Race to Richmond, part 1: Pro Division Numbers Crunch
Championship weekend is almost here! Come Saturday morning, over two months will have passed since the last North American Tour Series event. To get you fully up to speed, we crunched some numbers to provide insight on this season's standout performers, alongside the most decorated veterans in the pro scene playing this weekend. The North American Tour Series is sponsored by Spikeball.
What Does ELO Say?
We can all agree that playing pro division at the end of the year is a different test than anything that takes place during the season. However, the ELO rankings provide a great look at who the system believes to be the strongest, without worrying about point accumulation or any subjective eye test. Bangerang, a partnership who only played once this year in August (1st place NYC Major), are third on combined ELO with their semi-recent victory. Not to mention, some of our play-in teams find themselves with an ELO that doesn’t quite match their season output, presenting them as formidable threats in the division with a Friday night win. To paint a clear picture of level along with experience, pro division debutants are distinguished with “*”. 5 duos in Open Pro will be completely new to the level, with just 2 of the pairings in Women’s Pro being full debut teams. The ELO rankings in both divisions are as follows:
Open Pro
1) Fever (Rose/Nelson): 2,405
2) Rogue (Marino/Hamilton): 2,257
3) Bangerang (*Leung/Fowler): 2,232
4) Carnivourous Herbivores (Wooley/Fragiacomo): 2,208
5) Seazonal (Summers/Snover): 2,158
6) Unstable (Picone/Clifford): 2,132
7) Foolish (Gu/Pruett): 2,104
8) Finocchi/Model (Model/Finocchi): 2,083
9) Diamond Dogs (Anderson/Pfutzenreuter): 2,046
10) TLMG (*Dery/*St-Martin): 2,044
11) Ka-Chow (Leveque/Reynolds): 1,985
12) Dinomite (*Camarena/*Wish): 1,969
13) Envy (*Robertt/*Hansen): 1,967
14) Sweaty (Newton/Shaytar): 1,965
15) Crave (Nee/Diani): 1,964
16) NEM Phantom (Fernandez/Cummings): 1,952
17) Bigg Boys (Greer/Biggs): 1,947
18) Algorithm (*Berry/*Moscoso): 1,940
19) Come & Go (Garrett/Mottershead): 1,935
20) Charlie's Angles (*Mariniuk/*Saddik): 1,850
Women’s Pro
1) ABG Scale Theory (Lowe/Hui): 1,499
2) Treacherous (Morgan/Wanderer): 1,448
3) Pour Decisions (Lamontagne/Phan): 1,408
4) Club Cafe (Gould/Dolan): 1,370
5) Woof (Jenki/Cunningham): 1,325
6) GunSlide (Barklow/Radell*): 1,158
7) Nugget^2 (Ding/Freeman*): 1,111
8) Bello! (Norris*/Althouse*): 1,028
9) boston commoners (Maag*/Bigham*): 1,010
10) Killa n Bones (Kula/Jones*): 947
Who Was Picking up W’s this Year?
If you’ve read the previews before, you’ll have heard me reference the idea that winning is a learned habit. Those who have lived experience getting to 21 first, regardless of where their experience was built, tend to find themselves with more belief in pressure points than those who don’t. For a look at who the winningest teams are, listed are the top half W-L records amongst established teams, as well as how they fared in matchups vs. other pro teams in the field this season (order determined by win percentage, 0-0 mashups not included, series win=1 win).
Open Team W-L
Bangerang: 8-0
Fever: 31-1
Ka-Chow: 8-1
Seazonal: 20-4
Rogue: 14-3
Carnivourous Herbivores: 13-4
Finnochi/Model: 14-5
Come & Go: 12-5
W-L vs the field
Bangerang: 6-0
Come & Go, Charlie’s Angles: 1-0
Fever: 7-0-1
Rogue: 4-2
Seazonal: 4-2-1
Diamond Dogs: 7-4
Dinomite: 7-6
Women’s Team W-L
Treacharous: 9-0
Club Cafe: 8-0
ABG Scale Theory: 7-1
Pour Decisions: 15-4
Bello!: 6-2
W-L vs. the Field
It was a year of mashing up in Women’s! 5 of the 10 women’s pro teams do not have a W-L record together. The only matchup amongst teams in Women’s Pro this season was Club Cafe(Dolan/Gould) vs. Pour Decisions(Phan/Lamontagne) in the finals of Boston. Club Cafe won in 2.
The Glass Collectors
A common way to measure legacies in big American sports is the ring count. In roundnet, a tournament sport where making it on the podium is deemed as an achievement, career glassware becomes a valuable metric. It’ll tell us less about who’s getting it done right now, but more about who’s coming in with tangible evidence that they’ve been there before. These kinds of legacy statistics bring us to one of the biggest stories of the weekend: Olivia Jenki is unranked due to inactivity, but will be returning to the pro scene alongside Jamie Cunningham this Saturday. Regardless of how much she’s been playing, somebody with 17 pitchers can’t be counted out. Here’s how the top 4 teams in each division look on total glassware between the partnerships, along with how many of the podiums were a first place finish (pitcher)
(data pulled from https://gavins-glassware-tracker.vercel.app/):
Combined Glassware count: Open Pro
Fever: 64 (25 pitchers)
Rogue: 47 (24 pitchers)
Unstable: 43 (11 pitchers)
Finnochi/Model: 40 (6 pitchers)
Combined Glassware count: Women’s Pro
ABG Scale Theory: 65 (17 pitchers)
Treacherous: 47 (14 pitchers)
Woof: 41 (17 pitchers)
Pour Decisions: 31 (6 pitchers)
Looking Ahead
I hope you enjoyed a quick look at who’s where in the pro division from a few different angles! The full division breakdown of these metrics and more can be found here, courtesy of Jacob Arzaga. In the days ahead, expect a variety of content from X’s and O’s to community opinion, along with traditional pre-tournament storylines. Keep it locked with usaroundnet.org for NATS Championship reads all week!
