Gramps Braggin Rights Grassroots 17U boys "top 500" July 31, 2021

 Some of you may think I disappeared the past week and a half, or caught the delta variant and expired.

Well, I did disappear after posting my "Top 100" on Twitter.  I disappeared into the game scores for a bunch of teams that had only one or two game results listed.  I call them "pretenders" because their rating might be based on one great game but their overall rating was not that great.  You see, I spent a lot of time on The Circuit in early July and the EYBL, UAA, and 3SSB tournaments, and once I had those "Contenders" rated fairly, I needed to go back and weed out the pretenders.

I think the top 50 is pretty darn close to the top 50 Contenders.  The Circuit may have some other teams in the top 25 but I know the statistical model is a fair representation of the teams, based on head-to-head and comparative scores.  I predicted nearly 70% of those EYBL Peach Jam games correctly over the two weeks of play.  You do not get that percentage of correct winners without great statistics.  I had Brad Beal and Team Final near the top throughout the year and they played a heck of a game for the finale.  Hats off to both teams!

I had good feedback on my predictions and ratings, except for a Nightrydas Elite supporter who thought they belonged in the top 25.  After washing out the pretenders, Nightrydas moved up to #33, maybe not where that loyal fan thought they belonged but higher than they were, as some pretenders dropped down to more realistic ratings.  If you don't like your ratings, you can calculate it yourself but adding your scoring differential to each rated opponent and averaging it out.  Send me your calculation and I will take a look.

So, here's my "top 500" ratings with a count of ratings on the right.  For the teams with 10 or more game scores, I feel damn good about their rating.  For teams with one or two points, I still consider them pretenders until I can go back and add more scores.  I could do this from here to December and not get all 4000 17U boys teams.  At some point, I will be moving on to Missouri High School teams, assuming we have a winter session given the uptick in the Covid-19 delta variant.  Mask up, get the vaccine!  We might not have a winter buckets season unless we get the "crazies Give me Liberty or give me Death" all vaccinated.

My top "500":

Note:  The count may be larger than the number of games played due to weighting of game scores.  In other words, to move one team's rating above another, I may add the same score multiple times to move the winner above the loser in the overall ratings.  In some cases, I ignore victories where a clearly superior team is upset by a team with a lesser record and lower season rating.

Bonus

If you made it this far, here are the rest of the not so ready for prime time 17U ratings