schmke
Legend
I just learned (and wrote about on my blog) about SoCal using unflighted round-robin for their Tri-Level Sectionals for the 3.0/3.5/4.0 women's event.
It appears there are 13 teams and since that couldn't be split into even flights, they went this route. That is fine, unflighted round-robin can work well, but to be fair and avoid controversial standings, enough matches need to be played. Unfortunately, SoCal has scheduled each team to play only 2 matches!
That means there could be 5 or 6 teams finish undefeated, and with just 4 advancing 1 or 2 teams without a loss could be sent home. And with only 6 courts played total in the round-robin, the chances of ties are high either for the last undefeated spot or at 1-1 if there are 3 or fewer undefeated teams. And then we have flawed tie-breakers being used. Consider, as many as 11 teams tied at 1-1 (and 9 tied at 1-1 is entirely reasonable at 25%) and all of those teams having to have court records of 4-2, 3-3, or 2-4, and you can see some tricky tie-breaking.
Way to go SoCal, gotta find a way to one-up NorCal's ineptitude?
It appears there are 13 teams and since that couldn't be split into even flights, they went this route. That is fine, unflighted round-robin can work well, but to be fair and avoid controversial standings, enough matches need to be played. Unfortunately, SoCal has scheduled each team to play only 2 matches!
That means there could be 5 or 6 teams finish undefeated, and with just 4 advancing 1 or 2 teams without a loss could be sent home. And with only 6 courts played total in the round-robin, the chances of ties are high either for the last undefeated spot or at 1-1 if there are 3 or fewer undefeated teams. And then we have flawed tie-breakers being used. Consider, as many as 11 teams tied at 1-1 (and 9 tied at 1-1 is entirely reasonable at 25%) and all of those teams having to have court records of 4-2, 3-3, or 2-4, and you can see some tricky tie-breaking.
Way to go SoCal, gotta find a way to one-up NorCal's ineptitude?