Prediction. The girls side comes down to Stanford and Newport. Newport girls are once again heavy favorites. I don’t think it will be close. Similar to last year, I don’t think there is a challenger that can hang all 4 quarters.
Did they re-bracket the girsl? Looks like both sopac teams are in the bottom of the bracket.
Not surprised. Socal patriots aren’t as competitive and probably accurate as they are middle of the pack. Not sure if that plays a role however in brackets.
They re-bracketed both boys and girls. On the boys side, Mission is now in the same group with SD Dons and CC United making a brutal Group-C.
Whichever of those three teams goes 0-2 on Friday will not have another competitive game for the rest of the weekend.
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3 of the top 5 in one bracket. Seeding for waterpolo is a tough job, but someone has to do it…
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Same on the girls side for the third bracket. I’m biased towards Newport of course, but I’ve been around long enough to see the discrepancy. This is a down year, but it’s still a gap between Newport and the rest if Patriot games were any indicator. Going 0-2’is going to leave 680’or Santa Barbara without any competitive games.
Those weren’t even our real rosters!!!
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Is there an algo published for this seeding? Or is the goal just to make the tourney a total waste of time and drive out more top programs next year? Already we have top14U programs foregoing all tourneys in fall and just hosting invite-only scrimmages. This is not how you’re going to grow the sport USAWP.
I believe they want some of the non-California or Super/All Star teams in the top 8 and maybe top four.
The top 14u program you refer to is actually represented at Champion’s Cup. They have two kids on the Diablo Super-Alliance. Both are JO 15u eighth graders, and this will be their only competition. They’ll play with their club’s 16u after Champion’s Cup. USAWP seems to have leaned hard into making Champion’s Cup a Super Team tournament.
As for the seeding, it is based on zone finishing places from last year. SPA only sent a single team last year. As Mission is SPA’s #2, they got slotted in at the end of the snake-seeded bracket alongside the MTN team, also a Super Team, who sent no representative at all last year.
What is a Diablo Super Alliance? 
Champions cup seems like an opportunity for USAWP to tinker with formatting in a low pressure environment.
Suggestion: why not run all games on day 1 as 4min quarters and every team plays back to back games?. Add a 3rd round for day 1 and all teams could play 6 shortened format games. This eliminated longer blowout games, and teams that lose a close game in game 1 still have a chance to win the tournament if they play well in their remaining 5 games on day 1.
would require someone with good spreadsheet skills and a capable facility that can handle multiple games. Just a thought.
Using prior year Champions Cup when super teams come and go and zones send varying number of squads is not a good algo.
Averaging the 14U and 12U JO finishes from three months ago is both more informative and robust.
And make this a proper 14U tourney. Redshirt kids get to beat up younger kids in HS, they don’t need it in 8th grade too.
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It was almost crazier than it ended up being. As it is, there are kids from three zones. I was told that in Quals, they had kids from a fourth zone and in the early days when trying to put it together they had reached out to at least one kid in a fifth zone.
In the words of the great Ron Burgundy; I’m not even mad, that’s amazing!
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This isn’t any different than any other tournament; the fall is the hardest time of year to seed teams. These kids are getting to travel to Las Vegas, spend time with their buddies and at minimum they will get two great games. Getting other zones involved and placing well should only benefit the sport.
Agree with that but they could improve the seeding and not strictly adhere to using last year finishes since so much changes year to year and there are only 12 spots. I would think a seeding call would address much of the disconnect between quality of team and seed.
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Seed the top four and blind draw everyone else.
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Is there a roster for the super teams?
Not public yet, but 6-8 is contracted to do stats. Worst case, rosters will be on 6-8 as of next Friday. I was a fan of how it was done for Rocktober where the rosters were a tab on the schedule, but USAWP seems to have gone a different direction with Champion’s Cup.
I agree, I liked when there was a tab with the rosters. Should be a fun tournament will definitely be watching.
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Interesting that SD Shores was a two seed out of SD and seeded 4th and Mission being a two seed out of SoPac is seeded 11th after finishing high in last year’s tournament.