September 28, 2018 by Charlie Eisenhood in Analysis with 0 comments
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After an exciting weekend of Regionals, we now have the full field of teams and the post-Regionals rankings update from USA Ultimate. It’s time to start thinking about what the seeding and pools might look like for Nationals.
Note that Regionals finish no longer binds seeding at Nationals. We do our best to follow USA Ultimate’s guidelines for seeding: USAU’s post-Regionals rankings are very heavily weighted, head-to-head wins matter at the margin, and historic success is considered. We do not explicitly try to avoid regional matchups.
Let’s kick things off right away with the pools generated by my predicted seeding.
| POOL A | POOL B | POOL C | POOL D |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brute Squad (1) | Fury (2) | Riot (3) | Molly Brown (4) |
| Nightlock (8) | 6ixers (7) | Ozone (6) | Scandal (5) |
| Heist (12) | RIval (11) | Phoenix (10) | Nemesis (9) |
| Schwa (13) | Traffic (14) | Pop (15) | Wildfire (16) |
1. Boston Brute Squad – #1 ranked team by a significant margin. Undefeated with wins over Fury and Molly Brown.
2. San Francisco Fury – Defending National champion. #2 ranked team. Over 70 points ahead of Molly Brown in the rankings.
3. Seattle Riot – We deviate from the rankings here to bump Riot ahead of Molly. Seattle is 2-0 vs. Denver this season.
4. Denver Molly Brown – The clear #4 seed. Ranked over 100 points higher than Scandal.
5. Washington DC Scandal – #5 ranked. Over 100 points higher than Ozone.
6. Atlanta Ozone – #6 ranked. Southeast champs.
7. Toronto 6ixers – #7 ranked. 120 points higher than Nightlock.
8. San Francisco Nightlock – #8 ranked and has a H2H win over Nemesis.
9. Chicago Nemesis – #9 ranked. Great Lakes champs.
10. Raleigh Phoenix – H2H win over Rival bumps them up. Despite a H2H win over Nemesis as well, Phoenix likely is too far behind in the rankings (49 points) to pass Nemesis.
11. Columbus Rival – #10 ranked. 1-1 v. Heist with a recent blowout win. Worth noting that if they stayed at #10, despite the H2H loss, that would eliminate a Phoenix/Ozone rematch in pool play. It’s possible USAU would do that, though unlikely given precedent.
12. Madison Heist – #12 ranked.
13. Portland Schwa – #13 ranked. Big win over Pop. Finished second in Northwest.
14. Vancouver Traffic – H2H win over Pop pushes Traffic up a spot.
15. Minneapolis Pop – Clearly will go at #14 and #15.
16. San Diego Wildfire – #19 ranked. 1-1 vs. Pop. Clearly the bottom seed.
