HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

HS Boys Lacrosse
ctbagataway
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

Post by ctbagataway »

But the starting point for teams then has a fairly significant impact on your results, no? Or do the wins/losses get remeasured as the season goes on?
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

Post by pcowlax »

That (the starting points) is the real stickler. Yes, if McD loses to 1-9 they could indeed be the #10 team in the country. However, losing to 1-9 only shows that they are 10 or lower. Unless they have beaten a good number of other, say, top 25 teams, there would be nothing from THIS YEARS body of work to indicate putting them at 10 rather than 53. The win over Culver is great and Bullis and Gonzaga are good so I certainly wouldn't have them at 53 but, subjectively yes, 10 seems way to high for a team with a 62% winning percentage. The other issue that seems to be more glaring with a few teams this year is not taking margin of victory/defeat into account. On the one hand this is very reasonable in some settings, it is always maddening to hear someone say team A is better than team B because A beat C by 12 and B only beat them by 7. When the game is somewhat out of hand, there is nothing to be gained from looking at margin of victory. However, Boys Latin not only has 5 losses, they were thrashed in 4 of these in games that were not competitive. I think that has to count for something. In addition, they only have 1 win (Gonzaga) over anything close to a top 10-15 team this year. I think in a vacuum, without taking last year or the name on the jersey into account, they actually would be somewhere around 30-35. There is no perfect system, this one is trying to do it purely mathematically with no subjective opinion. This can run into problems with the eye test and common sense. To anyone who has seen them play, it would be crazy not to have Brunswick in the top 3 at least. All that said, I certainly appreciate the effort and creativity that Matnum has put in and to anyone who starts to make personal the criticisms of it, YOU should consider taking your ball and going elsewhere to make your own rankings. The many missing scores (at least when looking at each team's results) are a problem but inputting everything is a huge task for one person.
LIlax88
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

Post by LIlax88 »

You mentioned how we can have McDonogh as the #10 team if all the teams they have lost to are in the top 10 etc. How can we have Smithtown West ahead of GC when they lost at home to them and GC is undefeated? Another interesting case is Bayport Blue Point in the top 50 when they have 4 losses and their best win is over 5-4 Port Jefferson, who if you've watched them play isn't even a top 250 team in the country (and i've watched them play).
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

Post by admin »

The Starting Points do have a significant impact and they are recalibrated after every game. And, after 5 games, the recalibration is based exclusively on 2019. (Is that your question?)

As a semi-aside, all computer rankings are based on equations. Some are "wins divided by games played" equations and some are "if this then that" equations. But, in all cases, they're just simple equations. Sometimes the Computer Ranking Formula is presented in a way that it seems like magic (or it's simply not presented at all... which I find dubious) but, in all cases, it's just composed of equations. So, if you thought deeply about why you believe Brunswick to be better than Culver, you, or someone for you, could make a Computer Ranking. Most people just copy someone else and then make minor changes but... Anyone can do this. And, in all cases, the Computer Rankings maker isn't wrong. e.g. The guy who thinks the teams closer to A alphabetically are the best while the teams closer to Z are the worst isn't necessarily wrong. Boys Latin, Culver, Darien, Delbarton, these are all good teams. But for every 1 Boys Latin, there are 100 A.C. Floras (with no insult intended to South Carolina lacrosse. They're just the first HS alphabetically). But, again, they're not wrong. Just a formula that is (heavily) imperfect. So we post our Computer Rankings and people look and say (to IL), Chaminade is undefeated and beat st. anthonys so... Why is St. Anthony's #2 and Chaminade #4? and I'm confident that the answer is quality wins. But Mountain Lakes (NJ) is 8-0 and has zero quality wins and they're #11 so... I'm curious what IL's equation is. What's their perspective on what makes Team A #1 and team B #20. (If you look at the top IL teams, they all have something in common which is wins over teams that did well in 2018, but aren't necessarily doing well, thus far, in 2019. My guess is that the previous season is a factor. (Which, as an aside, I don't like. Previous 10 seasons where where each season is weighted less and less until the season 10 years ago is worth 10% what the previous season is worth I like. But that's about it.) As for LaxBytes, they also have St. As over Chaminade (they obviously value quality wins over head-to-head), their Rankings obviously have very similar equations (which is fine) to IL as their head-scratchers match, and... How is Deerfield at #7? I'm not lambasting them. I'm just trying to understand what their rationale is. Similarly, Choate lost to Deerfield and Avon and, from where I'm sitting, 5 mediocre wins, and they're #10. Taft is #13 and... Take a look. There seems to be a boost given to a Conference or a common opponent. And, personally, I'm curious what it is. Again, not lambasting their system, just trying to understand the rationale. Keep in mind, as already stated, there's no magic to Computer rankings. Just equations. And, if the equation is based on New England teams are better than Whatever teams, we should all be throwing a flag. When a Ranker says, I prefer baltimore teams, we can say whatever. But when a computer ranking is built on this prejudice, a flag should be thrown. BUT... we don't know this to be the case. Which is why I ask, Why are Deerfield, Choate, taft, and others so high in the rankings?

