[EricH]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Are you arguing that an 80 team regional that has one Divisional Champion &/or Finalists harder than a 40 team regional that has one Divisional Champ &/or Finalist?

Again, this is a create your own metric thread, but if anything I would argue the othe way: A regional seems harder to me if they have a higher percentage of Divisional Champs & /or Finalist.

I am not sure how big Sacramento, but Detroit was pretty small. I think that Detroit might have a case for the strongest regional on a pound for pound basis.

Joe J.

That was not my intent, but it seems that number of teams should be a factor, though maybe a small one.

You're right, a regional is probably harder if it has a larger percentage of divisional champion/finalist teams. However, one other factor is: do the top dozen or so teams from the regional go to championships? LA only had three of its top teams at Championships: 980, 22, 330. The other 3 regional winner/finalist teams (69, 634, 968) and all of the semifinalists were not there.

Someone said that you could get whatever result you wanted by manipulating the data just right. They are correct.

P. S. Sacramento had about 36 teams, at least 5 of which made it to Einstein.