Nation,
After the remaining UPA college regional championships took place on the weekend, Canada has only one remaining school in the running for the UPA championship. The
Ottawa Lady Gee Gees will be attempting to win their first UPA title. More information on the finals and the teams in open and womens can be
found here.
UBC men finished 4th in the ultra competitive
Northwest region. Only two bids were available.
UBC women, last year's UPA champions, also
finished 4th in the same region. Only three bids were available.
Also note that Ottawa's Kate Crump has been named to the UPA College Alumni All Star team, and her group will play a game against the 2009 USA World Games Team. Congrats Kate!
Would RRI Have Agreed with the teams in the Finals?
As most college fans know, different college sports have different ways of deciding their champions. I'm a big fan of the current upa system of sectionals/regionals/and finals.
I've never been a huge user/follower of the RRI ranking system on the UPA site. However, I wonder if the RRI rankings would agree with the teams in the UPA college Finals this year.
Here's a breakdown of the women's team's listed in the RRI. UPA Top 25 and the Actual Finals. Finals seeding has yet to be done, so I ranked them based on current RRI rankings:
| RRI | UPA Top 25 | UPA Finals |
| 1 | Wisconsin | California-Santa Barbara | Wisconsin |
| 2 | Oregon | Oregon | Oregon |
| 3 | California-Santa Barbara | Washington | California-Santa Barbara |
| 4 | Washington | Wisconsin | Washington |
| 5 | Stanford | Stanford | Stanford |
| 6 | Michigan | Michigan | Michigan |
| 7 | Ottawa | Ottawa | Ottawa |
| 8 | North Carolina | North Carolina-Wilmington | North Carolina |
| 9 | North Carolina-Wilmington | Wake Forest | North Carolina-Wilmington |
| 10 | British Columbia | North Carolina | UCLA |
| 11 | UCLA | UCLA | Southern California |
| 12 | Southern California | Maryland | Carleton College |
| 13 | Maryland | British Columbia | Colorado |
| 14 | Carleton College | Southern California | St Louis |
| 15 | Wake Forest | California | Washington University |
| 16 | Western Washington | Western Washington | Iowa State |
| 17 | California | Iowa State | Dartmouth |
| 18 | Pacific Lutheran | Penn State | Illinois |
| 19 | Colorado | Washington University | Pennsylvania |
| 20 | St Louis | Carleton College | Northeastern |
What we can see is both UPA Top 25 and RRI predicted 70% of the teams in the finals. This seems like a reasonable figure given the nature of the current process, and how little RRI has to do with it.
However, it really sucks that a team like UBC could be the 10th best performing team in the nation, and have the unpleasant task of needing to beat one of three teams in your region, all in the top 5 in the nation, in order to simply get the finals. It's brutal.
It is at this time that you think "Maybe the number of bids to each region should be based on performance during the current season".
Readers, do you have a solution to revamp/improve the qualification process? Or is the process okay in your opinion?
