February 28, 2014 by Charlie Eisenhood in News
An unusual late adjustment to the Stanford Invite women’s seeding should be a boon to Southwest teams — including host team Stanford — as they will now get to play a weakened Central Florida team playing without Sunny Harris, one of its stars.
Washington came into the tournament seeded fourth and sitting in the second spot in Pool A behind Oregon. They would have faced off against three Southwest teams — Stanford, UCLA, and California — below them. #3 ranked Central Florida would have seen only two Southwest teams: UC Santa Barbara — the region’s strongest and a team likely to earn the auto bid for the region — and Sonoma State — one of the bottom seeds at the tournament.
In Ultiworld’s preview of the tournament, we broke the news that Sunny Harris would not be playing for UCF due to an injury.
Subsequently, the pools were changed, moving Washington into Pool B and UCF into Pool A (along with a swap of Carleton from A to B and British Columbia from B to A).
The best bubble Southwest teams — UCLA and Stanford — will now get what is likely to be a much easier game against UCF than they would have had against Washington.
Some close watchers of the women’s division took notice:
@ultimatepulse Why the pool changes? w/ Sunny out, swap favors bids for SW (Stanford, UCLA, Cal) and hurts NW (@WWUchaos), NC (@bdultimate)
— Scott Dunham (@Hallies_Dad) February 28, 2014
Tournament director Ryan Thompson responded:
.@Hallies_Dad Reducing rematches, keeping NW at 2 teams per pool
— Ryan Thompson (@ultimatepulse) February 28, 2014
Washington coach Kyle Weisbrod also entered the conversation:
.@ultimatepulse @Hallies_Dad The fairness of the tournament/bid allocation is more important than whether we play @OregonFugue 1 addn’l time
— Kyle Weisbrod (@kdubsultimate) February 28, 2014
UPDATE: TD Ryan Thompson tweeted at Ultiworld shortly after this article was posted:
@Ulti_world no idea Harris wasn't playing – haven't read the preview. No allegiance to SW or bids
— Ryan Thompson (@ultimatepulse) February 28, 2014
Here are the finalized new pools:
