Upsets at Sections and State

[karl(east)]

One of my random projects during these often hockey-starved months:

We often see complaints on this forum saying "Team X always chokes" or "with all the talent coming through program X, they should have won Y section titles and Z state titles over the past few years." These claims often seem a bit far-fetched--what team can actually win as often as these critics think they should?--but I decided to try to figure out how accurate they actually are.

I took fourteen of the top AA programs over the past 16 years (as far back as Lee's PS2 records go) and tried to categorize each team's seasons. They were divided into five categories:

1. Heavy favorite in the section
2. Mild favorite in the section
3. Realistic shot at State, but odds below 50%. (A category for a lot of 2-seeds, or maybe for everyone seeded 1-3 or 4 in a very tight section.)
4. Little chance at State (mostly 3 or 4 seeds that are not very close to the top team, plus the occasional 2-seed)
5. No chance at State

I then tallied each team's success rate--the chart below shows how often they went to State (out of how many chances) in each category.

After this, I categorized their trips to State as either "overachieving" (+), "underachieving" (-), or "met expectations" (E). This is based on seeding, or, in years prior to seeding, my own efforts to rank the teams as they headed into State. Here, it's important to note that I considered each championship bracket game individually; if a team was a 2-seed, but the #1 was upset in the first round, then a 2-seed winning the championship would have "met expectations," as they didn't beat anyone considered better than them at State. Consolation and 3rd-place games are not included.

Code: Select all

Team            1     2     3     4     5     +   E   -
Edina          4/4   4/4   0/3   1/3   0/2    3   1   5
Bloom. Jeff.   3/3   2/4   0/5   0/0   0/4    1   3   1
Holy Angels    1/3   2/2   2/4   0/4   0/2    2   2   1
Hill-Murray    4/5   1/2   5/8   0/1   0/0    3   3   4
WBL            0/0   2/4   3/9   0/2   0/1    0   3   2
Blaine         2/2   3/3   3/6   0/0   0/5    1   5   2
Eden Pr.       0/1   3/3   2/9   0/3   0/0    0   5   0
Minnetonka     0/0   1/3   1/2   0/3   0/9    0   1   1
BSM            0/0   0/0   2/3   0/3   0/0    1   1   0
Wayzata        0/0   1/1   0/6   0/3   0/6    0   1   0
Duluth East    5/5   2/4   3/6   0/1   0/0    2   4   4
Elk River      1/1   3/4   1/6   0/4   0/1    0   4   1
Moorhead       6/6   2/5   1/2   0/0   0/3    3   5   1
Roseau         4/4   0/0   3/5   0/3   0/3    0   5   2

Totals for each category:
1. 30/34 (88.2%) of heavy favorites go to State
2. 26/39 (66.7%) of mild favorites advance
3. 26/74 (35.1%) of teams with a "realistic" chance advance
4. 1/30 (3.3%) of teams with little chance moved on
5. Logically enough, 0 of the teams with no chance won their section.

16/83 (19.3%) trips to State resulted in overachievement
43/83 (51.8%) resulted in meeting expectations
24/83 (28.9%) ended in the team being upset

You can compare each team to those averages to see where they stack up, though I do think there are some important asterisks--for example, it's a lot easier to meet expectations when the expectation is a 2-and-out than it is when a team is the favorite. Yes, a team like Edina looks bad at State in this, but when a team is favored more often than not, it's going to be hard for them to find that many opportunities to "exceed expectations."

I'm sure we could argue about where exactly certain seasons should belong, and some of those State tournament judgments can look harsh--for example, considering Edina's loss to Benilde this year "underachievement." But regardless, I think the general results hold true. I think it gives us some idea of how often to expect an upset, and how much we should celebrate or judge teams' apparent successes and failures.

[Doc Holliday]

Funny read & look, Karl.

Only thing I'd want to know (probably would take WAY too long for you to list) is what years the teams fell into these categories. I seem to have a good guess (i.e.: EP 0/1 as a heavy favorite in sections was most likely 2000). Maybe a little easier to determine if a team overachieved or underachieved (2009 Edina underachieved, maybe 2011 Edina underachieved, but I wouldn't call it a choke by any means, & you mentioned 2012 Edina's loss to BSM, which gets tossed into the same category). But you also mentioned that so no need to say anything more about that.

Good post: Reading this stuff helps pass the offseason quicker...

[karl(east)]

Funny read & look, Karl.

Only thing I'd want to know (probably would take WAY too long for you to list) is what years the teams fell into these categories. I seem to have a good guess (i.e.: EP 0/1 as a heavy favorite in sections was most likely 2000). Maybe a little easier to determine if a team overachieved or underachieved (2009 Edina underachieved, maybe 2011 Edina underachieved, but I wouldn't call it a choke by any means, & you mentioned 2012 Edina's loss to BSM, which gets tossed into the same category). But you also mentioned that so no need to say anything more about that.

Good post: Reading this stuff helps pass the offseason quicker...

Putting up everyone would take a lot of time, but since I'm detecting some interest in Edina , I'll put up the Hornets:

1: 97, 07, 08, 12
2: 98, 09, 10, 11
3: 99, 01, 03
4: 00, 04, 06
5: 02, 05
+: 97, 00, 10
E: 98
-: 07, 08, 09, 11, 12

Like you say, it is a bit strange to lump Edina's '09 failure on the same level as the '12 "failure," or even '11, for that matter. I like my method for sections better than the State method, but I don't think it would work to use that on both, since State tends to be much more of a crapshoot than sections, with probably an average of 7 teams per year that are capable of giving anyone a good game, whereas most sections only have 2 or 3 real contenders. I'll mull it over for a few days to see if I can come up with a better method for State.

The other things that this doesn't really take into account are losses in earlier rounds of sections. For example, Elk River in 2000 suffered maybe even worse an upset than EP did that same year, going down to 4-seed Osseo in the semis. But they weren't considered a heavy favorite because there were other good teams in that section, including the eventual state champion, Blaine. On the other side of the coin, there are also a number of teams that saw their major competitor(s) within a section get upset before they had to play them--meaning they had a much easier road to State than this makes it look.

The four heavy favorites who didn't make it to State are 00 Eden Prairie, 06 and 07 Holy Angels, and 11 Hill-Murray.

I'd take requests for other individual teams if anyone is curious.

[TheHockeyDJ]

Karl, now that we're getting close to the season and probably most of the roster movement is done in terms of players deciding to stay, transfer, or move on the another league, what would your top 20 look like right now?