Thursday, October 13, 2005

Seeding Rules

Is it time to get rid of the requirement that the team that finishes higher at regionals has to be seeded higher at nationals? It seems like this rule consistently forces seeding that doesn’t gel with the common sense perception of strength. I think it’s particularly silly in the scenario where the 2 and 3 seed don’t even play. In open this year, I don’t think there were any huge surprises at regionals, but it sounds like their might have been some craziness in coed. Anyway, there are examples of other sports that don’t force this requirement – The NCAA Basketball Tourney for instance – I was just wondering what people thought about this rule.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just can't understand why the bracketed version was not used. In the MA, we have always used the bracketed format with no pool play. It just makes no sense unless they were just trying to have teams play more games (ie. not eliminated on saturday).

JT

Anonymous said...

why not play it out? who can plan for upsets? deal with them. who's being punished here? in the open division it's not a matter of who you might play, but when you play them. if you can't beat them at various points in the tourney then your team is not as solid or prepared as you think. put away your slide-rules and stats and stick to the format. don't like it? don't lose games at regionals. don't like that 'team x' lost and you're being punished? take the week and a half to prepare for the game (defensive stunts, film, matchups...etc.) or go to a different division where you might be more dominant.


idaho

sometallskinnykid said...

Does not going by regional placement give a little bit too much subjectivity?

The thing about March madness is the search committee who has supposedly watched every minute of every game and "determines" who is better than who (a very big generalization for the greatest time of the year).

So, do we get a search committee? Who do we put on it? I think not going by regional placement can really screw with pools even more. Captains *could* try to argue for a better pool just because they want what they think is a better game. To allow the captains free reign over putting teams anywhere, much tougher and much more subjective (i dislike subjectivity).

I like the pressure at regionals that, in a way, you are also playing for seed. I felt this past weekend if we won, we would get the 10 seed. If not, probably 12/13/14. We will see what happens, but I am fairly certain we will not be lower than 11.

It gives something more to the regional winner. Something they earned by playing well over the most important weekend they played that year....

Maybe if I were on the seed committee, I would approve.

AJ said...

Tim:

I think, yeah, you'd have a seeding committee. Basically it would be composed of some group of knowledgeable non-natties participants. I think the SC would take in-put from captains and then make their decision.

I don't think it's necessary to have watched every game to make an informed decision. You can compare teams based on their scores against each other and common opponents.

Based on the way you seeded over your blog, I'd vote for you to be on the sc...after you retire of course.

As Flo pointed out - it makes sense to reward the team that had the succesful regional upset, but it's doesn't make sense to create unbalanced pools thereby punishing three teams who weren't involved in the upset.

parinella said...

I'd be in favor of making the rule conditional on team A actually having beaten team B at Regionals in knockout play (or A beat C who beat B) and applying it only to the non-#1 finishers.

And regarding consistent play: does someone want to take a look at all rematches within Regionals to see what the records are? In the NE (all divs), I know of two splits (Godiva/Brute Squad and Chinstrap/7 Slow) and two sweeps (Metal/Goat and Capitals/Ambush) involving teams that made it (there may be others).

I vote that Idaho's team has to play against the best available team each round while my team gets the worst.

bakkenra said...

Going with straight RRI for Mixed this year would be a disaster. The reason being a huge lack of inter-region play. Hangtime, the #1 RRI hasn't played more than like one game out of Texas, sorry two out-of-region games.

The formula for the RRI (the little look I have given it) means that you could have essentially seperate RRI groups if there is not enough team mixing. If you had multiple teams on an island, and one team was just dominating the others, they would have a high RRI, but it wouldn't really be an accurate measure of strength.

Reid B
shazam

Anonymous said...

What's our count on the 16.3 pool play version failing to correctly seed the 2&3 out of a region, vs. our count of 16.3 pool play giving us palatable results?
I know that we have had funny seedings in Mixed two years in a row with the no 2-3 game being played. As has been noted, this year's Central results SEEM incorrect and last year's NW regionals had RFBF taking 2nd without ever playing Brass Monkey, which in turn resulted in funny nationals seedings.
I'm having trouble reconstructing previous regionals because of a lack of reporting information, and since I don't know when the current 16.3 pool play tournament format was instituted. I think I remember 2002 having a different 16.3 pool play format, and different rules since Shazam didn't play our 2/3 game because we lost to that team in semis.
Do we have any information that bracket play do better? And if we wanted to make 16.3 pool play the more difficult option to use, how would we go about that?

Anonymous said...

whoops. i meant 16.3 bracket play the second time there.

as in:
>vs. our count of 16.3 bracket play giving us palatable results?

Anonymous said...

Yes,I agree with you....

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JOHN

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