by AlwaysImprove » Sun Jul 06, 2014 9:06 pm
As nw-98 pointed out. Pool play purposely does not matter. So it is very much so a showcase.
The big orgs, SoCal A's, Firecrackers, Angels etc are effectively two teams. About 9 players that can definitely make a run for the end. And another 9 that are basically this years 'recruiting' team, and the core of next years team. So you even see those teams end up on the down side of lopsided scores during pool play.
Back in some of the ASA tournaments when they were having 150+ teams the downside of having so many bad teams was that some good teams could draw a 3 or 4 team pass cause their part of the bracket was not competitive. They may not even throw their number one until the fourth round.
While in other parts of the bracket you have a two top 5's unlucky enough to draw each other, in the first round. Now one of the top 5's is in the loosers bracket, wading through all the crap. Yeah if they are good enough they should be good enough. But slogging through never ending fresh teams falling out of the winners bracket, even though you are way better talent wise, your team is going to tire, falter and loose to a much less competitive team.
Add in the likely chance that a rain delay would make the whole thing fall to a single elim, and you were at a point where most years it was impossible to even come close to determining who was the better team in the country.
While there are some not so competitive teams in a field of 64, it really is not enough to make the brackets funky. It would be an interesting exercise. Rank the teams before the tournament starts, a rough ranking should be fine. Then see how they do once bracket play starts.