As mentioned in the thread for the last game, this one's not at Dragon, but out at The Palace. Current standings (games left in parentheses): 26 - Laredo (1) 25 - Austin (1) 24 - West Texas (2) 22 - El Paso (2) 20 - Rio Grande (2) Games left: Friday: El Paso at Austin DFW at RGV West Texas at Laredo Saturday: El Paso at Houston Sunday: West Texas at RGV (and DFW at Houston, irrelevant) Laredo has us on head-to-head (lost to them twice, tied once), so to get past them, we need West Texas to beat them. Then we need to beat El Paso to stay ahead of them. Then we need RGV to at least tie West Texas because we have the tie breaker over West Texas (two wins). If those things happen, we get first. At least, I think I have that right. In fact, I think that's the only way we end up first. The other possibilities are too complex for me to try and sort out.
Ha, I'm glad 'you' worked all that out. I was going to sit down and try to work out how we could finish first and now I don't have to, phew! Thanks for that It's a long shot, but at least the possibility is there that we can finish first.
Wikipedia agrees with you (I think ): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_PDL_Season#Mid_South_Division The Mid South did indeed stay competitive till the end: it's the only division in which nobody has clinched a playoff spot yet (green is clinched, yellow is "would be in playoffs at current spot").
This has just been posted on the Aztex site: http://www.austinaztex.com/news/headlines/index.html?article_id=149 Basically, win and we're in Woohoo, I can't wait
Tie. Man, another frustrating game, this time from the U23s. They had something like 15 shots, lots of clear open chances, but they just couldn't put it away. Game ends 1-1. (Pretty free kick by us to tie it up, though.) We got some help from Laredo last night. Laredo's in first, and they beat West Texas 1-0. At this point, that was better for us than West Texas (sitting in 3rd) getting anything. We're actually in pretty good shape now. And (I think) are in the playoffs. The question now is, do we finish in 3rd or 2nd. El Paso is likely to beat Houston today. But even if they do, we have the tiebreaker over them. We could still finish 2nd. If RGV and West Texas tie, no matter what happens with El Paso we finish 2nd. If RGV and El Paso win, we have a 3-way tie for 2nd. Hm. If that happens, the tiebreakers are complicated, and I don't know how that would all sort out. If El Paso ties and RGV wins, RGV has the tiebreaker over us and we'd finish 3rd. But if both El Paso and RGV win, it's possible we're out of the playoffs. Maybe I'll take some time later today to dig through those possibilities. So, now we just sit and wait. We won't know until Sunday.
Well, the lads came out of last nights final regular season home match with a 1-1 draw. At this point, I'm not really sure what this does to our playoff chances, as the draw puts us in a precarious "wait and see" position with West Texas and RGV have one more game to play. What I can say with certainty is that the officiating was shameful. Even considering it was a PDL official. However, what bothers me most is the continuing "assault" of officials by certain teams (I've seen it from EP, RGV and Houston) after calls, primarily red cards. Last night, a sheriff had to actually escort EP's #14 off the pitch after he was shown red. This is not the first time I've seen this happen. It's unsportsmanlike and a blemish on the PDL. I hope the league does something about this type of behavior in the off season, because left unchecked, it's telling players and coaches it's okay to intimidate the officials in a way that borders on physical assault.
Things haven't changed in 15 years (it was this way with the Lonestars), so I don't think things will ever be any different.
The tiebreaker is ridiculously convoluted, but I think the Aztex need West Texas to get a win or draw at Rio Grande Valley on Sunday. If it's a draw, we're ahead of both of them, and finish tied with El Paso for second, and take the tiebreaker based on head-to-head record, the first tiebreaker. If West Texas wins, they take second place, and we take third, again by holding the tiebreaker over El Paso. If RGV wins, there's a 3-way tie for second. Since we've played each other an unequal number of times, you throw out the first tiebreaker (head-to-head), and go to total wins, which means El Paso takes second place with eight wins; we remain tied with RGV with seven wins, but lose out to them in the third tiebreaker, goal differential (+6 to +5). And, if I'm reading it right, the third seed plays at the second seed next Friday, with the winner playing at Laredo (first seed) on Sunday.
