Before I begin, let me make clear that I'm posting from memory--all the stats sheets are in Charlie's apartment and he's out of town, so the following is reconstructed from my increassingly weak memory. The tournament schedule included a full round robin plus several matches chosen via modified-swiss pairings. Unfortunately we had an odd number of DivII teams, and some teams drew matches against the #10 seed--in effect, an extra bye. Tennessee was one of those teams. Rhodes A was not. This meant that at the end of the modified-swiss, Tennessee had a 9-3 record and Rhodes was 10-3 (not 9-4 as Patrick remembered it). Charlie then arranged the playoff schedule based first on number of losses, followed by head-to-head. Unfortunately Charlie misread one of the score sheets and incorrectly concluded that Rhodes and Tennessee had split on head-to-head. This led him to announce that (based on points--the third criterion) Rhodes A would enter the playoffs as a #2 seed and Tennessee would enter as a #3 seed. The first playoff match was then played (#2 played #3), with Rhodes A emerging as the victor. Had Charlie's information been correct, this would've meant that Rhodes A would have defeated Tennessee twice out of the three times the two teams met. Rhodes A would've then advanced to the finals. But Charlie had misread the head-to-head records. Tennessee had actually beaten Rhodes A both in the round robin and the mod-swiss. The first I actually heard of this was when the moderator of the first playoff game came to me to report that "there is some question as to whether we need to play another game." He was accompanied by the Tennessee coaches, who explained their rationale for questioning the seeding. I checked the scoresheets and verified that Charlie had in fact misread the head-to-head record. The Rhodes team then complained that Tennessee's 9-3 record was weaker than their own 10-3 based on percentages. I telephoned Charlie (by that time he was headed south on I-59) for a clarification of the seeding. He explained to me that the W/L records were evaluated solely on number of losses (per UTC house rules, since tournament officials could not find any rule on the NAQT website concerning this situation) and that Tennessee should've been seeded #2 going into the playoffs. Thus, there would be a need for another Rhodes-Tennessee match to determine which team would advance to the final. Tennessee then won the match against Rhodes A (the fourth time the two teams had met that day, and Tennessee's third victory over Rhodes A). Tennessee advanced to the final and defeated Emory B for the Division II crown. Members of the Rhodes team did express their disappointment with the outcome of the playoffs. The disappointment is understandable, especially given that there was a substantial delay while we attempted to resolve the question of whether or not to play another match. It's rather akin to having a touchdown called back upon review--even if you replay the down, there can be a "loss of momentum," but there's really no way of compensating for the psychological effect of the delay. I'm sorry for the disappointment, but we did our best to achieve an accurate and equitable resolution. (continued) Stephen Taylor Assistant TD, 2002 NAQT Midsouth Sectionals
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:45 AM EST EST