Under a system which directly rewards a player besting his direct counterpart on the opposing team then UCLA would have handily beat Memphis in last Saturday's final four matchup.

The continuing contest for the NCAA basketball championship has become a frenzy of debates and proclamations about gamesmanship. The University of Memphis has been particularly vociferous in claiming that its program has the best combination of offense and defense. It has vaunted Memphis's narrow lead in total points, as well as in the final score of previous games, as the definitive measure of which is a better team. The NCAA is well within its power to void a victory it feels harms the integrity of the sport , but Memphis supporters claim that overriding their alleged 'victories' would show a cynical contempt for fair play which would tear the NCAA apart.

These arguments might be compelling if Memphis's leads were not so reliant on certain eccentricities in the current college basketball game-scoring process, as well as on some blatantly unsportsmanlinke maneuvers by the Memphis Tigers. Memphis's advantage hinges on a system that, whatever the actual intentions behind it, seems custom-made to hobble players' chances in competitive tennis. It depends on ignoring one of the central principles of single's tennis, which is that to be successfull, a player has to beat his opponent.