Mondays are a light day at TeamBrunnhilde. No slate of Sunday games to enter into the database. Time to catch up on missing games from the previous weeks.
A new feature of the schedule pages are TeamBrunnhilde point rating differences of the teams playing. Early in the season, before this season’s points ratings are calculated and published, that difference is based on last season. Consider Dayton girls, 4th in state last year and ranked #1 for part of the season by AP. They scored two (2) points in their opener against River View. That’s falling off a cliff. Mercer Island girls, last year’s 3A champion, who regularly beat hapless teams last season finds itself on the other side of the ‘hap’ ratio, losing their last three by 41 point average. Bothell girls ranked #1 by WIAA RPI are also in dumps, although that slide may have begun before last season ended. And on the boys side, one-and-done Nathan Hale finds itself descending to customary status for that program now that Brandon Roy has set up shop at Garfield. So last year’s ratings may be misleading.
So when to publish ratings based on this season? The TeamBrunnhilde points rating needs teams to be ‘connected’ into a continuous set. Say we measure the distance between teams by games. The distance of teamA to teamA is 0. You probably would have guessed that. From teamA to teamB, which have played each other, are 1 game apart. TeamB’s opponents are 2 games away from teamA (provided that teamA has also not played them). Imagine then a tinker-toy structure. Teams are the hubs and games are the colored rods connecting them. Early in the season, there are few games per hub. At first, there are pairs of hubs connected by single rod. As more games are played more and more connections are made, and finally every hub is connected, via other hubs and games, to every other hub. But the whole structure is pretty rickety. Measuring the width of the whole set, it might be 15 games or so between some teams. And the number of path ways for that distance will be few. By the end of the season the distance between teams will be well under 10 with multiple paths of comparison.
Last Tuesday (December 5), complete connection of teams was achieved; teams that hadn’t played sufficient games to connect to anybody not included. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday added more games. So by now, after two weeks of data, one can pick up the tinker-toy construction of games and it doesn’t sag too badly. It will get better. It is likely better than applying last year’s ratings to this year’s teams.
Here are the initial rankings, broken out by gender and class. This week’s complete rankings are available for boys and girls.
Girls 4A
| 1 | Kentridge | 55.5 |
| 2 | Moses Lake | 52.5 |
| 3 | Eastlake | 49.2 |
| 4 | Lake Stevens | 46.2 |
| 5 | Bellarmine Prep | 46.0 |
| 6 | Woodinville | 43.3 |
| 7 | University | 43.1 |
| 8 | Chiawana | 41.4 |
| 9 | Lewis and Clark | 37.7 |
| 10 | Skyline | 35.5 |
Girls 3A
| 1 | Kamiakin | 53.0 |
| 2 | Garfield | 51.5 |
| 3 | Lincoln | 46.6 |
| 4 | Bethel | 46.0 |
| 5 | West Seattle | 45.1 |
| 6 | Seattle Prep | 39.0 |
| 7 | Rainier Beach | 37.4 |
| 8 | Bellevue | 35.5 |
| 9 | Prairie | 34.4 |
| 10 | Snohomish | 34.3 |
Girls 2A
| 1 | W.F. West | 49.0 |
| 2 | East Valley (Spokane) | 41.8 |
| 3 | Archbishop Murphy | 40.5 |
| 4 | Wapato | 40.2 |
| 5 | Clarkston | 31.0 |
| 6 | Black Hills | 30.0 |
