SoccerMath

Oops. Yeah, I was referring to numbers 3 through 6, (7 if you count Manual), but Mason County hasn't actually played this week, so still stuck at 23. Sorry.

Some bonus midweek rankings. Seems to help if your school name starts with M. Maher Rankings | Kentucky Girls Basketball Rankings 1/31/16rankings Kentucky | ohio, Kentucky | high school, Kentucky The top 20 Rank Team 1 Elizabethtown 2 Butler 3 Male 4 Murray 5 Mercer County 6 Mercy 7 DuPont Manual 8 Bowling Green 9 Allen County-Scottsville 10 Franklin County 11 Ryle 12 Holmes 13 Southwestern 14 Simon Kenton 15 Bullitt East 16 Sacred Heart 17 Campbell County 18 Eastern 19 Owensboro Catholic 20 Henry Clay

Some bonus midweek rankings this week. Yes, Mercer County moved up another one! Maher Rankings | Kentucky High School Soccer Rankings Maher Rankings | Kentucky Boys Basketball Rankings 1/31/16rankings Kentucky | high school, Kentucky | basketball, Kentucky The top 20 Rank Team 1 Paul Laurence Dunbar 2 Henry Clay 3 Covington Catholic 4 Mercer County 5 Scott County 6 Ballard 7 Bullitt East 8 Bowling Green 9 Trinity (Louisville) 10 Southwestern 11 Male 12 Newport Central Catholic 13 St. Xavier 14 Christian County 15 Doss 16 North Hardin 17 Perry County Central 18 Oldham County 19 Lexington Catholic 20 Fern Creek

I wanted to get back to the Scott County vs. Mercer County question from last week. It is probably a moot point now since SC lost to Bryan Station, they are sure to drop below Mercer, but it is still an interesting question: as of Sunday's ranking, why is Scott County ranked higher than Mercer? First of all, the two teams were very close, so it's really hard to tell the difference between them. They were separated by only 1.08 scaled rating points, so Scott County would have been a 1 point favorite on a neutral court. Another way to look at it: Scott County would have had a 53.3% chance of winning against Mercer on a neutral court. So, trying to slice up the difference is dang near futile. Still, I can point out a couple of things. Essentially, Scott County was 4-0 against the top 25 to that point, with greater than 10 point wins against each of those four teams, including the 11 point victory over #4 Henry Clay that got them 2.3 points. The other 3 were all pretty good point gainers as well, all in the 1-2 point gain range. Mercer is 1-0 against the top 25, gaining 1.2 points in the 10 point win over #21 Wayne County. Their next two best victories, over #26 Madison Central by 2 and over #34 South Laurel by 1 actually cost them a few tenths of a point, since the games were so close, and Mercer is ranked so far ahead of them. The two wins over Montgomery and the win over Boyle definitely bought Mercer some quality points as they were rather convincing and two of the games were on the road. With only a 1 scaled rating point difference, one could point to that though, the difference in performance against each team's top 4 ranked opponents as the key driver. Scott County gained 7.1 points in those 4 games, Mercer gained only 1.7. It is always, of course, harder to gain points the weaker an opponent gets so the games mean less and less as you go down the list. Scott County did lose to Montgomery, losing 2.3 points, and Mercer gained points on them in the mid-section of their schedule, having gone 8-0 against teams ranked from 50-64, but it still couldn't close the gap. Again, all of that said, SC is going to drop this week, perhaps we'll run an interim ranking to see! This at least addresses the question from last week though.

There are 269 girls teams in the state. Mason County dropped from #16 to #23 mostly caused by the 13 point loss to Campbell. They dropped 2.5 scaled rating points, because they lost by 13 to a team they were supposed to beat. The system does view that harshly. However, the # ranking points that they dropped is a little more complicated. It depends on what the teams around them did. Southwestern, for example, was only 0.01 points behind them last week so not surprising that they jumped them. Imagine the outcry we would get from the Campbell County fans if they were still below them. Still we do understand the single bad game phenomenon. It wouldn't surprise me if they have a bounce back game, and move right on back up!

