Beach VB: Pool Seeds Set for 48 Teams

[OOTCDUDE]

The FIVB recently announced its poll selections for the 24 men's and women's teams. Both USA and Brazil have four teams as the #1 seeds in their pools.

www.examiner.com/article/london-olympics-beach-volleyball-pools-for-48-teams-decided

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[baywatcher]

Know nothing about talent of international teams. Are any of the American teams getting screwed by their pool draw? And what about medal round play; is this arranged so that even if they win, say, Brazil will play each other, or Misty/Kerry in the quarters, while the Tunisian and Malaysian teams are in another quarter?

[OOTCDUDE]

For the four US teams, they are all seeded #1 in their four team pools. And each should advance out of the pool as the top seed into the "sweet sixteen" single elimination round. Of course any team can "game" the system by a weak performance, but that may be ovethinking. The four quarters are arranged as follows:
1st Qtr: 1 (1st in Pool A) , 8, 9, 16 seeds
2nd Qtr: 3 (1st in Pool C, 6 (1st in Pool F), 11, 14,
3rd Qtr 4 (1st in Pool D, 5 (1st in Pool E), 12, 13
4th Qtr: 2 (1st in Pool B), 7, 19, 15 seeds

It is possible for a country to have its two teams compete against each other - most likely from the quarters onwards.

Haha! While there are no Tunisian or Malaysian teams, there is a Mauritius team!

[pogoball]

Men's Pools:

2012 Olympic Games Beach Volleyball
MEN’s Pool Assignments
Seed, Team, Country
POOL A
Alison Cerutti/Emanuel Rego, Brazil
Jefferson Bellaguarda/Patrick Heuscher, Switzerland
Daniele Lupo/Paolo Nicolai, Italy
Clemens Doppler/Alexander Horst, Austria

POOL B
Phil Dalhausser/Todd Rogers, United States
Adrian Gavira Collado/Pablo Herrera, Spain
Petr Benes/Presysl Kubala, Czech Republic
Kentaro Asahi/Katsuhiro Shiratori, Japan

POOL C
Julius Brink/Jonas Reckermann, Germany
Penggen Wu/Linyin Xu, China
Sebastian Chevallier/Sascha Heyer, Switzerland
Serguei Prokopiev/Konstantin Semonov, Russia

POOL D
Jake Gibb/Sean Rosenthal, United States
Grzegorz Fijalek/Mariusz Prudel, Poland
Aleksandrs Samoilovs/Ruslans Sorokins, Latvia
Freedom Chiya/Grant Goldschmit, South Africa

POOL E
Reinder Nummerdor/Richard Schuil, Netherlands
Jonathan Erdmann/Kay Matysik, Germany
Martins Plavins/Janis Smedins, Latvia
Igor Hernandez/Jesus Villafane, Venezuela

POOL F
John Garcia-Thompson/Steven Grotowski, Great Britain
Pedro Cunha/Ricardo Santos, Brazil
Tarjei Skarlund/Martin Spinnangr, Norway
Josh Binstock/Martin Reader, Canada

[pogoball]

2012 Olympic Games Beach Volleyball
WOMEN’s Pool Assignments

Seed, Team, Country
POOL A
Juliana Felisberta Silva/Larissa Franca, Brazil
Katrin Hloltwick/Ilka Semmler, Germany
Lenka Hajeckova/Hana Klapalova, Czech Republic
Natacha Rigobert/Elodie Li Yuk Lo, Mauritius


POOL B
Chen Xue/Xi Zhang, China
Simone Kuhn/Nadine Zumkehr, Switzerland
Vasiliki Arvaniti/Maria Tsiartsiani, Greece
Anastasia Vasina/Anna Vozakova, Russia

POOL C
Misty May-Treanor/Kerri Walsh, United States
Kristyna Kolocova/Marketa Slukova, Czech Republic
Doris Schwaiger/Stefanie Schwaiger, Austria
Natalie Cook/Tamsin Hinchley, Australia

POOL D
Jennifer Kessy/April Ross, United States
Sanne Keizer/Marleen Van Iersel, Netherlands
Elsa Baquerizo/Liliana Fernandez, Spain
Ana Gallay/Maria Zonta, Argentina

POOL E
Maria Antonelli/Talita Antunes, Brazil
Sara Goller/Laura Ludwig, Germany
Louise Bawden/Becchara Palmer, Australia
Madelein Meppelink/Sophie van Gestel, Netherlands

POOL F
Zara Dampney/Shauna Mullin, Great Britain
Greta Cicolari/Marta Menegatti, Italy
Ekaterina Khomyakova/Evgenia Ukolova, Russia
Marie-Andree Lessard/Annie Martin, Canada

[pogoball]

Discussion of the draw is at the following beach thread: volleytalk.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=beach&thread=44856&page=1#871469

Very nice post by Klazk listing draws with the current rankings: volleytalk.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=beach&thread=44856&page=2#872163

Looking at the draw by rankings, it worked out much better than you would have normally expected. Kessy-Ross got the short end of the stick being in the only pool with two top-5 teams, but other than that, it worked out pretty well. Even the pools with the GBR teams have a top-5 team in their pools.

