NCS Ranking Summary

High School - Boys
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Yesterday, MaxPreps released updated NCS rankings. As of now, they have 19-2 Archie and 21-2 Redwood sitting safely in the 4-team open bracket with the three best teams in NorCal fighting for the last two spots; 15-8 Campo, 16-5 De Le Salle and 13-9 Miramonte. There were some big games yesterday that might move the rankings but we have no faith in a computer program without human review. Ideally, they would increase open to 6 teams and let all 5 battle it out.

All three of DLS, Campo and Miramonte should be in open division but are being penalized for playing the best Southern California schools. Miramonte, sitting in the worst position, has the most losses but they also scheduled 3 trips to play SoCal teams, and their record reflects a much harder schedule. They are the only team who beat Cathedral and while they lost their first two games to Campo, they beat them 25-9 in the third game. They also just beat #1 Archie last night 17-11 but it might not be enough to push them into top 4 and if it does, Campo might be kicked out of open, since Archie is a league winner. Neither situation is ideal but nor is bumping redwood or Archie out because they weren’t invited to the major tournaments and didn’t have the opportunity to play the SoCal teams.

DLS in 4th is particularly confusing as they have 5 losses to: Mater Dei (OT), JSerra by 3 goals, Cathedral (2OT), Newport, and Miramonte by 1 and they might be sent to D1. They beat Sacred Heart last night by 3 goals, and are in the best position of the three but certainly not safe. The rankings just don’t work without human review.

NCS needs to step in and do a human review of rankings and NCS open placement as the MaxPreps rankings are not telling the entire story.

Archie Williams - #1 Seed – 19W / 2L (MCAL League Winner)

Key Wins:
· Redwood 12-9 / San Clemente 10-8
Losses:
· Westlake 12-13 / CDM 8-15 / Miramonte 11-17

Redwood - #2 Seed – 21W / 2L

Key Wins:
· La Jolla 16-15 / Campo 14-13
Losses:
· Foothill (LA) 10-12 / Archie Williams 9-12

Campo - #3 Seed – 15W / 8L (DAL League Winner)

Key Wins:
· Foothill (LA) 13-12 (OT) / Miramonte 12-10 / Miramonte 10-9

Losses:
· Oaks Christian 12-15 / Cathedral 5-10 / Redwood 13-14 / Cathedral 8-10 / Loyola 12-13 / Punahou – Forfeit / Santa Margarita 9-10 / Miramonte 9-25

De Le Salle - #4 Seed – 16W / 5L (EBAL League Winner)

Key Wins:
· Bishops 11-10 / Miramonte 12-7 / Harvard Westlake 12-9 / Mater Dei 16-8 / Loyola 11-10 / SHP 11-8

Losses:
· JSerra 10-13 / Mater Dei 11-12 (OT) / Miramonte 12-13 / Newport 9-18 / Cathedral 16-17 (2OT)

Miramonte - #5 Seed – 13W / 9L

Key Wins:
· Cathedral 9-7 / CDM 14-13 (OT) / DLS 13-12 / Santa Margarita 16-14 / Greenwich 11-8 / Campo 25-9 / Archie 17-11

Losses:
· Oaks Christian 9-10 / DLS 7-12 / Campo 10-12 / Campo 9-10 / Oaks Christian 9-12 / Mater Dei 13-14 / JSerra 6-17 / Cathedral 6-7 / Mater Dei 10-11 (OT)

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ya. this situation makes no sense at all - why don’t we just turn this over to chatGpt for gods sake. Is it too much trouble to use the brain anymore? I was at the Miramonte - Archie game last night and Archie is a good team, but they are not deep and while they came on clicking on all cylinders, they got worn down by Miramonte’s depth and an awesome performance (offensively) by Tristan Tucker who scored 8 goals. Teams like Campo Miramonte should not be punished for having a more rigorous schedule. This is bad for the game…

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Asking the humans here, who is #5 then?

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This is a complete joke. Complaints to CIF have already been issued.

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As of games played through October 24, this is how I would rank the top 5 NCS schools:

  1. De La Salle
  2. Miramonte
  3. Archie Williams
  4. Campolindo (a very close call between Archie Williams and Campolindo)
  5. Redwood

I predict that De La Salle, Miramonte, and Campolindo will win their remaining games. Archie Williams will be the No. 1 seed in next week’s Marin County Athletic League tournament. Redwood will be the No. 2 seed. If Archie Williams beats Redwood and wins the MCAL, and De La Salle, Miramonte, and Campolindo don’t lose another game, I would rank Archie Williams 3rd and Redwood 5th prior to the NCS Tournament. If Redwood beats Archie Williams and wins the MCAL, I would rank Redwood 4th and Archie Williams 5th.

