[Peter Matteson]

I was refering to whether mean was more important or having 2 of the 3 highest ranking teams. Which would you be more likely to predict win? That's all I was getting at is that most people would think that would go the other way. I wasn't trying to find deeper meaning, just to propose a question which I found interesting while looking at the data.

I also agree with you looking at data from just one event or all the season is different if you look out of context. Trending up and down can be abberations based on competition at events rather than meaningful performance changes. I believe to have very reliable data we all need to play more matches.

Ed,I'm glad you posted this, because as I intended to get across while most people thought the championship was an upset this says the winners should have been obvious. I wonder if some one with time one their hands could find an allaince with a higher average OPR or the highest combined OPR and see what that data might show.