UAA CHAMPS: Why men’s soccer won the tiebreaker

Whirlwind weekend for the men’s and women’s soccer teams. Both will be making the tournament: They took care of business against Wash U and—for the first time since I started following tournament selection procedures in 2005—got all favorable results elsewhere.

The men don’t even have to wait for tonight to get confirmation they are in the tournament. They not only tied with Carnegie and Rochester for the UAA championship, but they also got the UAA’s automatic qualifier.

You might have seen my previous post about a potential three-way tie scenario. The breakdown of the tiebreaker changed entirely once ties (all against different teams) were involved.

But everyone—including me—was confused by Chicago getting the auto qualifier. The UAA had a unique interpretation of their tiebreaker, using a process that is not detailed in the soccer handbook.

The third tiebreaker is “record against succeeding teams.” Carnegie, Rochester and Chicago all beat fourth-place Wash U. The UAA’s fifth-place team was Emory, against whom Carnegie tied while Chicago and Rochester won.

So UAA officials eliminated Carnegie and then decided to go back to the first tiebreaker criterion: head-to-head result. Because Chicago had beat Rochester, Chicago took the auto qualifier.

What do you think of the UAA’s determination? Don’t worry: It’s OK to be a Chicago fan and not agree with the enforcement. All three teams were going to get into the tournament anyway, so the net effect is that the distribution of bids between regions will be different. (For example, Hope might get in from the Central now, whereas they probably would have been left out had both Chicago and Elmhurst been ahead of them in line.)

Thanks to Dave Hilbert for the notification of last night’s decision as well as an explanation of the UAA’s interpretation.