18 Gold Southern Territory Qualifier Dallas

[93players]

I saw a Friday bracket. 4 winners bracket bids, 2 loser bracket bids. That decision made seeding much more important because you only have 4-5 games to a bid. Many teams got a buy -- I do not like this. ASA should ensure teams play an equal number of games. The 4 bid brackets caused this, but I might have looked at 3 winners and 3 losers to get more teams with an equal number of games. Some brackets are mixed in terms of location. It does not show where later games are played. They should have kept teams in same park once they made up 4 winners brackets.

Gate fees? Yikes $10 an adult.

[CULater]

I saw a Friday bracket. 4 winners bracket bids, 2 loser bracket bids. That decision made seeding much more important because you only have 4-5 games to a bid. Many teams got a buy -- I do not like this. ASA should ensure teams play an equal number of games. The 4 bid brackets caused this, but I might have looked at 3 winners and 3 losers to get more teams with an equal number of games. Some brackets are mixed in terms of location. It does not show where later games are played. They should have kept teams in same park once they made up 4 winners brackets.

Gate fees? Yikes $10 an adult.

Not sure you can do much about the number of games played since that is determined by the number of teams entered. What are the odds that you will always get a pool of teams that is divisible by 4?

I could be wrong, but how can you get an odd number of teams to qualify from both winners and losers? I don't think it is possible from a mathematical standpoint. Some team would get a bye into the berth in the loser's bracket

[HoustonFastpitch]

I saw a Friday bracket. 4 winners bracket bids, 2 loser bracket bids. That decision made seeding much more important because you only have 4-5 games to a bid. Many teams got a buy -- I do not like this. ASA should ensure teams play an equal number of games. The 4 bid brackets caused this, but I might have looked at 3 winners and 3 losers to get more teams with an equal number of games. Some brackets are mixed in terms of location. It does not show where later games are played. They should have kept teams in same park once they made up 4 winners brackets.

Gate fees? Yikes $10 an adult.

Not sure you can do much about the number of games played since that is determined by the number of teams entered. What are the odds that you will always get a pool of teams that is divisible by 4?

I could be wrong, but how can you get an odd number of teams to qualify from both winners and losers? I don't think it is possible from a mathematical standpoint. Some team would get a bye into the berth in the loser's bracket

I haven't researched the out of state teams and based solely on how the Texas teams fared this past weekend, here are my inital thoughts after looking at the Bracket:


Top Quarter: Texas Eclipse seems to have a good shot at getting that bid.

2nd Quarter: Texas Peppers-Bass and Sudden Impact look to be top Texas teams in this quarter of bracket. Maybe Impact Gold-Dan??? I haven't seen them this year yet.

3rd Quarter: Toughest quarter of bracket by far. Bombers, Blaze, Mizuno Impulse, Aces-Jacoby, Storm-Wymer all in this quarter. Plus several other teams capable of pulling an upset (AF-Trout, Platinum, Batbusters, Hawks, Austin Storm, etc.)

Bottom Quarter- This one seems up for grabs. None of the Texas teams finished in top 8 in Houston last weekend, and there are several out of state teams in this quarter. I hope a Texas team gets the bid.

Good luck to everyone and be careful on the road.

[CULater]

I wonder why the bracket is not yet on TournamentMVP. I would love to see it.

[HoustonFastpitch]

I saw a Friday bracket. 4 winners bracket bids, 2 loser bracket bids. That decision made seeding much more important because you only have 4-5 games to a bid. Many teams got a buy -- I do not like this. ASA should ensure teams play an equal number of games. The 4 bid brackets caused this, but I might have looked at 3 winners and 3 losers to get more teams with an equal number of games. Some brackets are mixed in terms of location. It does not show where later games are played. They should have kept teams in same park once they made up 4 winners brackets.

Gate fees? Yikes $10 an adult.

Not sure you can do much about the number of games played since that is determined by the number of teams entered. What are the odds that you will always get a pool of teams that is divisible by 4?