The new rankings have been posted. Check out the Movers of the Week, Upset of the Week, Region Strengths and Games of the Week upcoming. Let us know what you think, as always. Maher Rankings | Kentucky High School Soccer Rankings top 20: Rank Team 1 Elizabethtown 2 Butler 3 Male 4 Mercer County 5 Murray 6 DuPont Manual 7 Mercy 8 Bowling Green 9 Allen County-Scottsville 10 Franklin County 11 Holmes 12 Ryle 13 Lincoln County 14 Bullitt East 15 Simon Kenton 16 Sacred Heart 17 Campbell County 18 Owensboro Catholic 19 Southwestern 20 Eastern

The new rankings have been posted. Check out the Movers of the Week, Upset of the Week, Region Strengths and Games of the Week upcoming. Let us know what you think, as always. Maher Rankings | Kentucky High School Soccer Rankings The top 20 Rank Team 1 Paul Laurence Dunbar 2 Covington Catholic 3 Scott County 4 Henry Clay 5 Mercer County 6 Ballard 7 Bullitt East 8 Bowling Green 9 Trinity (Louisville) 10 Southwestern 11 Newport Central Catholic 12 Male 13 Lafayette 14 Christian County 15 St. Xavier 16 North Hardin 17 Doss 18 Perry County Central 19 Cooper 20 Fern Creek

Absolutely, they've played #1, 6, 13, 15, 16, 24, 26, 29 and 35 with really hardly any gimme games. Looks like they are just knocking on the door against the 10-20 ranked teams as well. Close games.

You got that right! We're talkin' #1, #3, #4, #6, #10 and #18 are all there. That's a crazy tournament. Whoever survives that will have some confidence heading into the postseason. It's too bad the matchups weren't set, because our algorithm can't find the games to put them into the games of the week. Oh well, everyone knows about the LIT, and this gives some exposure to other schools this week.

I’m going to start by saying thanks for this excellent case study. Why is Holy Cross Covington ranked below CovCath, NewCath and Cooper, all fellow 9th Region foes which they have beaten? This one is especially interesting as it appears to be plaguing the Cantrell and Lit Ratings as well. Though I know nothing about the other two, I imagine we all have a similar base, with some differing assumptions along the way. This is a hard one, and it took some digging, and you may or may not be satisfied with the answer. There isn’t going to be an easy, single answer, but it’s more of a combination of factors all adding together. Let’s start with Covington Catholic. You’ll notice some subtleties at first in their favor. CovCath is 4-3 against the top 35. Two of those wins are on neutral courts, and only one of the losses is at home, a 2 pointer to #4 Trinity. Holy Cross 4-4 against the top 35 with only one win on the neutral court, plus they have the additional loss to #55 Brossart by 12. In fact, Holy Cross is 1-5 against the top 70 away from home, CovCath is 3-2. It is true that all else being equal, a road win counts for more than a home win. The converse is also true, however, a home loss hurts more than a road loss. Holy Cross clearly has a strong home court advantage, but they do seem to struggle on the road. Home losses, on the other hand can punish you, but a 2 point loss at home to the #4 doesn’t punish a whole lot. Still, so far we have probably successfully shown why CovCath is ranked higher, but probably not done enough to explain why they are so far apart. Enter the scoring margin. We’ve talked a lot about W’s and L’s, but a major difference between the teams is the scoring margin. Against many mid-level opponents Holy Cross tends to slog out the ugly wins. Wins all the same, yes, but the system must use scoring margin, trust me on that one. Consider, a 5 pt win vs. #113 Buckhorn, 7 pt wins vs #166 Highlands, #178 Ludlow, and #93 Newport and even the win vs. #215 Bellevue; all wins that were actually negative point games for Holy Cross as viewed by the system. The Ludlow and Highlands games were fairly significantly negative (losing greater than 0.5 scaled rating point in each). The rest were very close to zero, or neutral games. CovCath on the other hand, when they win a game, they can run away with it. They beat the #9 by 15 on a neutral court, the #14 by TWENTY-SEVEN at home, the #23 by FORTY-SIX on a neutral court. Their wins over the mid-level teams, Conner, St. Henry, Ludlow are also by impressive margins. They only have the one loss to Cooper that kind of got away from them (13 pts), as compared with Holy Cross’s two 18 point losses, a 12 point and a 10 point loss. We are going to have to leave it at that for now. It is pretty time consuming to do the deep dive study, especially with 4 teams. I think next, I will move on to the Scott County/Mercer County question. Looks like a good one. Thanks, and as always, questions/comments are welcome.

