06-11-2018, 10:22 AM
Thanks COTree - this is super helpful and provides all the context necessary to understand these choices (both ours and the teams picking their Kick-Off Weekend sites).
It's frustrating that tennis doesn't have some way for the prior season's results to at least partially influence rankings, at least at the beginning of the season. Unlike true team sports like basketball or football, where even losing one starting PG or QB can really alter the entire team's trajectory, tennis is a sport of individuals, so I would think the prior season's rankings would have more predictive power. Certainly, it would be odd if on the pro tour they ranked players for the French Open based only on results since January. Having some sort of 52-week rolling ranking would make much more sense.
To that end, why couldn't the NCAA just tally up the team's collective UTR as calculated from singles matches for 1-6 and from double matches for the three doubles teams? Or at least have that play some role in the rankings? It just seems absurd that so much of the first half of the season is spent managing matches to establish a suitable ranking. 52-week UTR would do much to mitigate that.
It's frustrating that tennis doesn't have some way for the prior season's results to at least partially influence rankings, at least at the beginning of the season. Unlike true team sports like basketball or football, where even losing one starting PG or QB can really alter the entire team's trajectory, tennis is a sport of individuals, so I would think the prior season's rankings would have more predictive power. Certainly, it would be odd if on the pro tour they ranked players for the French Open based only on results since January. Having some sort of 52-week rolling ranking would make much more sense.
To that end, why couldn't the NCAA just tally up the team's collective UTR as calculated from singles matches for 1-6 and from double matches for the three doubles teams? Or at least have that play some role in the rankings? It just seems absurd that so much of the first half of the season is spent managing matches to establish a suitable ranking. 52-week UTR would do much to mitigate that.