I could be wrong, but how can you get an odd number of teams to qualify from both winners and losers? I don't think it is possible from a mathematical standpoint. Some team would get a bye into the berth in the loser's bracket

CULater- I think you could come up with a way to do a 3/3 bracket since you are not playing the entire tournament out. If you had 3 automatic qualifiers in the winners braket, you could have 96 teams and it would come out perfect. I think this tourney has 98 teams so only 4 teams would have to play a "play in" game to get to your 96...but then you have the argument is it better to have fewer teams play an extra game or more teams? I'm not sure how the loser's bracket would play out, but my guess would be you could figure out a way to make it equitable (or close to equitable) with three qualifiers left standing at the end. The three winner's bracket final losers would play the winner of each section of the loser's bracket for the last 3 berths.

The problem is there is no readily available template that the ASA folks could use. Making one would actually take some thought and extra work. But even with the 3/3 bracket in this case you would still have some teams playing more than others.

[HoustonFastpitch]

I wonder why the bracket is not yet on TournamentMVP. I would love to see it.

The bracket I have seen has only Friday game times and places. My guess would be they are still working on scheduling the rest of the tournament. I applaud them for sending out the partial bracket as early as they did so everyone can plan their Friday.

[93players]

HoustonFP, my point was giving close to 1/3 of the teams a buy in the middle of the day is a signficiant benefit. One game vs 2 on Friday when it will be over 90 helps keep that team just fresh enough to make it through Sunday. I think a 3 winners 3 losers bracket would have worked out better. But you are right, ASA does not have it easily available.

Your analysis on the brackets seems correct. OK Diamond Girls will be tough.

The rain last week made the fields very tough to run on. In a few games, fast teams were neutralized on base stealing. But, bunts and squeezes were easier to get down in the wet sand. In Dallas, I am sure these fast teams will be running again on the competition.

The one other thing is that Keist and Heritage are really far apart. ASA officials should have kept two winners brackets in one and two in the other. The notion of travel in the DFW area for a team between these two sites on the same day is ridiculous. In theory, late games should be eliminated but they had 100 teams last year at Keist for 3 bids.

BTW: Burger at Keist last year was really good. But I did eat it late on Sunday so maybe I was weary by then.

[CULater]

I am going with

Winner's Bracket

Eclipse
Peppers - Bass
Storm - Wymer
Tulsa Eagles

Loser's Bracket

Sudden Impact
Bombers Gold

[93players]

CU Later,

I agree with your pick of the Eclipse and Peppers Bass. They should be able to win all of the games in the winners bracket.

Storm Wymer looks good when you say 6-2 in Houston. But when you look at who they defeated and how many runs they gave up to some of the teams that were a little stronger, I do not see Wymer getting out of the bracket. The beat Elite Bancroft (5-1), SA HITT (8-1), Bombers Gold South (5-3), then lost a 2-1 game against Rapid Fire. In losers, they beat MC Elite 3-2, Batbusters 4-2, Centex Buzz 3-2, and lose to Texas Blaze Limp 9-7. The top side of the bracket has OK Diamond Girls. If you have never had the privilege of being beat by this team, you will get to see future Oklahoma and Arizona recruits. Plus, Bombers Gold, Mizuno Impact, and Blaze SLimp come into play. Mizuno played in Cali last weekend. Look at their recruits. Wymer will go into the losers bracket.

In the 4th bracket, we will find out how good the centex buzz is with all of the Baylor players (its a baylor coach encouraged team) and whether Glory Adkins can take care of business.

So hard to predict loser brackets -- Anyone losing Friday or early Saturday is probably toast. So two of the three (Bombers, Impulse or Blaze) will be down early and add another when you face Diamond girls later saturday. The opponents of the brackets 1, 2, and 4 look to be average so Sudden Impact or Peppers should qualify in losers. That leaves one spot for loser of that 4th or 5th round game in strand 3. Ok, maybe Storm Wymer can come through here. The bid in Strand 3 requires beating some true Gold teams with high d1 recruits.

[CULater]

Luckily for Wymer's team they will only have to face one of those teams, that you mentioned, to qualify. Assuming they make it that far in the winner's bracket.