I don’t know why the NCS decided to have just 4 schools in its Open Division Tournament. In some years, there is a significant drop off after the top 4 schools. That’s not the case this year. If it were up to me, I’d resolve this dilemma by asking the No. 5 seed whether it prefers to play in the Division 1 Tournament. If it does not, I’d place the 6th strongest NCS team in the Open Division and have a 6-team tournament. My third option would be to have the No. 4 and 5 seeds face each other in a play-in game. The winner would be the No. 4 seed in the Open Division Tournament; the loser would be the No. 1 seed in the Division 1 Tournament.

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For the record, I dont have a kid in any of the five schools

Wow. The east bay bias is strong here, but some facts while mentioned seem to be ignored in the analysis. Glaringly missing is the fact that Redwood beat Campo straight up. True they are probably the 4/5 teams but that should be the primary tiebreaker.
The real question is should the top 4 teams be the top 4 at the end of the season or over the course of the season. Miramonte had one of their stars out for the majority of the season; they took some loses especially to Campo twice as a result. Should that be ignored.
While I am all for a play-in for the fourth spot, but I am afraid under the circumstances and most scenarios, the most fair outcome would be either Campo or Miramonte end up as the 5 seed.

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There certainly seems to be 5 teams that are deserving of making of the open division. If It wasn’t simply based on MaxPreps rankings it would still be a very Interesting discussion.

I think the committee that seeds the teams look at a few things; overall record, head to head match ups, common opponents and strength of schedule.

Overall Record: Right now the order would be Redwood (22-2), Archie (20-3), DLS (17-5), Campolindo (15-8) and Miramonte (14-9).

Head to head match ups go around In a circle this year too.
Campolindo beat Miramonte twice but lost handily in the the most recent match up. They also lost to Redwood.

Miramonte has played most teams In this discussion going 1-2 against Campo but having the most recent win, not sure if the most recent win matters to the committee. They went 1-1 against DLS, winning the most recent match up. And they beat Archie this week.

Archie has lost to Miramonte and beat Redwood.

DLS has gone 1-1 against Miramonte.

Redwood has lost to Archie but beat Campo.

Strength of Schedule Rankings according to MaxPreps: Miramonte, Campolindo, DLS, Archie, Redwood. This actually seems accurate to me.

Best Wins from these teams outside of their head to head match ups:
DLS over HW
Mira over Cathedral
Mira over CDM
DLS over SHP (some might consider this win better than Mira’s over CDM)
DLS over MD
DLS over Bishops
Campo over Foothill
Mira over SM
Redwood over La Jolla
Archie over San Clemente
I ordered these wins on my opinion of teams, If you use the MaxPreps rankings the order Is different.

Their Worst Losses outside of head to head match ups
Campo FF to Punahou
Westlake over AW
Foothill over Redwood
SM over Campo
Jserra blowout Mira
Loyola over Campo
MD over Mira 2x
MD over DLS

Those games seem to tell a better story of the rankings than their record or MaxPreps rankings. From those results it looks like DLS has the highest ceiling followed by Mira, Campo, AW and finally Redwood. That’s how I would rank the teams. But it’s very tight and Interesting because the season is composed of so much more than a few key match ups.

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Westlake over Archie I believe in the note above

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Thank you for the correction.

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Maybe I’m wrong (the wording on the NCS guidelines isn’t exactly clear IMO), but I don’t think the MaxPreps rankings will be the final rankings. Think they’re using this as an easier way to seed the lower ranked teams, since there’s more uncertainty there, or it’s just a starting point overall. Seeding Committee/NCS Staff can still make adjustments.

I don’t anticipate the Open Division/higher ranked D1 teams to be seeded incorrectly, like they currently are. But if they are, have to imagine they’ll ditch this idea.

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I wish you were right, ChlorineGuy, but I’ve heard from several reliable sources that the MaxPreps ranking are the sole criterion for determining which four schools will participate in the Open Division Tournament. Once the four-team field has been established, the NCS seeding committee may consider other criteria to seed the four teams. It’s not too late for cooler heads to prevail but I wouldn’t count on it.

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Looks like Redwood is in the 5th spot now and Miramonte jumped up to #1?

