Alrighty, for Akron’s Pink Out tournament we have a lot of teams with similar ratings! Aside from Kent, most teams playing at Akron this Saturday have a average rating of 39.287 and a median rating of 38.585. That’s quite balanced… even with a spread of just 5.991 rating points from the highest rated team to the lowest rated team. In comparison, the League spread is 25.742
| Time | High Seed | Low Seed | Rating | Rating | Predicted Exchange | Exchange if Upset |
| 9:15 | Kent | Akron | 42.983 | 39.344* | 0.636 | 1.364 |
| 9:15 | BW | Ohio | 37.828 | 36.993 | 0.916 | 1.084 |
| 10:30 | BW | Akron | 38.744 | 38.708 | 0.996 | 1.004 |
| 10:30 | Kent | Ohio | 43.619 | 36.076 | 0.246 | 1.754 |
| 11:45 | Akron | Ohio | 37.712 | 35.830 | 0.812 | 1.188 |
| 11:45 | Kent | BW | 43.865 | 39.741 | 0.588 | 1.412 |
| 2:00 | Kent | Akron | 44.453 | 38.524 | 0.407 | 1.593 |
| 2:00 | BW | Ohio | 39.153 | 35.019 | 0.587 | 1.413 |
* Akron’s rating includes a home court advantage of +3.
Another thing to note is that these are the predicted results as they occur for each match. If Ohio upsets BW in the first round, gaining rating points instead of losing them, it’ll affect the rest of the matches. Because Akron, BW, and Ohio U are so similar in strength, any matches versus them will have larger exchanges.
Let me try to horribly apply a double edged sword metaphor: In tournaments that have closely ranked opponents, the Gonzalez system isn’t able to accurately predict matches “later in the day” because there is a higher probability of technical upsets among teams of similar ratings. However, the Gonzalez system is useful for the first round. It is a system that excels at comparing team strengths based on past performance. By the end of the event we’ll have a clearer picture of each team’s strength by comparing their ratings against each other, after all is said and done.
