they advanced.
Men's 4.5+
Just 14 teams, three finished 3-0 with a three-way tie for the fourth spot. One team had a one court better record on courts won/lost so they advanced, but is interesting that they had the same sets lost as the fifth place team and actually lost more games, so would have lost out on the flawed tie-breaker had it gotten to that point.
Men's 3.0
Just 12 teams, the chances of a situation with undefeated teams not really there, but there was a four way tie for third with the teams finishing 4th/5th tied on courts at 8-7, but one lost one more set (and won fewer too) so did not advance.
Women's 4.0
A good sized 20 teams in the flight and three undefeated teams at 3-0 leaving an eight way tie for fourth. Worse, five of these teams were tied on courts at 9-6. One team had lost one fewer set, so they were the team that advanced.
Women's 3.5
Also 20 teams in the flight and they lucked out with four 4-0 teams advancing. There was a big seven-way tie for fifth giving an idea what kind of tie-breaker could have come into play.
Women's 3.0
There were 16 teams, just two went undefeated with a six-way tie for third at 2-1. Two teams were both 10-5 on courts with the others behind so these two advanced.
Women's 4.5+
Just 14 teams, three teams undefeated with a three-way tie at 2-1 for fourth, one of those teams having a better courts won/lost record.
So there was not controversy at every level, but we did have (to my knowledge) the first case of an undefeated team being left out in this format, and several other very large tie-breaks where strength of schedule played a key role in who advanced since it came down to just a single court or even set.
I wonder if the USTA/NorCal really gave any thought to the possibility of sending an undefeated team home? It was almost inevitable with this many teams and playing just three matches doesn't give much data to differentiate on and is very susceptible to strong/weak schedules skewing things. I would hope they did, but then they apparently decided they were ok with it.
What do you think? Is so many teams and so few matches taking this format too far? Did you play at NorCal Districts and have first hand experience or feedback?
For the 22-team districts, they could have played three 4-team round-robin flights and two 5-team round-robin flights, and then had the flight winners advance to sectionals for a 5-team round-robin there. That would require finding courts for 38 matches at districts instead of the current 33, and for 10 matches at sectionals instead of the current 6. I don't understand the advantage of flightless play where teams play different opponents, versus flighted play where if you win every match then you're the champion.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment.
DeleteThe advantage of flightless play is two things.
First, in some formats like Nationals where there used to be one flight with 5 teams and 4 matches but the others with 4 teams and 3 matches, this standardizes things and allows all teams to play 4 matches.
Second, in the old format, a scenario where the two best teams are in one flight would mean only one of them could advance to the semis. With flightless round-robin, even if the two best teams play in round-robin the loser could still advance if they do well enough in their other matches.
I will grant the above two points have some appeal, but there are also potential downsides to the format and if those aren't mitigated, the net result could be worse than the old format.
Even with flightless play it's far from certain that the second-best team will advance if it has the misfortune of playing the best team in the round-robin stage.
ReplyDeleteAnd to me it seems much more important that the best team should finish first rather than that the second-best team should finish in the top three; and flighted play ensures the former.
I also don't think it's a big deal if some teams play one more match than others -- that happens all the time in tournaments, for instance.