FORMAT:
With the final field locked at ten teams, the format will be as follows:
Rounds 1-9: Full round-robin. Top 4 teams advance to championship bracket.
Round 10: Tiebreakers for championship bracket (ie, anything that determines who falls on which side of the fourth/fifth place line will be played off).
Round 11-16: Championship bracket plays double round robin. Lower bracket plays single round robin and any needed tiebreaker games for final placement.
Round 17: Tiebreakers for entrance into finals, as needed; tiebreaker games for second or third place, as needed.
Rounds 18-19: Championship finals.
The championship format will be a standard "must win by two" scenario in which a team that is only one game ahead of the remainder of the field receives an advantage in a weighted best-of-three final. A team that clears the field by two or more games wins the tournament outright without need for a final. Outright ties for first will result in a one-game, winner-take-all final (or standard series of single-elimination games for ties involving more than two teams, etc).
SCHEDULE:
We will be running the first 12 rounds on Saturday and concluding the tournament on Sunday morning.
The entire tournament will take place in the Reckford Armory, near the entrance to the Maryland campus (
http://www.umd.edu/CampusMaps/bld_detai ... d_code=ARM).
Team registration begins on Saturday at 8:30 in room 126 and runs until 9:00. This will be followed by a brief opening meeting and the start of round 1. Any team that is not present before 9:00 risks forfeiting their first game.
BROADCAST:
Audio from all games at NASAT will be live-broadcasted using Coveritlive.
FRIDAY NIGHT SOCIAL EVENT:
In order to avoid taking on overly ambitious logistical challenges, we have decided not to do the rumored barbecue on Friday night. However, we do encourage teams and staff to meet at Franklin's, a highly recommended restaurant in the College Park area, around 6:30 PM on Friday for an informal mixer. Information about the restaurant may be found at
http://www.franklinsbrewery.com/.