Gramps Not So Regular Grassroots Ratings- boys 15U to 17U

 Have you ever worked on a project and someone, unaware of the complexity in the construction, stops by and say, "Is that the way it is going to look?"

My wife does that with my woodworking projects, sometimes between cutting, glueing, sanding and staining.  Inevitably, she asks me that question.  She is always satisfied with the final outcome but shows no confidence in me early on.

So, as I look at trying to "build" boys 15, 16 and 17U Grassroots/AAU ratings, I suspect that some reader will also ask the same question.

It is not easy.  There is a lot of detective work involved in building a rating for teams from many different states.  Developing a rating algorithm involves comparative scores and head-to-head competition.  It is not hard to rate a bracket in Prep Hoops if several teams have known ratings, but what if you have no game data for any of the teams in the bracket?

The process starts by finding a team you have rated previously.  For me, I start with St. Louis teams that play in the CNR league and local tournaments.  I have to expand that pool of rated teams by looking for teams that they have played outside of St. Louis.  If none of the teams has played St. Louis teams, then I have to get out my detective hat (picture Sherlock Holmes) and look for teams that are in the tournament I am handicapping and then work backwards to previous tournaments where teams may have played opponents that I have already rated.  Sometimes I am lucky, sometimes I am not.  

BallerTV is a good source for quick tournament checks.  I can search a team in a current tournament and their search engine gives me all the games that have been broadcast with opponent and score.  It makes it easy to find common opponents or teams who have played teams who have played teams (the Kevin Bacon effect) that allow me to rate a team.  One rating allows me to rate the other teams.  Two or three ratings make for a better model to rate their new opponents.

If I don't have any older tournaments to rate teams, then I have two choices.... 1. wait for a tournament with common opponents and then come back to this tournament, or 2. Assign a temporary rating for the top team in each bracket, i.e. give the top 17 U teams in each bracket a 140 rating and work back to a rating and then check it with subsequant tournaments.

You probably were not interested in any of that explanation but I relate it because the early ratings can be a crap shoot and readers need to be patient.  The ratings models do not really come together fully until mid-July when multiple tournaments and thousands of games have been played.  The more data inputted, the better the ratings.

So where do I start?  I have rated St. Louis area, PrepHoops and RecruitLook tournaments and a couple of Chicago tournaments.  It took me nearly a week to rate the 250 teams that played in the PrepHoops KC tournament April 23-25th.  I won't catch every tournament.  I will focus on Midwest teams.   I hope to pick up UAA, EYBL and other top leagues but it all takes time.

So I am rating all 17U, 16U and 15U teams in this post.  if your team is not on the list, I just have not gotten to your tournaments.  If you think you are something special, send me the link to your last tournment championship.  Enjoy the trip.

I will split up Prep Hoops and RecruitLook and the other leagues in separate posts by age group.  Here are those links:

PrepHoops 15, 16 and 17U

RecruitLook 15, 16 and 17U

I will also publish St. Louis CNR league ratings as results trickle in.