If I had set this up, I'd have Wake playing us day 1 - easiest game, and meaningless game. Then day 2 Wake would have off. Miami would be predicted to win as they are the higher seed than Tech, and so they'd be given a day off to play Tech who would now be playing for the second day in a row. Whoever wins (Miami predicted) would then play Wake
The more I've thought about it, the more stupid I think it is. If both other teams have to go 2-0, then it should just be a bye for the higher seeded team. GT plays Miami on Day 1, then on Day 2 the winner plays Wake to see who advances. The End. The way they do it today doesn't fully favor the highest seeded team, and it creates a meaningless game, which makes less than no sense. There shouldn't ever be a game where its completely pointless to someone. Imagine playing a 7 game series and 1 team gets up 4 wins to 2 but they decide to play 1 more game anyway. Huh?
You make valid points. If you're the ACC, you must deal with trade offs on picking format. You focused on one pool in laying out your "better" schedule. Not sure you can repeat that sequence over 4 days/4pools...hurts my head to figure that out.
I looked back to previous 3 tournaments. There are 15 total games in both formats. My goal was to find "meaningless" games in that format. I concluded that each year (out of 15 games total) there were 2 meaninglessness games... of the 15. I'm pretty sure it's mathematically possible in that old for format to have more (or less) meaningless games. I found 2 for each of the 3 tournaments I looked at....but I could have missed something.
In this format (and chosen sequence), your are locked into 4 meaningless games (out of 15). No more...no less.
Here's where you weigh the trade offs:
New format: Saturday games will matter for sure.
Old format: Meaningless games came late in pool play. Always on Friday or Saturday (usually Sat).
New format: No play in games among bottom 4. Each teams guaranteed to play twice.
Old format: While the play in games among bottom 4 were not meaningless (by definition).... they were starting the tournament & an entire day of baseball less than interesting.