Lastly, we constantly field questions. And from these questions, we improve our formulas and find just plain stupid errors (Had one last night with the NJCAA Men... silly mistake. It happens.). Our goal isn't to be right or lazy or otherwise. Our interest is getting this right. We genuinely are interested in the question "Is there a relatively objective metric where all rational people would agree that Team A is better than Team B"? Anyway, just a long-winded way of saying, We care about Computer Rankings and we care about your feedback.
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

Post by admin »

PCOW
Starting Points... Yes. Not simple. You want to start from 0, like a starting line in a race, and... It doesn't work. You have to start with prejudices. So, the best you can do is make the prejudices as objectively fair as possible. So, we used the results of last season as the starting Starting Point and then, after every game, we re-do the Starting Points until 2018 is phased out. As the starting Starting Point was based on a previous year (and, for next season, our plan is to use previous years, plural), it's never 100% gone but, more importantly, a team that was #3,567 in 2018 can be #1 in 2019. i.e. There's always a Starting Point, there's always an anchor, but, with our method, the anchor can move dramatically, which makes for, if nothing else, a fair Starting Point.

McDonogh... Yes. 100% We also subscribe to the notion that you're as good as who you beat and as bad as who you lose to. Thus, in theory, McD is 1-9 and #10 in the country. Similarly, this is why a team beating teams worse than them says little to nothing. If a team beats #32 and then #33, #34, #35, and #147, we've learned nothing in those last 4 games. We just confirmed. Anyway, more specifically, McD has lost 5 games: #8 St Paul's (MD), #16 Loyola Blakefield (MD), #2 Calvert Hall (MD), #13 Boys' Latin (MD), and #5 St. Anthony's (NY). Yes, the #13 and #16 losses would seem to indicate that they should be #17 or lower but... I assume we all recognize that the rankings get more complicated than this. The "wins formula" is based on Top 1 Win, Top 3 Wins, and Top Wins. For McD this is wins over (1) #1, (2) #1, #7, and #9, and (3) #1, #7, #9, #12 and some others. This is pretty impressive.

Margin of Victory... Margin of Victory is part of our Rankings. It's just currently set to 0. :) It would literally be as easy to change this for every HS team's game played thus far this season as typing some numbers into 6-8 cells but... We want to get it right. We know that just Ws and Ls is a solid philosophy. As you speak to, there are other perspectives. But we're standing on solid ground if we say, Only Ws and Ls. With this said, we don't have the Margin of Victory set-up and ready-to-go because we're opposed to it. We just want to make sure to get it right. anyway, without a promise, that'll be one of our tasks today. Coming up with a Point System for margin of victory that makes sense. (For a different post.)

Brunswick... Agreed. You watch them, you say, they're so good, and... The Computer Ranking says, Then prove it. I'm comfortable with this.

BL... Their losses are similar to McD and they have wins over McD, Gonzaga and L-Blakefield. Not amazing but better than the teams behind them (as long as you have a similar perspective re: the value of Ws vs. Ls... which, like the margin of victory cells, can be changed. Our plan for next season to have this all online so everyone can punch in their own values and preferences)

Scores... Inputting the scores isn't simple. But, everyday, more and more caches are sending them so... We're getting there. We'll be sending a post about this soon but I think our best bet is having people of our ilk taking responsibility for, for example, NY Section 3 and submitting all those scores.

Lastly, Matnum is lazy. I do the heavy lifting.
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

Post by admin »

LILax
Smithtown West is ahead of GC because... There numbers are actually very similar. But, though not by much, GC's are slightly better. Except re: "All Top Wins" which is weighted very little. I need to look more closely.

Bayport... they do have 4 losses but none are awful and... Their best wins are over East Islip (NY) and Eastport/South Manor (NY). Is that not accurate?
random observer
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

Post by random observer »

Admin you're looking at the regional rankings for Laxnumbers, not the national rankings. Choate is #21 on the national rankings and Taft is #36, which still seems a tad high, but less egregious on the whole.

There isn't much transparency in the IL ratings system but for Laxnumbers the math is on the team pages. Each team gets a score for every game played, with that score being your opponents rating plus or minus the scoring margin, capped at +/- 10 (ex. if you lose by 5 to a team with a 99 rating, you get a 94, and if you win by 3 against a team with a 92 rating, you get a 95). These scores are updated with every game (essentially the game scores are not frozen in time -- if that team you lost to with a 99 rating drops to a 97, the score you got for playing them becomes a 92 instead of a 94). Each team's rating is an average of all of their game scores.

So in the case of Deerfield (who I agree looks a little high at #11 nationally based on the current resume, but is for sure a top 30 team at least in my eyes), they have two losses, but neither was too damaging because their opponents have high ratings. For example, the Brunswick loss produced a game rating of 93.99 for Deerfield -- a team with that rating average for all of their games would be #41 in the national rankings. Given how Brunswick has been hammering teams, it might make sense that they would typically beat the 41st best team in the nation by 6 goals. Deerfield's ratings were further boosted by high game scores against solid Trinity-Pawling and St. Margaret's Episcopal teams, due to high MOV.

