All great point. There are many ways to slice the data. I’d be happy to send you the link to the raw data and would be curious to see what you find.
Anecdotally, only three teams moved from the bottom 24 to the top 24. To me, that ratio doesn’t justify a first day or playing three games in a single day.
If I were tasked with redesigning JOs, I’d start with a few simple parameters:
A four-day tournament
Not more than two games per day
Two backdoors (i.e., more crossover games) to allow a team seeded #24 to move up at least 12 spots despite suboptimal seeding or one bad game.
Something along those lines.
I think the result would look like an improved version of Futures Super Finals, with the benefit of an extra tournament day.
Right out of the gate I strongly agree with you that there should never be more than two games in a day. Having three on day one feels like a design flaw that leads to a sloppy game and potential injury, and hurting the following days.
Another tournament I don’t have a view on yet is Quicksilver. I’m not sure how it’s being seeded or structure. Does anyone know?
It’s 10 days from now, the weekend before JOs. At least last year, it featured 16 teams, most if not all from the top 20. I believe it runs over four days with one or, at most, two games per day?
I don’t the organizers have published yet the schedule or the list of teams: Link
Having a major tournament a week before JOs seems to be sub-optimal, especially for the teams traveling to SoCal.
I’m not sure that 3 games per day is really a big imposition. Many of these kiddos practice 5 days a week for 2+ hours per day… 3 x 24 minutes, if you play 100% of the minutes, can be handled at their conditioning level.
Minimizing the crossover games will only exacerbate the potential for seeding impacting the final results. If you want to preserve the intent of the crossover and reduce the daily game count then add a day to the tournament.
The quality of play in a third game in the heat definitely drops. The limited rosters compared to the college game puts a heavy burden on the team, especially the kids that get little break during the games.
At the younger levels I can see this playing a roll in the quality of play. Heat, 8-12 hour days, physical exertion all adds up on the littles.
Now, I might be entering my grandpa, back in my day mode, but I remember when HS use to play three games on Saturdays for tournaments, and those were the Qtrs., Semis, and Finals.
Are kids too soft? Has sports science gone too far with data? Do I just “miss the idea of it?” Probably some combo of everything. But the big takeaway that was made above, and what I have heard repeated on various threads is to add at least another day to JOs. That seems to be the next step IMO.
My kids were double rostered and played 4 games a day 12u to 16u at JOs as they shuttled between classifications. The reps only make for better players IMHO.
I don’t buy the “load-management” argument…leave that to Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers
The problem that the Futures organizers are trying to address, if I understand it correctly, is the one of top clubs often skipping “good quality” tournaments for scrimmages between themselves. If you are a top 3-4 team then the idea of playing a team at the edge of platinum and gold divisions on the first day of K7 is not very appealing.
Several NorCal clubs travel to SoCal during the K7 Intl weekend just to scrimmage top SoCal teams, afaik. This February, the Platinum divisions for 12s and 14s girls at K7 Intl had very few teams that actually belonged there.
The solution suggested by Futures makes Day 1 competitive even for top clubs. Sure, perhaps some teams could brag that they finished 12th, instead of say 14th but I strongly doubt it. Also, it was pointed out already that seedings at the Futures are mostly dictated by the Futures results in January- May so there is a reasonable amount of fairness there.
A four-day JOs probably presents a logistics challenge when the organizers are trying to squeeze in two tournaments (boys and girls) into one calendar week. Costs would go up for everyone across the board.
I personally think that three games on Day 1 are fine as it allows most of the bench players see meaningful action. But having to play a third play in game on Day 3 is where things fall apart.
That’s a very fair point as related to some of the other, 4 game tournaments. 2 games might not be competitive. I just think the whole “sales pitch” of futures is that it is only high level games. Maybe 1-24 would be a blowout but the next game is 1-12 and that should be competitive. And every other matchup would be more-so. Look, this is like a 51/49 debate. Not necessarily a wrong answer but there really isn’t a group of 8 that is head and shoulders above the rest and deserves special treatment. That is the case at the 20u world championships, and those seedings are reliant on more than one weekend where two guys might be out of town for a team. It really came down to week 3 for SoCal. Week one was mildly important but could be offset by a good week 2. Week three is where the top 6 were determined. It really doesn’t matter, but I can see how some might think the process was stacked against them and favored others.
I disagree. Currently, there are 3-4 teams significantly superior than the rest on U18 D1 level, while teams 5-8 are better compared to the rest. Every week matters, and every week should matter but championship weekend gives everyone a chance (both ends of the groups), which makes this format great. It is hard to argue as the facts support this since last 3-4 years we have seen the same teams consistently competing for top spots in almost every tournament.
And I agree no team deserves special treatment.
If you were in D1, all you had to do was win 2 games in either week 1 or week 2 (in a cross with D2) to stay in D1 for week 3. If you won two games in week 3, you were top 6. So, week 3 was all that mattered. Week 4 was meaningless and Week 5 was just to rank those 6. One week mattered. The old way where all of D1 played all the other teams and then there was cross removed the subjectivity of the two groups of 5 in weeks 1 and 3 from this year.
The tournament is what it is. The outcome doesn’t matter. They essentially gave 8 teams first and second round byes. They’d never do this for quals (top seeds are guaranteed top finishes).
It is even worse than 1-12 for the second game of Day 1. Since USCC and Futures Superfinals take place on consecutive weekend, 5-6 cubs from the top 18 typically miss Superfinals. Thus, if I am top seed, I would have been playing teams nationally ranked about #30 and #16 on Day 1 according to the old formula. No way such games are competitive so I am just wasting the whole day.
According to the new formula, I am playing teams ranked about #12 and #7 (?). Compare and see the difference.
In any case, I do not care much which formula is used as long as top clubs are taking part in the “quality” tournaments.
