Oxford News

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — The Hamilton West Side All-Stars will play their first of three Little League World Series pool games at 2 p.m. today against Walpole, Mass.

The 16-team World Series is split into four pools of four teams. Two pools are comprised of teams from the United States, while the other two are made up of teams from around the world.

Each squad plays the other three teams in its pool once. The top two teams from each pool will advance, while the other two will be finished.

Hamilton, which won the Great Lakes Region, and Walpole, champion of the New England Region, are in Pool A along with Warner Robins, Ga. (Southeast) and Lake Oswego, Ore. (Northwest).

Pool B is comprised of West Salisbury, Md. (Mid-Atlantic); Chandler, Ariz. (West); Lubbock, Texas (Southwest); and Coon Rapids, Minn. (Midwest).

Pool C features Willemstad, Curacao (Caribbean); Tokyo, Japan (Japan); White Rock, British Columbia (Canada); and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia (Transatlantic).

And Pool D is made up of Mexicali, Baja California (Mexico); Taichung, Chinese Taipei (Asia-Pacific); Apeldoorn, Netherlands (EMEA); and Maracaibo, Venezuela (Latin America).

All pool play games will be finished by Tuesday evening, and the top two teams in each pool will advance to the single-elimination quarterfinals.

Should a tie need to be broken among two teams, the head-to-head game those two teams played in pool play will determine which team advances.

Should a tie need to be broken among three teams, the formula of runs allowed divided by defensive innings played will be used. The team with the best ratio will win the pool, while the remaining two teams will revert to the head-to-head tiebreaker to see which team will advance.

The quarterfinal pairings will be set using a crossover method.

The Pool A winner will face the Pool B runner-up, and the Pool B winner will take on the Pool A runner-up. The same thing goes for Pools C and D.

The quarterfinal winners will advance to Saturday, Aug. 25, where the two remaining American teams will square off in the United States championship game, and the two foreign teams will compete in the international championship game.

The United States champion will face the international champion for the World Series title on Sunday, Aug. 26.