I just read the @schmke blog post:
computerratings.blogspot.com
Basically, at 3.5 women's Nationals this weekend, there were no undefeated teams after the 4-match partial round robin, and there were eight 3-1 teams. Only four teams advance to the semifinals so they need to break the ties. Intermountain and Southern had the best individual match record at 14-6 and 13-7, so they were in. But then there were three teams that went 12-8, so it comes down to sets. Here are the set W-L records for those three teams:
MidWst: 27-17
SoCal: 27-19
Caribbean: 25-18
Which two teams get in?
MW is a pretty clear choice because they lost the fewest sets and tied for winning the most, and therefore had the best match winning %. I think most people would choose SoCal as the 2nd team, as they won 58.7% of their sets vs. 58.1% for Caribbean.
However, USTA chose Caribbean and left SoCal out, because the tie-breaker is "fewest sets lost." Does anyone out there agree with USTA that Caribbean deserved that spot over SoCal?
Here's one way to think of it: since both teams went 12-8 in matches, if all matches were straight sets, then the set record would be 24-16. Extra wins beyond 24 mean that you won sets in matches you lost, and extra losses beyond 16 mean that you lost sets in matches you won.
So "fewest sets lost" is actually equivalent to "most straight-set matches won." Seems pretty arbitrary to value that while ignoring matches lost in straight sets.
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computerratings.blogspot.com
Basically, at 3.5 women's Nationals this weekend, there were no undefeated teams after the 4-match partial round robin, and there were eight 3-1 teams. Only four teams advance to the semifinals so they need to break the ties. Intermountain and Southern had the best individual match record at 14-6 and 13-7, so they were in. But then there were three teams that went 12-8, so it comes down to sets. Here are the set W-L records for those three teams:
MidWst: 27-17
SoCal: 27-19
Caribbean: 25-18
Which two teams get in?
MW is a pretty clear choice because they lost the fewest sets and tied for winning the most, and therefore had the best match winning %. I think most people would choose SoCal as the 2nd team, as they won 58.7% of their sets vs. 58.1% for Caribbean.
However, USTA chose Caribbean and left SoCal out, because the tie-breaker is "fewest sets lost." Does anyone out there agree with USTA that Caribbean deserved that spot over SoCal?
Here's one way to think of it: since both teams went 12-8 in matches, if all matches were straight sets, then the set record would be 24-16. Extra wins beyond 24 mean that you won sets in matches you lost, and extra losses beyond 16 mean that you lost sets in matches you won.
So "fewest sets lost" is actually equivalent to "most straight-set matches won." Seems pretty arbitrary to value that while ignoring matches lost in straight sets.
