As a reminder, this format was introduced in 2018 and addresses some challenges Nationals had, but also can result in an undefeated team being sent home, and shines the line on the broken tie-breakers that are used for determining the semifinalists.
On to what happened this year.
The 2.5 women had a nice and tidy four 4-0 teams so no controversy here. Caribbean, NorCal, Eastern, and Florida all advanced. The simulation had NorCal, Eastern, and Florida all in the top-5, just Caribbean was a surprise as they often are.
The 3.5 men was a little more interesting. There were three 4-0 teams in Texas, SoCal, and Florida, and then a full five teams tied with 3-1 records, and three of them were tied on courts 13-7, Caribbean, PNW, and Middle States. None of the teams played each other so that couldn't factor in, so it went to sets lost where Caribbean got the spot having lost just 15 sets while the other two lost 18 and 19. No real gripe about this, except ...
Caribbean got to pad their record by playing Northern (finished 0-4), New England (finished 0-4), and Mid-Atlantic (finished 1-3). Their only quality opponent, Intermountain (finished 3-1 / 11-9), they lost to. PNW had a similarly easy schedule, also getting Northern and New England, then also had NorCal (1-3) and Midwest (1-3). Middle States however had to play SoCal (4-0) and Southwest (2-2) so got to their 13-7 court record with a tougher schedule and lost out because of it. And even Intermountain had to play Texas (4-0) and beat 3-1 Caribbean so had a much tougher schedule and actually beat a quality opponent.
This just highlights the challenge with the format if nothing is done to try to create relatively similar schedule strengths for the teams.
The simulation did have Texas and SoCal as the top-2 teams and then had Florida in the top-7, just Caribbean was a surprise, again that is often the case.
Moving on to the 3.5 women, things got really interesting. The simulation said there was likely to be just one 4-0 team and the tie at 3-1 could be four or five teams. Well, reality beat that by a long shot.
After three matches were played, there were actually 10 (!!!) teams tied at 2-1, and my interim simulation said there could be eight finishing at 3-1. Well, there were no 4-0 teams and there were eight 3-1 teams! This meant the tie-breakers came into play again and as you can imagine it wasn't all terribly fair.
Intermountain separated themselves going 14-6 on courts, and then Southern was the only team that was 13-7. Then it got interesting.
There were three teams with 12-8 court records, Midwest, Caribbean, and SoCal, and SoCal was left out as they lost 19 sets to the 17 and 18 for Midwest and Caribbean. But the flawed tie-breaker only looks at sets lost and ignores sets won where SoCal had won two more than Caribbean. In essence, SoCal was able to extend several more matches to third sets than Caribbean was, but gets no credit for doing so.
Had sets won/lost differential been used, SoCal was +8 to Caribbean's +7 and would have advanced. Or if sets won percentage were used SoCal would have been ahead 59% to 58%. And SoCal did lose fewer games and had a better game winning percentage had it gotten to that. This would seem to have been unfair to SoCal.
I've tried to get the USTA to fix the tie-breakers in the past, but had no luck.
The 5.0 men didn't have the full 17 teams, but did still end up with a tie at 3-1 for the last spot with Southwest and Intermountain both 7-5 on court records. Southwest lost fewer sets (and also had a better differential and percent won) and got the spot to join SoCal, NorCal, and Southern in the semis. The simulation didn't do so well having just NorCal as a top pick.
The 5.0 women had two 4-0 teams in Mid-Atlantic and Texas, and two 3-1 teams in SoCal and Florida, so all very tidy. The simulation had all but Texas in the top-4 so was very close on this one.
Good luck to the teams in the semis and final latery today!
I thought it was really interesting to analyze the Caribbean's path to first place in the 3.5/18+ Women's tournament. Of 12 singles matches, they only won 3. So the bulk of their points came thanks to the doubles courts. Many people assume you need that ringer-singles person to propel the team forward. The Caribbean showed that's not necessarily the case.
ReplyDeleteThey did technically. But, their 3 singles wins came from the same lady. She finished 3-3, but retired in the Final when she was up 7-5, 3-0 after her team had won. One of her actual 2 losses was in a super and the other was against a lady who finished 5-1 for the tournament. So, I'd argue Caribbean did have that ringer singles player. It's just that most of the teams probably had at least one ringer singles player too and Caribbean didn't have much for the other singles spot. When it mattered the most for the SF/F, Caribbean won 1 singles spot in the SF, and then was ahead for 1 of the singles spots in the F, but that wasn't needed. Usually, a team will have to win at least 2 dubbs spots to win the match.
ReplyDeleteCredit to Caribbean, but like Kevin pointed out, they shouldn't have even had the chance to play on Sunday. SoCal should've won the tiebreak scenario for the 4th spot. Caribbean only finished 8th overall in % games won. Their 3 pool play wins were against bottom 8 teams.