DmanDad1980 wrote:Very fun and cool topic Lee...
My two cents on some of the issues...
I see Zamboni in an earlier post brought up the discussion of easy vs hard sections, I totally agree that you should award more points to the teams that come from top ranked sections... What I will counter with though, is that you have to be careful to acknowledge and monitor that strength of section or region has its ebbs and flows... Region 1, not today's Section 1, was very, very strong from the mid 70's through some point in the 90's, and that was due to the strong teams in Region 1: Bloomington Jefferson/Kennedy/Lincoln, Rochester JM & Mayo, Burnsville, Apple Valley... For the last decade, as we know it, Section 1 has not been so strong... One would have to look at strength of Region/Section and possibly give a bonus point or two to teams that win a berth to state from a top tier Section (1-4, 1-2...), like Eden Prairie & Edina this year...
I would have to agree that Class A teams would have to receive reduced points assigned to similar acheiving AA schools...
The Parochial schools should not gain many points for the State berth and tourney acheivements, some recongnition, but minimal... There were just not that many teams competting for its state tourney each year, so making the tourney was not that great an acheivement, but winning should have some points assigned to it, as there were definitely some good teams participating...
Remember the old "back door" entrants the North would get... The two losing tams from todays Section 7 & 8 would play a play-in game to decide who would be the third northern team at state... Their were some State Champs that were "Back Door" teams... That would come into your point classification system... It kind of separates the "Old School Era" vs the "New School Era"... thought I would bring that up for consideration...
The switch to two classes...
Lee, you will to decide what type of point classification you want to assign those before the two class switch... I think that with some old regions, there were 15-16 teams in a section to go to state...
My thoughts...
Dman, good points.
I've been mulling over the "strong section" thing and don't know what type of adjustment, if anything, should (or coulr) be made. As you said, sections during one period aren't the same as another period. Section 1 is weaker now than it probably ever had been, but how to apply a numerical adjustment to that? As I add more and more adjustments to the results, I start to possibly run the risk of distorting something which I hadn't anticipated. I want to be as thorough as reasonably possible but there is some point where it could become too cumbersome. Whatever the results are, they'll make a lot of sense to some, less sense to some, and zero sense at all to some.
I also thought about the one-class system and haven't decided how to adjust that yet. Were the top four or top eight stronger then than they are now? Probably, yes, but how much stronger? Most of the teams which made state back then continued to go to state after the switch (huge exception being Warroad which dropped down, and newer programs which didn't exist in the one-class days such as Centennial, Maple Grove, Rochester Century, etc). How much did splitting the field into two classes dilute Class AA? I think it did a little bit, which was why I didn't apply a lower factor to those years as I did to the 40's, 50's and 60's to early 70's.
I did apply a lower point factor to the earliest years (1945-49), a slightly higher factor to 1950-59, more for 1960-74, and then all years starting with 1975 (the first year the private were in the tournament) were rated equally. I think, by then, you had a fairly stable number of teams in the area of 120-160. My guess is that the largest growth in the number of schools participating occurred in the first 25-30 years after the first state tournament in 1945.
I've done a bit of preliminary work, subject to altering formulas based on feedback here, and it looks fairly solid. In other words, the teams I expected to have very high totals (examples being Hill-Murray, Roseau, Edina, Jefferson, Grand Rapids) do have such high numbers. I haven't added the number for the Class A tournament yet; it will be interesting to see how far it boosts Warroad, for example. Plus how high Breck and St Thomas Academy will end up on the list is something I'm very interested in.
I won't be publishing anything until after this tournament is complete, because it would seem a waste of time to publish the results and then have to recalculate everything after next Saturday.
Someone also mentioned recent years, and it's something else I might want to do, take a look at how those numbers shake out after the adding of the private schools.
Lee