| 7 | Burlington-Edison | 29.5 |
| 8 | White River | 28.2 |
| 9 | Woodland | 25.0 |
| 10 | Washougal | 24.7 |
Girls 1A
| 1 | Lynden Christian | 52.5 |
| 2 | Zillah | 52.4 |
| 3 | Cashmere | 44.8 |
| 4 | La Salle | 35.6 |
| 5 | Medical Lake | 35.0 |
| 6 | Cle Elum-Roslyn | 34.8 |
| 7 | La Center | 31.1 |
| 8 | Meridian | 26.4 |
| 9 | Connell | 24.8 |
| 10 | Seattle Christian | 23.9 |
Girls 2B
| 1 | Davenport | 37.3 |
| 2 | Northwest Christian (Colbert) | 29.7 |
| 3 | Mabton | 28.9 |
| 4 | St. George’s | 25.7 |
| 5 | Ilwaco | 25.3 |
| 6 | Wahkiakum | 20.1 |
| 7 | Lind-Ritzville/Sprague | 19.7 |
| 8 | Colfax | 18.6 |
| 9 | Napavine | 16.9 |
| 10 | White Swan | 14.4 |
Girls 1B
| 1 | Sunnyside Christian | 56.1 |
| 2 | Colton | 23.7 |
| 3 | Pomeroy | 17.8 |
| 4 | Inchelium | 14.6 |
| 5 | Garfield-Palouse | 14.4 |
| 6 | Oakesdale | 9.2 |
| 7 | Touchet | 8.9 |
| 8 | Selkirk | 7.4 |
| 9 | Wellpinit | 5.5 |
| 10 | Neah Bay | 2.0 |
Boys 4A
| 1 | Federal Way | 57.8 |
| 2 | Gonzaga Prep | 45.1 |
| 3 | Enumclaw | 44.9 |
| 4 | Richland | 41.0 |
| 5 | Bothell | 39.2 |
| 6 | Kentwood | 38.2 |
| 7 | Auburn | 37.2 |
| 8 | Curtis | 36.4 |
| 9 | Kamiak | 36.1 |
| 10 | Union | 34.6 |
Boys 3A
| 1 | Seattle Prep | 61.2 |
| 2 | Garfield | 60.2 |
| 3 | Eastside Catholic | 52.7 |
| 4 | Wilson | 52.6 |
| 5 | Rainier Beach | 51.9 |
| 6 | O’Dea | 49.5 |
| 7 | Lincoln | 48.1 |
| 8 | Franklin | 46.9 |
| 9 | Cleveland | 42.0 |
| 10 | Lakeside (Seattle) | 38.5 |
Boys 2A
| 1 | Mountlake Terrace | 50.1 |
| 2 | Anacortes | 36.4 |
| 3 | Columbia River | 35.6 |
| 4 | Foss | 33.6 |
| 5 | Selah | 31.8 |
| 6 | Sedro-Woolley | 31.4 |
| 7 | Lynden | 31.1 |
| 8 | Mark Morris | 28.4 |
| 9 | Lakewood | 27.3 |
| 10 | Renton | 27.0 |
Boys 1A
| 1 | Lynden Christian | 35.1 |
| 2 | Bellevue Christian | 21.0 |
| 3 | Montesano | 19.6 |
| 4 | King’s | 17.4 |
| 5 | Northwest School | 13.4 |
| 6 | Nooksack Valley | 11.2 |
| 7 | Freeman | 10.1 |
| 8 | Okanogan | 9.6 |
| 9 | South Whidbey | 8.9 |
| 10 | Mount Baker | 8.4 |
Boys 2B
| 1 | Winlock | 23.0 |
| 2 | Toutle Lake | 22.1 |
| 3 | Life Christian | 21.5 |
| 4 | Adna | 14.6 |
| 5 | Napavine | 13.9 |
| 6 | St. George’s | 13.7 |
| 7 | Brewster | 13.1 |
| 8 | Morton-White Pass | 7.0 |
| 9 | Toledo | 3.7 |
| 10 | Wahkiakum | -3.3 |
Boys 1B
| 1 | Sunnyside Christian | 12.9 |
| 2 | Muckleshoot | 9.6 |
| 3 | Yakama Tribal | 8.6 |
| 4 | Odessa | 3.7 |
| 5 | Cedar Park Christian (Mountlake Terrace) | 0.7 |
| 6 | Pomeroy | -1.9 |
| 7 | Naselle | -5.5 |
| 8 | Wellpinit | -6.2 |
| 9 | Tacoma Baptist | -8.3 |
| 10 | Mount Rainier Lutheran | -8.4 |
On oddity is that the overall top girls team is Sunnyside Christian, a 1B school. This is likely an early-season artifact due to the paucity of games played. Sunnyside Christian had played only White Swan and Mabton. The latter two have only played, besides Sunnyside Christian, 1A teams from the SCAC. The SCAC has #6, #26, #31 overall (out of 357 teams with point ratings). This is likely due to a very small sample size of game connecting that set of teams with the rest of the set. So if one is inferring that Sunnyside Christian would beat Kentridge, the initial #2 team, don’t bet the mortgage money on that. However, within the SCAC the estimates are likely more reliable. Note also that Central Valley girls have played only one game so is not included in the TB point rating. Several other teams also fall into that category.