Sir!

How much more interesting would regular season and the state tournament be if regular season was shortened by a week and tournament expanded to 32 teams with Regional Champs getting an automatic bid and remaining 16 selected "at large" -- maybe based on Maher Rank? Then seed the teams by geography and strength; then play first two games at the higher seeds' home fields. Never happen, but THAT would be a cool tourney.

If you want to put an Ohio team on a KY ranking scale you just subtract the OH-# from the combined rank and it gives you how many team in KY would be ahead of them. Anderson would be a KY#6 and Seven Hills would be a KY#17. SK was KY#48 and Mad Central KY#13... so apples-to-apples CCH's last 4 had an average KY rank of 21 vs the Cooper's last 4 with average KY rank of 115. The more direct comparison is just looking at Maher Scaled Rating, which is already apples-to-apples. KY#10 CCH sits at 15.26 and KY#36 Cooper at 13.56... a 1.7 differential on a neutral field. Maher I think says home field is worth a point. So CCH playing at home should be just under a 2.7 goal favorite. I'll go with a 3-1 win for CCH with Snow in the rain for Cooper's lone strike.

I think Opta Stats has a stat that does just that... it's called "xG" or expected goals. They calculate it for EPL, UCL high end league matches. We just need their analysts to crunch the numbers and KHSAA to add the stat to their website. Badda ding, Badda dong. Done.

The stat I'd love to see kept separately would be "meaningful goals"... goals scored in a game up to and including the n+1 goal (where n = goals scored by opponent) required to end up with more than the opponent. Scanning CovCath results, for example, it looks like Wulfeck has scored a high percentage of meaningful goals. In college they used to report game winners... another stat with some punch.

SoS is generally instructive, but (I've checked) and even the players on teams with better SoS still score more (a majority) of their goals against the weaker opponents.

Schutzman (Villa)14/5 Seger (SK) 14/3 Farris (HHS) 13/2 Harper (PC) 13/7 Nolasco Holmes) 13/7 Lemus (Holmes) 12/1 Gerst (Villa) 11/4 Muck (NCC) 10/10 Schultz (NCC) 10/8 * ten or more goal... probably missed a few.

Thanks... now I've got the Tiger Rag tune and "stop that pigeon" stuck in my head.

Agree 100%. Where numbers require split duty during the season, then play them. If they haven't been regulars during the season, don't supplement now. If you need an extra body or two, reward a freshman and bring them up. If you're just that short on players, don't enter a tournament where you could play 4 games in a 24-hour period. It's just not that hard.

Lots of "d" words to choose from. Sounds like disappointing might be appropriate. But thinking about "d" words... do you remember Dastardly's dog Muttley? One of the best cartoon character laughs of all time!

I thought someone from Ryle clarified that it was JV players brought up for the Varsity game to cover for injured Varsity kids? Either way, many of the smaller schools have to share players across multiple teams.

Nice margin. Seven Hills sits even with KY#17 Highlands by Maher Rating currently. Sounds like CCH is finding it's groove and should be in fine shape for Regionals when they get a couple players back. Nice job Colonels.

KY#2 Trinity (10-0-3) travels to KY#4 St X (10-2-5). Trinity with ties to LexCath, CovCath and DuPont Manual; St X with losses to Daviess County and DuPont Manual and 5 ties to MO, IL, IN schools. By the stats, pretty similar looks... large rosters and evenly distributed scoring (both teams have 11 or more players with 2 or more goals and no-one with more than 8 goals). Trinity has only conceded 7 while St X has allowed 14 in 4 more games. I've seen Trinity play 2x and St X not at all. Any basis for giving one team the edge over the other in this one? Is the game being streamed anywhere?

Name (School) Goals/Assists Colton Schneider (Campbell Cty) 25/4 Adam Snow (Cooper) 21/5 Mike DeWald (Pendleton) 18/5 Jeremy Moran (W-V) 18/4 DJ Sanders (St Henry) 16/2 Griffin Lamb (CovCath) 15/10 Luke Lockard (Calvary) 15/7 *15 goals or more

KHSAA has the score at 3-0 win for Holmes? Must have been entered backwards?

Holmes and Beechwood will have also played Covington Latin. Holmes beat CL, Beechwood yet to play. HC didn't schedule CL so if it goes by points, even if HC beats Holmes, Holmes will have 6 points to HC's 3. Even if CL beats Beechwood and HC beats Holmes, BW would have 3 points to HC's 3 but BW would have won the head-to-head. No District Seeding plan on the KHSAA site for the district, but I would think this is how it would work. Who knows?

A college coach at a high school soccer game is often more about a player seeing a coach (who is there to see them) than it is about a coach seeing a player.

Per Riherds. KY#1 Collegiate over KY#30 Lexington Christian. In their 7 game All "A" title run: - 63 goals scored - average 9 goals per game - 5 mercy rule games - only 1 goal conceded (in final) Wow! Has a team ever won the All "A" this convincingly before?

That was NCC's 8th game in a 12 day stretch (6th in the last 8 days). Two words... Epsom salts.

Final per KHSAA. Congrats to Colonels. Sounds like a convincing win!

How does Mercer County stack up? I know they beat both Lafayette and Madison Central by 1-0 scores. I'm looking for someone who has seen them play.

I've seen NCC play 3 times this year and that was the first card I've seen Muck take. He is a talented player and has gotten a lot stronger over the past year. It was fun to watch him battle with Colton Dolezal for HHS in the midfield. I do find it amusing that some on here can give advice on how he or his coach should manage or adjust when they haven't even seen the lad play this year? Good luck to NCC this weekend in the All-A. Represent for Northern KY!

Not sure... the boys on the stats leaders listing may just finish a higher percentage. Hard to tell though, you don't tend to see a lot of postings about the ones they should have scored. All in good fun... enjoy the weekend!

KY#7 Madison Central travels to KY#31 Covington Catholic Saturday. The visitors sit at 10-2-3 and have only conceded 9 times playing the 5th toughest schedule for KY teams. Recent form has been good (5-0-0) including a 2-0 win over Woodford County (KY#9). CovCath sits at 10-4-2 with recent form (3-2-0) on an upswing with wins over Anderson (OH#16) and Simon Kenton (KY#38) in the last two games. A win over Madison Central would move them back up the Maher Rankings and be a good sign that CovCath was coming into form ahead of post-season. I'll go with Madison Central in a 1-0 win on the road.

It would be cool if on the KHSAA site they listed both the actual score and the "could have been" scores as reported by the fan base for each team. Some teams report that Stat more than others!

NCC plays in the All-A this weekend. Pretty sure they just didn't want to risk losing him for big games. They'll get at least one more shot at Highlands (maybe 2 if things go right for HHS and NCC in Regionals). I think the card may have been for a shirt tug/tactical foul near midfield? Not too egregious, but avoidable. People may have felt cards were coming too easily last night, but an intense game requires management so that it doesn't get out of hand. I thought the officials did a decent job of it.