Playoff Bracket Trees

 

Overview:

Playoff Brackets generally feed from a round robin schedule to seed teams in the playoffs based on the standings of the round robin or regular season schedule (ike NHL playoffs). If there is no round robin schedule (like NCAA March Madness), teams can either be manually seeded or the first round can just use specific teams with no seeding or ranking prior to the first round.

Playoff schedules are 2, 3 or 4 rounds and can be one sided or 2 sided. Trees that are one sided feed in one direction where the winner moves on to the next round while a two sided tree will have round 1 games on either side feeding into the center. If you feed from destinct pools, a 2 sided tree may be the best choice to display, while a seeded playoff may be best displayed as one sided. See the example shapes below.

Feeding schedules like Regular Season or Round Robin standings style schedules feed the playoff schedule once all games have been reported. The playoff schedule will automatically become the active schedule when viewing the standings page on the public website once all feeding schedule games have been reported and, where applicable, all ties have been broken.

 

1 Sided tree with 8 teams

2 sided tree with 8 teams

 

 

How do the teams populate?

If you have fed your playoff bracket tree from a round robin schedule, the team names will populate in the appropriate places once all of the round robin games have been reported. With manual seeding, the team names will populate in the first round right away. Each subsequent round of the playoff bracket will populate once a winner of each series in the previous round has been determined. You can schedule a "bye" in any round by selecting a specific team when setting up the series, in which case the team name will display immediately. See below for a partially reported playoff tree.

 

What about the tie breakers?

As with all GOALLINE schedules, the default tie breaker will apply to break any ties in the standings of the feeding schedule. If the default tie breaker does not satisfy your tournament's needs, you can create your own customer tie breaker to apply to the round robin schedule. Playoff schedules do not require a tie breaker as they feed from the winner or loser of the previous rounds.

 

Notes:

1. League(s) and season must be created prior to creating the Playoff Bracket schedule.
2. Playoff Bracket style schedules only apply to Leagues (cannot create a playoff schedule for Association (rep) teams).
3. Playoff schedules must be contained in the same season as the desired feeding schedule.
4. Scheduled games cannot be imported to a playoff schedule.
5. If using Time Slots, slots must be available in order to schedule the series games.
6. Once games have been reported, some editing functions will not be allowed. To edit a playoff bracket after games have been reported, reset the reported games and then edit as needed.

 

To create a Playoff Bracket Tree Schedule:

1. Manage Schedules to create a Playoff Bracket style schedule. This can be done from the master menu (check the box next to the league(s) that require the schedule) or the league menu.
2. Set up schedule details as desired including tracking/displaying individual player statistics, point values for games, start and end date of the schedule, and participating teams.
3. Often, the Playoff bracket schedule is not the active schedule when it's being created initially (for example, if you have a round robin schedule, the playoff schedule should not be active until after the round robin games have been played and reported). The "is this the active schedule" setting should be set to "No" in this case. If there is no feeding schedule, select "Yes." In either case, the schedule can be published at any time (published means the schedule is available to view).
4. Click "Create Schedule(s)"
5. Edit the schedule to update the feeding schedule. This should be either the Round Robin/Regular Season schedule, Manual Seeding, or None. If you selected Manual Seeding, you will need to edit the schedule again after saving your changes. You'll see a "Manually Seed Teams" link which will allow you to set the seeds.
6. Edit the schedule details to update the type of playoff schedule to be "Tree"
7. More information on creating schedules is available here.

 

To setup the Playoff Bracket Trees:

1. From the league specific menu, click Playoff Tree Setup.
   
   
    
2. Select the number of rounds (this relates to the number of teams in the playoff) and indicate if it is 1 or 2 sided
3. Give the tree a Title. Keep in mind - if you will have more than 1 tree (for example a finals tree and a consolation tree), the name of the trees should be clearly indicated.
4. Click "Add Tree"
5. Your tree will display below with default titles and seeds.
   
   
    
6. Click the series box to edit the series
   
   
   1. Series Title: This can be updated to have a new title. Examples "Round 1 Game 1", "Finals Series 1"
   2. Win Conditions: Number of wins, total points or total goals (applicable to hockey and soccer). Enter the required number to satisfy the win condition. For a "Best of 3" series, 2 wins would be needed.
   3. Edit the Top Seed and Bottom Seed as needed. To select from the feeding schedule, select the appropriate option such as "1st place in Round Robin" and "8th Place in Round Robin." To select specific teams, select the team name.
7. Add games to the series
   
   
   1. Select who the home team is (either top or bottom seed), select the game date and time, duration, and venue. If the specific game date, time or venue is unknown, select the "TBA" check box.
   2. Click Add Game
   3. The game will display right away with an edit button in case changes are required.
   4. If the series requires more than one game, repeat this process until all required games have been added.
   5. Click Save after the series and game details have been save.
8. Repeat with each series in the first round until all first round games are seeded and scheduled.
9. If losers of games should play additional games, repeat the process from step 2 on.
   
   
10. In order for more team names to populate, be sure to report games as they finish. For more information on reporting game scores, click here.