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I wonder how any of the top 15 CA teams would fare playing the 7th, 11th or 13th nationally ranked teams from Texas.

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They have turned a joke into a mockery. They couldn’t augment their record so suddenly Miramonte’s strength of schedule is harder than Newport’s vaulting them from 5th in NCS to first.
I guess parental compaints and letters to who cares actually work.

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MSSF, unless the human beings who run MaxPreps changed or change the algorithm MaxPreps uses to calculate a school’s strength-of-schedule score, parental complaints and letters to administrators do not change a school’s score. For better or worse, computer programs are oblivious to outside pressure. Although I’m often wrong, I think it’s highly unlikely MaxPreps has changed its algorithm to accommodate the wishes of Miramonte fans.

As of October 31, here are the California high schools with the eight strongest strength-of-schedule scores as measured by the MaxPreps algorithm:

HW - 29.8
Cathedral Catholic - 29.4
JSerra - 29.1
Loyola - 28.7
SHP - 28.1
Bishop’s - 28.0
Miramonte - 27.7
Newport - 27.3

It doesn’t surprise me that Newport’s strength-of-schedule score is slightly lower than a handful of schools because, as the No. 1 seed in every tournament it has entered, it’s early round games in those tournaments were played against lower-seeded schools than the other seven schools shown in my list. Moreover, because Newport is ranked as the No. 1 school in the country, every school that plays or has played Newport (even the No. 2 school in the country) will see or has seen an increase in its strength-of-schedule score.

You mentioned Miramonte’s strength-of-schedule score. Miramonte has played 24 games. Sixteen of those games were played against schools ranked in MaxPreps top 22 list and 12 games were played against schools ranked in the top 10. By any reasonable measure, that’s a pretty tough schedule.

If Archie Williams and Redwood win their MCAL semifinal games tonight, they will meet in the MCAL finals on Saturday. The results of these games will be considered in the MaxPreps rankings the NCS seeding committee will use to seed the schools for the NCS Tournament. The MaxPreps rankings are also subject to change based on other games that will be played this week.

If it were up to me, I’d use computer-generated rankings as no more than a starting point for choosing and seeding schools for the various CIF Section Tournaments. I’ve argued elsewhere in this thread that there are five schools in the North Coast Section that can make a good argument for inclusion in the 4-school Open Division Tournament. If the team ranked No. 5 in the MaxPreps rankings prefers to be the No. 1 seed in the NCS Division 1 Tournament, I would allow them to make that choice. If the No. 5 ranked school prefers to play in the Open Division Tournament, I’d ask the No. 6 ranked school (College Park) whether it wishes to play in the Open Division Tournament. If it does, I would conduct a 6-team Open Division Tournament. If College Park prefers to play in the Division 1 Tournament, I would conduct a play-in game between the No. 4 and 5 ranked schools. The winner would play in the Open Division Tournament and the loser would be the No. 1 seed in the Division 1 Tournament.

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I’m not a big fan of computer-generated water polo rankings but I think they really fall down when they try to compare schools from states other than California with schools from California. St. Marks, a private school in Dallas, Texas, is ranked No. 7 in the country by MaxPreps. St. Marks played in one California tournament this high school season, finishing 6th in the Villa Park Classic. In this tournament, St. Marks beat Aliso Niguel 10-9, beat Lake Oswego from Oregon 10-9, lost to Santa Margarita 13-8 in the quarterfinals, beat El Dorado 12-11, and lost to Servite 13-9 in the 5th place game. With all due respect to St. Marks, I don’t think they would be ranked in the top 25 schools in California. Having said that, I think the rapid expansion of high school water polo in Texas is a positive development and won’t be surprised if the top Texas programs are competitive with good California programs by the end of this decade.

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Couldn’t agree more!

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AW 8, Tam 6. Two of AW’s goals were scored on penalty shots. College coaches should keep their eyes on Tam’s freshman goalie, Ethan Wallace.

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Redwood HS ascends six positions in the rankings following their victory over Terra High School, which is currently ranked 111. What methodology did the algorithm employ to achieve this adjustment?

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Good question, EYG. I don’t know the answer. More importantly, the coaches I speak with regularly don’t know either. That’s one reason I don’t think the NCS (or any other CIF section) should use computer-generated rankings as the sole criterion to choose or seed schools for their section tournaments. It’s possible that, if enough people complained, the NCS might change its mind. It’s probably worth trying.

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