<<In other words, if two teams, A and B, are playing in the same division at the same SCT, then depending on the results of *other* SCTs, NAQT's formula might rank A above B, or B above A. This shows that the ranking system is absurd.>> No, if A and B played the same schedule (except for one another) their relative rankings will be unaffected by other sectionals. You can't compute the actual final number without the results of other sectionals, but you can tell the relative rankings of teams whose schedule difficulties will have been the same, or virtually the same. If a tournament has played a full round robin and nothing more, relative rankings for that tournament could be produced on the spot with that tournament's statistics only, and they would be the same regardless of what happened in other tournaments. If a playoff structure created a situation where A and B had different strengths of schedule within the tournament, it could be difficult to be absolutely positive of relative ranking until all the data were in, since, while you would know which team had the harder schedule, you wouldn't be able to put exact numbers to the degree of the difference yet. If A played a slightly harder schedule than B, and had slightly lesser statistics, they will be extremely close in relative rankings, and which way it came out would depend on being able to compute the exact differences by which each team's strength of schedule differed from the average schedule across all sectionals. ESH
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