The seeding after pools is more important when it comes to finish, and that's going to be according to pool finish. Since the pools are largely reasonable, it would be hard to complain.

What I didn't see is how the single elimination will be seeded. The FIVB article I read just said it depends on finish but not much detail.

[OOTCDUDE]

@pogoaball - Klazk's revised ranking approach was based on a theoretical bet 4 o ur last 5 event finishes. Kessy/Ross will face the 7th seeded Holland Team.
And it's a bit difficult to explain the sweet 16 details but... The top four #1 seeds in the pools play the four 3rd seeds. The remaining two #1 pool seeds play low-ranked 2nd seeds. Two of the four quarters each have two of the #1 seeds. The other two quarters each have the best #1 seed and the runner-up #1 seed.

[klazk]

Jul 26, 2012 19:46:15 GMT -5 OOTCDUDE said:

@pogoaball - Klazk's revised ranking approach was based on a theoretical bet 4 o ur last 5 event finishes. Kessy/Ross will face the 7th seeded Holland Team.
And it's a bit difficult to explain the sweet 16 details but... The top four #1 seeds in the pools play the four 3rd seeds. The remaining two #1 pool seeds play low-ranked 2nd seeds. Two of the four quarters each have two of the #1 seeds. The other two quarters each have the best #1 seed and the runner-up #1 seed.

According to the Olympic media guide pages 40-41 (http://www.fivb.org/en/olympics/london2012/mediaguide/beachvolleyball/) your post isn't quite accurate. It says that all 2nd place teams will be "drawn" for placement, i.e. their ranking among the 2nd place finishers doesn't matter.

Assuming all seeds hold (obviously huge assumption), the quarters would look like this:

Men
Alison/Emanuel (BRA) vs winner of 2 drawn 2nd place teams
Nummerdor/Schuil (NED) vs Gibb/Rosenthal (USA)
Brink/Reckermann (GER) vs Ricardo/Cunha (BRA)
Rogers/Dalhausser (USA) vs. winner of 2 drawn 2nd place teams

Women
Juliana/Larissa (BRA) vs winner of 2 drawn 2nd place teams
Talita/Antonelli (BRA) vs. Kessy/Ross (USA)
May/Walsh (USA) vs. Cicolari/Menegatti (ITA)
Zhang/Xue (CHI) vs winner of 2 drawn 2nd place teams

So if US teams win their pools, they wouldn't face each other in either gender until the finals because of the way the knockout is set up and the pools they are in.

I think the only team in either gender you absolutely want to avoid is the Chinese women's team. If the USA teams take care of business in pool play, they would avoid the Chinese until at least the semis.

That being said, I think the Dutch are going to win Kessy/Ross's pool. If that happens, who knows where the draw places them.

And, just like every sport with pool play, one or two upsets in pool play and strategies of where you want to finish start changing in a hurry. Just look at 2008. Phil and Todd got upset, the #23 Latvians took over their seed and all of a sudden facing the winner of Pool B doesn't look so bad....

[OOTCDUDE]

klazk: Thanks for explaining the second place pool finisher's placement! I was referring to Kessy/Ross facing the 7th seeded Holland Team in their initial pool.

[pogoball]

Jul 26, 2012 19:46:15 GMT -5 OOTCDUDE said:

@pogoaball - Klazk's revised ranking approach was based on a theoretical bet 4 o ur last 5 event finishes. Kessy/Ross will face the 7th seeded Holland Team.
And it's a bit difficult to explain the sweet 16 details but... The top four #1 seeds in the pools play the four 3rd seeds. The remaining two #1 pool seeds play low-ranked 2nd seeds. Two of the four quarters each have two of the #1 seeds. The other two quarters each have the best #1 seed and the runner-up #1 seed.

My bad, I should have said something like "traditional FIVB event rankings".

[c4ndlelight]

Vasina can play