I wrote much more at the time, but the short story is in a league where the 1st and 2nd place team in each sub-flight advance to playoffs, the new local playoff format places all the 1st place teams in one draw and all the second place teams in the other. The winner of the 1st place team draw advances to Sectionals, while the loser of that match plays the winner of the 2nd place team draw for the chance to advance to Sectionals as a wildcard.
I wasn't terribly fond of the format then, and while we didn't get a chance to see it in practice yet, I'm still leery of it for the simple reason that it doesn't seem to reward 1st place teams enough. While by making the final of the 1st place bracket they assure themselves of an extra shot at advancing even if they lose that final, they still have to make it to the final by winning one or two matches and do so against other first place teams. One can almost make the argument that it may be easier to win two matches in the 2nd place bracket against 2nd place teams to make that final, and the have to play only one first place team, and that being one that could be playing their 4th match of the weekend at that point.
What do you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment