Power Ratings: Final Comments

[flat3]

I have been compiling Power Rankings based on coachray40's results thread and various other sources. Below you will see the final Ratings (not including Playoff results). I had made an error on Byrd's score, and they are now ranked #12.

It was an interesting experiment and I would like to offer some comments.

1. I will not compile Power Ratings next year. It's taking too much time.
2. These rankings are as good as reported scores. They were possible this year primarily due to coachray40's results thread. Once he stopped renewing that thread, the reliability of Power Ratings suffered. I missed too many scores.
3. Though I am quite confident of the formula I came up with, the bias toward Northern teams remained. There is nothing we can do about it.

Now if someone (LHSSCA?) wants to use some kind of ratings for a playoff seeding purpose, the following has to happen.
a. Making it mandatory to report scores of EVERY game. They probably need to set up a website to do that. Make it that schools who don't report their scores are not eligible for playoffs. This is particularly critical for DII and DIII schools, many scores of which were missing this year.
b. Hiring/securing someone to calculate ratings. If all scores are reported, it won't take too long to calculate them. I would say 5 hours per week. It took long to find scores, rather than calculation. I will supply my spreadsheet program, which is relatively simple, for whoever wants to take over.

2006/7 Final Power Ratings

1 17.99 Jesuit (1) 22 0 0
2 15.80 Teurlings (3) 23 1 2
3 15.67 St. Louis (3) 12 2 2
4 15.17 Fountainebleau (1) 19 2 1
5 15.07 Carencro (1) 15 2 3
6 14.68 Caddo (1) 22 3 1
7 14.49 St. Frederick (3) 11 2 0
8 14.39 Brother Martin (1) 13 3 8
9 14.36 St. Th. More (2) 17 3 3
10 13.96 Parkway (2) 18 5 0
11 13.89 Shreve (1) 18 5 2
12 13.83 C. E. Byrd (1) 15 5 0
13 13.79 Lafayette (1) 15 6 3
14 13.71 Rummel (1) 13 4 1
15 13.70 Catholic (1) 15 3 5
16 13.48 Newman (3) 13 4 5
17 13.47 Ruston (1) 12 5 1
18 13.39 Acadiana (1) 14 5 3
19 13.36 C Lafourches(1) 16 5 1
20 13.29 E. Ascension (2) 12 5 0
21 13.00 Opelousas Cath. (3) 11 4 1
22 13.00 St. Paul's (1) 14 9 0
23 12.74 Tara (2) 13 4 0
24 12.64 DeRidder (2) 20 5 3
25 12.62 Episcopal (3) 13 3 5
26 12.52 St. Thomas Aquinas (3) 11 4 1
27 12.41 Woodlawn (1) 15 6 2
28 12.35 Vandebilt Cath. (2) 12 8 2
29 12.27 Dutchtown (1) 11 8 5
30 11.96 Lee (2) 13 4 2
31 11.89 Ouachita (1) 7 3 0
32 11.85 St. Amant (1) 12 7 4
33 11.70 University (3) 12 5 8
34 11.55 Terrebonne (1) 13 6 3
35 11.28 Alexandria (2) 13 6 2
36 11.23 Pineville (2) 9 7 2
37 11.19 Menard (3) 16 5 3
38 11.17 Neville (2) 16 10 4
39 11.17 Mandeville (1) 12 9 4
40 11.12 Ponchatoula (1) 13 9 0
41 11.08 Grace King (1) 5 3 2
42 10.97 St. Michael (2) 9 6 3
43 10.95 Loyola (2) 8 6 1
44 10.89 East St. John (1) 15 6 1
45 10.85 S. Terrebonne (1) 6 4 0
46 10.85 Airline (1) 13 11 1
47 10.68 St. Martin's (3) 14 10 1
48 10.56 Ben Franklin (2) 8 9 2
49 10.53 Comeaux (1) 12 10 1
50 10.38 Sulphur (1) 11 11 3
51 10.27 Hahnville (1) 12 10 1
52 10.13 Opelousas (2) 10 6 1
53 10.10 E. D. White (3) 9 8 0
54 10.07 Northshore (1) 10 11 1
** 10.00 Bonnabel (1) 1 1 0
55 9.76 Westminster (3) 8 7 0
56 9.67 NISH (1) 10 11 2
57 9.58 Baton Rouge (1) 8 14 1
58 9.19 Destrehan (1) 9 8 3
59 8.93 Slidell (1) 7 9 0
60 8.70 Beau Chene (2) 9 11 1
61 8.69 Covington (1) 8 11 1
62 8.64 West Jefferson (1) 4 7 2
63 8.46 Parkview (3) 4 8 2
64 8.45 Catholic NI (3) 6 6 0
65 8.19 Haughton (2) 6 7 0
66 8.18 Christian Life (3) 5 9 1
67 8.17 West Monroe (1) 4 9 4
68 7.99 Hammond (1) 6 12 0
69 7.97 S. Lafourche (1) 6 7 0
70 7.97 East Jefferson (2) 3 4 2
71 7.94 West Feliciana (3) 4 11 1
72 7.82 Barbe (1) 4 13 4
73 7.62 Thibodaux (1) 3 8 0
74 7.50 Salmen (2) 2 2 1
75 7.48 Bossier (2) 6 12 1
76 7.38 St. Charles (3) 2 8 2
77 7.30 Pope John Paul (3) 2 4 1
78 7.15 H. L. Bourgeois (1) 4 12 0
79 7.14 Bolton (3) 1 7 0
80 7.06 Westgate (1) 3 12 0
81 7.02 Leesville (2) 2 9 1
82 6.91 Holy Cross (1) 2 16 2
83 6.47 Natch. Cen (1) 3 10 0
84 6.43 Ouachita Ch. (3) 2 5 1
85 6.35 Rapides (3) 2 4 0
86 6.32 Episcopal, Acadiana (3) 2 15 1
87 6.22 Chalmette (2) 5 9 0
88 6.05 McKinley (2) 2 11 1
** 5.94 Belle Chasse (2) 1 2 0
89 5.89 Calvary (3) 3 10 0
90 5.81 Broadmoor (2) 1 5 0
91 5.78 Runnels (3) 2 4 0
92 5.47 Central (1) 3 17 1
93 5.39 Redemptorist (3) 4 9 0
94 5.26 Shaw (1) 1 12 1
95 5.01 Carroll (2) 2 7 0
96 4.97 Morgan City (2) 1 11 0
97 4.66 Grace Christian (3) 0 5 0
** 4.59 Buckeye (3) 0 3 0
98 4.59 Sam Houston (2) 2 14 0
99 4.43 Huntington (1) 1 9 0
100 4.31 Catholic PC (3) 2 11 0
101 4.30 Zachary (2) 1 12 0
102 4.29 Independence (3) 0 6 0
103 4.08 Southwood (1) 1 14 0
104 3.91 Notre Dame (3) 0 13 1
105 3.76 Ellender (1) 0 9 0
106 3.73 Tioga (2) 0 7 0
107 3.62 Northside (2) 0 8 0
** 3.55 Ridgewood (3) 0 3 0
108 3.34 Northlake Ch. (3) 0 7 0
109 3.33 Abbeville (2) 0 8 1
110 3.30 Country Day (3) 0 4 0
** 3.24 Riverdale (2) 0 2 0
** 3.09 Pearl River (3) 0 2 0
111 3.04 Northwood (2) 0 15 0
** 3.00 Higgins (1) 0 1 0
112 2.64 Ehret (1) 0 8 0
** 2.55 Riverside (3) 0 2 0
113 2.39 Reserve Ch. (3) 0 4 0
114 2.28 DeLaSalle (2) 0 6 0
115 1.98 Peabody (2) 0 9 0
116 1.97 Belaire (2) 0 6 0
117 1.66 Wossman (3) 0 4 0
** 1.45 Lutheran (3) 0 2 0
** 1.01 Houma Ch. (3) 0 2 0
** 0.31 Red River (3) 0 1 0

Doumo arigatou -- for all the effort you put into this!

[brhsoccer14]

I would like to commend you on your efforts as I too tried a system of my own. I must agree that the finding and compiling of scores was the most tedious thing to do while compiling rankings. I was also confident in my ranking system, but as I had a lot of formulas and such, my computer was not able to handle that many calculations. I hope to come up with a better system next year and am looking for any current ideas some may have to reducing the favoritism for the north teams. See below for explanation. Anyway, back to the main point. Thanks flat3 for inspiring me to also look into doing my own system and for dedicating hours every week to make sure that your power ratings were able to be put up every week. I know how much work it can be.


As to the north favoritism... it's not because we like north teams better, , but since the northern teams aren't able to play teams in the south as often as they'd can/like, they don't have the records to reflect them playing down here. So basically, it's like having two separate ranking systems in one since one part of the state is almost completely independant of the other.

I've been thinking of ways to decrease the favoritism, but have yet to find a way of doing so while being fair. One of the ways I thought was to give a regional bonus. If you were in a certain region, points would be added (in my system, that is bad) to reflect who they have played. For the most part, it worked out, but teams like Capt. Shreve who come down south to play teams more often than others from up north would suffer. I then tried to do the same regional bonus thing, excluding teams like Capt. Shreve, but that took too much research and time. Don't get me wrong, it took a lot of research to begin with, but when you add that much more, it got harder.

Once again, excellent work flat3!

[timaeus]

Yes, let me add my hearty thanks to flat3 for such a tremendous job well done. As most computer rankings, they didn't start off too well, but come mid-season and at the end, they were nearly spot on. I was very impressed. Thank you for all the hard work. We'll miss your system next year, but hope you'll still be on the board.

[soccergeezer50]

It has been a treat to be able to log on and watch the rankings as the season progresses; thanks for that. And these rankings illustrate just how "well" the D1 playoff seedings turned out. If I read it right, there was not a single top ten team in the bottom half of the playoff bracket; the highest was Byrd at 12 and Rummel at 14. Meanwhile, in the top half, we have 5 D1 teams in the the top ten (Jesuit 1, FHS 4,Cro 5, Caddo 6, BM 6, and then LHS @ 13). The semifinals of the bottom bracket pits SPS (#22) vs. Acadiana (#18), and the top bracket is Jesuit (#1) vs, Carencro (#5). If that does not cry out for a seeding system, then nothing ever will.

[soccerjunqie]

I think they have turned out pretty accurate. The early comments about giving them a few weeks are accurate. It takes game input to make the polls work. Now maybe next year we can get all schools to input their scores to take some of the pressure off of Flat. Flat, you've made an A+. Rather than ditch the project perhaps recruit some help.

I fully agree with the seeding thoughts. Between coaches polls and power rating there is more than enough information to seed teams in all three divisions. Now, if only someone at LHSAA would take an interest in soccer, we'd have seeded brackets.

[ShreveDad]

Thanks so much Flat3!! Hope someone with the time and energy can take your work and run with it next year. LHSAA could easily seed the teams using a committee of coaches (1 from each district) to do the work. They could use each teams results, the polls and power rankings. Seeding the top 8 teams would be a good start.

Thanks again for all the hard work.

[flat3]

Thanks guys for all the nice comments. As brhsoccer14 wrote, what takes time is to collect the scores, rather than calculations themselves. For that matter, I again thank coachray, PutMeInCoach2, and all others who reported the scores.
Yes, I will be on board next year, sans Power Ratings....

[brhsoccer14]

Haha. No one read my post above flat

I think my posts either kill topics or are just plain skipped.