It's apparent that MOV plays a strong role in the laxnumbers ratings. I would bet it plays a big part in IL's system too -- I think that's why Mountain Lakes is so high in both, as they have been wrecking everyone in their path (FWIW based on the eye test, I think ML is a top 15 team nationally -- this is their best team since the days when they were a true national power).
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

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Brunswick (CT) vs. Hill (CAN) Today at 4 PM EST. Live stream. https://twitter.com/Hill_Lacrosse/statu ... 5225847809
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

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Random, that helps, thank you.
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

Post by LIlax88 »

admin wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 11:30 am Bayport... they do have 4 losses but none are awful and... Their best wins are over East Islip (NY) and Eastport/South Manor (NY). Is that not accurate?
They have those wins, but both of those teams have records under .500. So I would hardly call them quality.
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

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Agreed. Their Winning %s aren't great but they each have good Ws. Also, what's helping is a W over a team that beat Northport that beat Ward-Melville.
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

Post by wahoomurf »

LIlax88 wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 10:33 am You mentioned how we can have McDonogh as the #10 team if all the teams they have lost to are in the top 10 etc. How can we have Smithtown West ahead of GC when they lost at home to them and GC is undefeated? Another interesting case is Bayport Blue Point in the top 50 when they have 4 losses and their best win is over 5-4 Port Jefferson, who if you've watched them play isn't even a top 250 team in the country (and i've watched them play).
LIlax88: You're spitting into the wind.ADMIN wrote the rule book; ergo ADMIN is the sole arbiter of the rankings.
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

Post by Maggie12 »

This is by far the worst rating system i have ever seen. St joseph collegiate is 9-0 with wins over cba syracuse,salesium,Brighton too name a few with a game tonight against Culver and they are ranked 108 in Northeast
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

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wahoomurf wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 3:54 pmLIlax88: You're spitting into the wind.ADMIN wrote the rule book; ergo ADMIN is the sole arbiter of the rankings.
This is silly. I'm constantly asking for feedback and making changes based on the feedback. So, LILax, I appreciated your question and would appreciate your keeping us honest with relation to the LI teams and otherwise. Our goal is to get it right. So if you see something, say something.

Maggie, first, thank you. Your kind words are appreciated. Second, the problem for St. Joseph Collegiate is two-fold. One, their wins aren't that impressive. I'm not sure how high you think they should be. Maybe just higher. And, two, that numerous teams (that they've beaten) have not submitted scores. So St, Joe's beats CBA Syracuse and the only game score for CBA is that St. Joe's game. If CBA had submitted all their games, they'd all but certainly have more Points. And... We're working on this. For example, there's a guy who's going to take on NY Section 3 and that'll help.
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

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Maggie, as an FYI, Salesium's best win is over Appoquinimink (DE). Brighton's best w is over Canandaigua (NY), much better, a #2 W over CBA Syracuse, also better, (just saw, we have 3 games for CBA), and their #3 W is over... Penfield (NY). These aren't obviously top-tier teams in 2019. St. Joe being at 100 plus national isn't so ridiculous. Undefeated in a vacuum is meaningless. Strength of schedule also needs to be considered.
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

Post by wahoomurf »

admin wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 8:18 pm
wahoomurf wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 3:54 pmLIlax88: You're spitting into the wind.ADMIN wrote the rule book; ergo ADMIN is the sole arbiter of the rankings.
This is silly. I'm constantly asking for feedback and making changes based on the feedback. So, LILax, I appreciated your question and would appreciate your keeping us honest with relation to the LI teams and otherwise. Our goal is to get it right. So if you see something, say something.
You 'da man ,LIl88. ADMIN is relying on YOU and you alone for "keeping us (ADMIN is an US?) honest with relation to the LI teams". I tried but obviously I'm either too "silly",too dishonest or lack the nous ADMIN-US is looking for.Best of luck.

Thank God Nassau and Suffolk playoffs are nigh.It's imperative that we resurrect that Metro NY initiative.Not sure if you were involved in the initial discussions.OK if I contact you as we move forward?The financing is in place.All we need is a good tech jockey. Sursum corda!
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

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wahoomurf wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 9:24 pmI tried but obviously I'm either too "silly",too dishonest or lack the nous ADMIN-US is looking for.Best of luck.
None of the above. You're too angry and hostile. As soon as the discussion moves from criticisms about the Rankings to criticisms about people, in this case, me, I lose interest in the discussion. Channel your hostility at someone else.
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

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HS BOYS: Today, Hill (CAN) beat Brunswick (CT). This was the 14th Biggest HS Boys Game, thus far, this season. These are the Top 20 HS Boys Big Games in 2019.
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

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Haverford v Salisbury?
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Re: HS Boys National and Regional Rankings

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#10
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