Southern California follows Northern California's lead in questionable use of unflighted round-robin

Earlier this year, NorCal used the unflighted round-robin format for district playoffs, and foolishly did so with 22 teams, each only playing three matches.  This was a recipe for disaster, and indeed it happened with five teams finishing undefeated, and only four advancing.  Given that it was possible for eight(!) teams to finish undefeated, it is no surprise this happened.

You would hope the lesson had been learned and this format with a large number of teams and few matches per team would be avoided.  Unfortunately, that isn't the case as SoCal appears to be trying to one-up NorCal by questionably using the format for Tri-Level Sectionals.

Specifically, the 3.0/3.5/4.0 women's draw has 13 teams and a schedule with each team playing only two other teams.  Running through my simulation, two issues are exposed.

First, with this format/schedule, there is a not insignificant chance of six(!) teams to be undefeated, but a full 7% chance of five undefeated.  So it certainly isn't a given it will occur, but it very well could occur that one, if not possibly two, teams go undefeated and aren't in the top-4 to advance to the semis.  This is bad on its own, but is even worse when you throw in that in Tri-Level each team plays just three courts (six courts total across the two matches) so there is very little differentiation possible and it is highly dependent on schedule strength.

Second, the schedule has a 69% chance of a tie for the last spot (at 4-0 or 3-1 or even 2-2).  Again, with so few matches/courts played, there is little differentiation possible and ties on records and courts are very likely and it will go to tie-breakers.

Both of these highlight those tie-breakers and their flaws and could likely lead to the 'wrong' team being picked to advance.  These tie-breakers have issues, especially when so little data is provided to them and are highly subject to strength of schedule which can be wildly different when everyone plays only two matches.

Other events at Tri-Level Sectionals have normal flights so don't have this issue.  It appears the 3.0/3.5/4.0 women are the only event with an odd number of teams that can't be split into even flights so they went this way.  They just needed to have all the teams play three matches to mitigate the risk.

Now, they could get lucky and have no controversial standings or teams advancing, but beware of the inappropriate use of unflighted round-robin!