I wrote earlier today a high level summary of how the different sections did at Nationals, and it certainly wasn't balanced. Southern, SoCal, and Florida, along with Midwest and Intermountain, had significantly better results than the other sections.
In the earlier post, I broke it down as far as men/women/mixed, but now I'll go further and break it down by different divisions. A few other sections did well, but overall the big-5 still appear the most.
For 18 & Over, here is the full breakdown.
The women were led by Intermountain making the semis in 5 of 6 events and making the final twice. No championship, but their 11 points bettered New England who only made the semis twice, but too the championship each time. Southern did well with 7 points just ahead of Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Florida.
For the men, Southern led making 4 of 5 semis and garnering 9 points which just beat out the Intermountain men making 2 semis and coming away with two titles. Missouri Valley led a group just behind along with Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, PNW, and Southwest.
For 40 & Over, here is the full breakdown.
The women were led by Florida and Southern Cal with 2 semis and 6 points apiece across the 4 events. Midwest, Northern Cal, and PNW also had good showings.
The men saw Midwest and Texas garner 7 points across 2 semis each, Middle States and Eastern did well too.
For 55 & Over, here is the full breakdown.
The women saw Florida not only make 4 semis, but made all the finals and took 3 titles home! Southern Cal had a very respectable 8 points making 3 semis but was well back.
But the Southern Cal men made all the finals and took 2 titles home to better Southern who made 4 semis and got one title.
Last, here is the full breakdown for Mixed.
In 18 & Over, Southern Cal stood out making 4 of the 5 semis and garnering 10 points, well ahead of Intermountain and Northern Cal. Midwest and Southern were close behind those two.
The 40 & Over had Mid-Atlantic make 3 of the 4 semis, but Florida made 2 semis and won both titles to lead in points. Texas also did well making 2 finals and winning 1.
What do you think? What does this say about all the sections?
To the extent this information might be used to determine if the ratings are deflated in certain sections I think you should also consider more information:
ReplyDelete1) how those teams did in their sectional championship
2) how many self rates were on the team and
3) How many teams the various sections have in their league. If you have a county that has 7 teams you might expect them to do well simply because they have many players to choose that will happen to be at the top of their level. That could explain their success as much as any rating deflation.
4) Weigh the sections with many more players more heavily than those with fewer players. So 3.5 18+ and 4.0 18+ should be the heavy hitters. Tiny sections with 5.0 players not so much. 3.0 might be weighted more because of the number of players but since that is the beginning level for men I think it is fair not to weigh it quite as much for them. It will include many improving players and so the entire calculations may be a bit off.
I think USTA should also look at how the winner performed at sectionals (and even states and districts) because if the team that made it to nationals blew out everyone from sectionals worse than they blew out everyone at nationals maybe that section's ratings are not off but instead that team was just an outlier.
For example the 4.0 Intermountain men's team had a very large number of self rates and went 17-3 won 68% of the games at their sectional championship when the average winning percentage of the rest of the field was about 45%. @23% better than the rest of the field.
https://tennislink.usta.com/Leagues/Main/StatsAndStandings.aspx?SearchType=0#&&s=9%7c%7c77676%7c%7c116038%7c%7c2021%7c%7c20
At nationals they went 16 - 4 with a winning percentage of 65% when the rest of the field averaged about 50%. @ 15% better than the rest of the field.
So they blew out their section by quite a bit more than the national teams. This is too be expected of course but there should be some idea of how well this happens in each section. And I think it should vary by section. For example sections that traditionally do well at nationals may not typically have as large a difference between sectionals and nationals.
But if you look at the men's 3.5 in midwest they had I believe only one self rate and at sectionals the top team went 15-5 in sets and won 61.12 % versus the rest of the field 47% at sectionals. @14% better than the field.
https://tennislink.usta.com/Leagues/Main/StatsAndStandings.aspx?SearchType=0#&&s=10%7c%7c79285%7c%7c118474%7c%7c2021%7c%7c20
At nationals they went 29-15 in sets and had a winning percentage of 58% versus the field that averaged 50%. @ 8% better than the rest of field.
https://tennislink.usta.com/Leagues/Main/StatsAndStandings.aspx?SearchType=3#&&s=10%7c%7c79281%7c%7c118462%7c%7c2021%7c%7c20
So this is how I would more or less of factor this information:
While Midwest 3.5 men were clearly not as dominant at nationals (in fact 2 sections had higher winning percentages than they had at nationals) as Intermountain they also weren't as dominant at sectionals. Maybe this is about a wash but I would say this data does suggest that intermountain is more of an outlier for their section than Midwest so I would say this is slightly more evidence that Midwest ratings are deflated.
I do not know enough about either section to say whether either area would have many more players in league tennis so I would say that is a wash.
But the fact that Intermountain 4.0 had so many self rated players it is hard to say their championship was much of any indicator of how the ratings in intermountain might be deflated. Whereas with Midwest they were mostly c rated players so they are indeed a reflection of how the ratings might be deflated.
I believe the 3.5 sections just have more players so that would also suggest that deflation may be more of an issue in midwest.