The rankings have been updated complete with, The Top 200 Upset of the Week, Movers of the Week, Region Strengths and Games of the Week for the week upcoming. Let us know what you think. Maher Rankings | Kentucky High School Soccer Rankings Rank Team 1 Elizabethtown 2 Butler 3 Male 4 DuPont Manual 5 Bowling Green 6 Mercer County 7 Murray 8 Franklin County 9 Allen County-Scottsville 10 Bullitt East 11 Holmes 12 Mercy 13 Ryle 14 Eastern 15 Lincoln County 16 Mason County 17 Southwestern 18 Sacred Heart 19 South Warren 20 Simon Kenton

The rankings have been updated complete with Upset of the Week, Movers of the Week, Region Strengths and Games of the Week for the week upcoming. In the queue we hope to have an analysis of Holy Cross Covington, and their ranking compared to some of the top teams in region 9, who they have beaten! Let us know what you think. Maher Rankings | Kentucky High School Soccer Rankings Rank Team 1 Paul Laurence Dunbar 2 Covington Catholic 3 Scott County 4 Trinity (Louisville) 5 Ballard 6 Mercer County 7 Bullitt East 8 Lafayette 9 Newport Central Catholic 10 Bowling Green 11 Southwestern 12 Henry Clay 13 Male 14 St. Xavier 15 Cooper 16 Hopkinsville 17 Christian County 18 North Hardin 19 Doss 20 Lexington Catholic

The general answer to this is that almost every team is ranked above someone they beat. Teams don't play to the same level every night, their performance vary night to night. If you are ranked, say, #20, you basically have a coin flip bs the teams 5 above or 5 below you. An exception to that is Etown girls this year, as they are so far ahead of #2. But back to our #20 team, their chances against #10-15 might drop to about 30 or 40% and so on and so forth. So all mathematical rankings take into account every game. Your head to heads still only comprise 3 games. To answer this question more specifically, we have to analyze every game for the teams in question. It takes some time. This is a good question so if I have time, I will do. Also consider this, every game is head to head against someone. If we bias the system to treat HC Vs NCC specially, then what would Brossart say.

It probably comes down to the hundredth decimal place, which they don't publish, but surely know. It's doubtful two teams could be exactly tied.

Holy Cross Cov. gets some love at #24. The entire top 200 is available on the maherrankings site. I'm guessing you were only looking at the top 20?

My Christian County response from last week: Christian County has a similar story, with the 58th rated strength of schedule. Below is their resume. Again, they look like an excellent team. They have moved up from #78 since the beginning of the year, and I wouldn’t be surprised a bit to see them continue to climb. The fact of the matter is that they haven’t played a team yet above #35. They beat Tilghman by 5 at home. We currently have Christian listed as a 6 point favorite over Tilghman on a neutral court. They beat #42 Owensboro by 8 on the road. We currently have Christian listed as 8 points better than Owensboro on a neutral court. Rank Opponent Location WinningMargin 203 Caldwell County a 40 73 Madisonville north hopkins a 41 52 Warren Central n 28 42 Owensboro a 8 56 Daviess County n 19 110 Apollo n 21 178 Mclean County n 44 109 Webster County h 32 35 Paducah Tilghman h 5 120 University Heights a 14 #18 is a pretty good spot for them so far.

The system does have a little bit of a "what have you done for me lately" kind of effect to it. Two teams with identical 8-8 records over the exact same opponents, by the exact same scores, one team wins their first 8 and loses their next 8, the second team loses it's first 8 and wins it's next 8. The second team will be ranked higher. It may account for Ballard's high placement.