I *think* the tiebreakers are used to determine one of the teams, then the tiebreakers are used over again starting at the top to settle things between the two remaining teams. So, if I followed what you have correctly, we'd end up out of the playoffs in the three way tie, not based on goal differential, but on head-to-head with RGV after El Paso was determined the tiebreak winner of the three-way tie. But I have to say, if we do end up on the outside looking in, it'll be because we couldn't close out when we had plenty of chances to.
It looks like the PDL squad fell short this season. The latest PDL tables are out, and the Aztex are in the fourth position. Dammit.
Still not sure what's going on here. In the table on the PDL site is shows the Aztex as being 4th in the league, but in this report they say they are 3rd and going through to the play offs. http://pdl.uslsoccer.com/home/349060.html I guess we need to wait for something on the Aztex website
So we actually beat El Paso twice and tied once, so I think we had the tie breaker on El Paso. I think we made it through. I just hope we don't have to travel to West Texas and then Laredo, but I fear that we do.
It looks like the USL site is down for the moment on the PDL side of things, so I'll fill in the numbers from my initial post. 29 - Laredo 27 - West Texas 26 - Austin 26 - El Paso So, if we're listed in 4th, the table is wrong. We have the tiebreaker over El Paso (two wins and a tie), and are in the playoffs in 3rd place. We have the long hard road to the national championship. We play at West Texas Friday, and if we can win that one, Laredo on Sunday. And, as I said, we only have ourselves to blame. Had any one of a dozen shots gone in Friday night, and we'd be hosting West Texas. And if we could've gotten it done in Dallas the week before, we'd be hosting the whole Divisional playoffs. One small plus: we beat West Texas twice this year, both here and there, so hopefully we don't pull a Cowboys. And hopefully we find our shooting boots.
If so, that's awfully rude of him. From what I can tell Andy Mangan had some perfectly good shooting boots of his own already.
Not that it matters at this point, but: "The following two guidelines will be followed during the implementation of USL tiebreakers for all ties involving three or more teams: 1) The tiebreaker will determine the winner first. 2) The tiebreaker will continue to be followed in order to determine the ranking of the remaining teams without restarting from the beginning."
I don't see how this is an issue. No tiebreakers were used to determine first or second, so the 1st tiebreaker used is used to determine 3rd and fourth... At least how I read the rules.
That's why I said it doesn't matter at this point. But had it been a 3-way tie, it would've been the third tiebreaker that would've broken the 3/4 tie, not the first, as noted in the post I quoted. (Of course, since we would've lost the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and, I believe, sixth tiebreakers anyway, it wouldn't actually have mattered then either, but our computer network is down at the moment, so I figured I might as well waste your time while I'm wasting my own.)
I'm confused, but the way I read it is like this: First tiebreaker: Head-to-head record based on total points in League games. However, there's a caveat which says "Should more than two teams involved have played each other an UNEQUAL number of times, this tiebreaker will be skipped" - and you and El Paso have played three times in league play. So we move on to the second tiebreaker: Total wins in League games. El Paso have won eight games, you have won seven, which puts El Paso into third and into the playoffs. http://www.uslsoccer.com/aboutusl/rules/index_E.html HOWEVER: the confusion comes in the wording of the rule about unequal games - it says "more than two teams"... so does that mean two or more, or three or more? If its TWO or more, then you would hold the first tiebreaker, because in the three games between you, it's two Austin wins and a tie: so you would have 7 points in the tiebreaker, and El Paso would have 1. If there has to THREE teams in the tiebreaker for this rule to apply, then unfortunately it has to be skipped and El Paso gets it on rule 2. If I were you I would have someone from the Austin FO check on this, because the league tables have El Paso in third (http://www.uslsoccer.com/standings/13381239.html), but the PDL Playoff page shows Austin as a qualifier (http://www.uslsoccer.com/postseason/PDL/index_E.html)
That caveat that you cite comes into play when three or more teams are tied. Had RGV beaten West Texas, for instance, there would've been a three-way tie, but RGV only played the other two teams twice each (four games total) while Austin and El Paso played each other three times, so had five total games against their rivals. That would make it unfair to RGV to compare the total points among the tied teams, so that tiebreaker step is skipped. But in the case of two teams being tied, the first tiebreaker is used ("more than two" means "three or more" because two isn't more than two). As for why the standings still show El Paso in third, quien sabe? But the short answer is, they're wrong.