The Maher Rankings have been updated, complete with Upset of the Week, Region Strengths and Movers of the Week. Games of the Week for the week upcoming are also featured. Check them out, let us know what you think. Maher Rankings | Kentucky High School Soccer Rankings Rank Team 1 Elizabethtown 2 Butler 3 Male 4 DuPont Manual 5 Mercer County 6 Bowling Green 7 Murray 8 Franklin County 9 Allen County-Scottsville 10 Mercy 11 Lincoln County 12 Eastern 13 Southwestern 14 Mason County 15 Holmes 16 Sacred Heart 17 Bullitt East 18 Ryle 19 South Warren 20 Simon Kenton

The Maher Rankings have been updated, complete with Upset of the Week, Region Strengths and Movers of the Week. Games of the Week for the week upcoming are also featured. Maher Rankings | Kentucky High School Soccer Rankings The top 20 Rank Team 1 Paul Laurence Dunbar 2 Covington Catholic 3 Scott County 4 Trinity (Louisville) 5 Ballard 6 Mercer County 7 Lafayette 8 Bullitt East 9 Southwestern 10 St. Xavier 11 Bowling Green 12 Newport Central Catholic 13 Henry Clay 14 Male 15 Cooper 16 Hopkinsville 17 Christian County 18 Doss 19 North Hardin 20 Fern Creek

I’m always a little hesitant responding to this sort of thing because I want to make sure I’m not bad mouthing a team. For the record I am not bad mouthing either of these teams, both of them are amongst the best in the state. Still, we gotta defend our baby against that kind of vitriol, so this is about accurately placing a team based on results to date, or at least getting them in the right ball park. I’ve detailed the Mercer County topic previously in this thread. Suffice to say they are an excellent team, but with the 70th ranked schedule and not a single win against a Top 25 team, #6 seems pretty accurate so far. If they keep winning, they will move up. If they beat some top teams, they will move up more, and faster. Christian County has a similar story, with the 58th rated strength of schedule. Below is their resume. Again, they look like an excellent team. They have moved up from #78 since the beginning of the year, and I wouldn’t be surprised a bit to see them continue to climb. The fact of the matter is that they haven’t played a team yet above #35. They beat Tilghman by 5 at home. We currently have Christian listed as a 6 point favorite over Tilghman on a neutral court. They beat #42 Owensboro by 8 on the road. We currently have Christian listed as 8 points better than Owensboro on a neutral court. Rank Opponent Location WinningMargin 203 Caldwell County a 40 73 Madisonville north hopkins a 41 52 Warren Central n 28 42 Owensboro a 8 56 Daviess County n 19 110 Apollo n 21 178 Mclean County n 44 109 Webster County h 32 35 Paducah Tilghman h 5 120 University Heights a 14 #18 is a pretty good spot for them so far. Listing #1 or #2 based on their results so far, would be a joke.

You got that right!

Mercer has a really nice record, and are blowing out their opponents, and they are clearly a very good team. However, by the numbers, they have only played 3 teams in the top 50, zero in the top 25. If they are indeed better than #6 how would we know yet?

The Maher Rankings have been updated complete with Upset of the Week, Movers of the Week and Region Strengths as of most games tonight. Also, we have the Games of the Week for the week ahead. Check them out, let me know what you think. Maher Rankings | Kentucky High School Soccer Rankings The top 20 Rank Team 1 Covington Catholic 2 Scott County 3 Paul Laurence Dunbar 4 Bullitt East 5 Trinity (Louisville) 6 Mercer County 7 Lafayette 8 Newport Central Catholic 9 Bowling Green 10 Ballard 11 Henry Clay 12 Southwestern 13 Male 14 North Hardin 15 Doss 16 Hopkinsville 17 Cooper 18 Christian County 19 St. Xavier 20 Lexington Catholic

I only copied the Top 10 here, but on the maherrankings site, we've shown the top 50. West Jess is the 18th highest Mover of the Year, moving up 36 spots already. They have gained 7.13 scaled rating points, from 54.14 to 61.27 - the 30th best improvement in scaled rating. So, they made the top 50 in both categories!

The improvement is calculated by taking the January 3 Ranking and subtracting from the Preseason Ranking. We don't publish the preseason basketball ranking yet, because it's never super accurate - we take too much flack! In soccer we feel like we've built up enough street cred to do it, but there is still flack. I think a lot of people enjoy it though since they can follow and track their team through out the year. Let me look into West Jess.