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Mid July. 90 degrees under the shade on my deck. Pinot Noir and Puyallup loganberries.

But since March I’ve been busy. The data for this website (except for the games!) is now in a database. Ergo, version 2 of teambrunnhilde.com. Besides the games there is a lot of other data. Who played, what season, what league, what classification, who the out-of-state opponents were, what was their record, who changed names, who switched partners (for the co-op teams)? Games are almost an afterthought.

Anyway, you’ll notice that Crosspoint Academy school page now has King’s West and Bremerton Christian. Ritzville school page now has Lind-Ritzville and Lind-Ritzville/Sprague as well. No. Tekoa-Oakesdale doesn’t have Tekoa-Rosalia. But Rosalia does.  Getting the data into an actual database was the IT task for this off-season. The database isn’t accessible from teambrunnhilde.com. Maybe that will come. For now the pages are still static, but the perl scripts generate them from a database rather than from an ever increasing collection of files that only I could possibly figure out.

This was actually done in May or June. The out-of-state team records were added then. That addition allows good calculation of RPI back maybe 14 years. Data there which was obtained from OPSN, idahosports.com, and MaxPreps. Further back, I’ve plunged through scanned newspaper archives. It is a work in progress. The RPI calculations have been redone. Looking up the out-of-state school records also afforded an opportunity to regularize the school names and verify that the Washington school actually played that out-of-state team and not some name-alike school.

Last year I saw six regional games and four were absolute barn burners. This year of six games seen, one went to the final seconds, one other was close in the fourth quarter, the other four ranged from clear wins to routs. In all, girls regional games reverted to their 2016 form: only 5 games decided by 5 or fewer points (16 last year), only 13 by less than 10. So I didn’t get unlucky in choosing my games.

One other thing.  I’ve probably seen between 1000 and 1500 games over the last 23 years.  A Garfield girls free throw shooter was called for exceeding 10 seconds before taking a shot.  That’s the first time I’d ever seen that called.  Justified?  I dunno.  The referee was likely the only one in the building counting.

Check out the WIAA Regional program cards. The picture: La Center girls (check: in 1A), White Swan girls (check: in 2B), Federal Way boys (check: in 4A), Anacortes boys. What happened to them? Program cards were free at Tumwater and Auburn Mountainview. They cost $1 at Bellevue College. Is that another case of getting rich people in blue areas to subsidize the rest of the state? Of the six program cards, three have good quality pictures of the teams. The ones that don’t were the ones that cost a buck. Horribly pixilated grainy photographs. And howcum a dollar anyway? For District 1/2 2A tournament, each team got a full page, often in color, and these were free. Game prices were lower also.

Bellevue College charged $5 for a hot dog and $2 for a very small bag of popcorn. When last I was there it was $3 and $1 for a bigger bag: same as the standard prices for booster club concessions at high school sites. Maybe price gouging for concessions is just to get us warmed up for the Tacoma Dome. At least the police at Bellevue College weren’t taking on the job of confiscating food coming into the venue. Seems that Tacoma’s Finest consider the duty of safeguarding exorbitant prices charged by T-Dome vendors for sub-standard food to be their primary job. Wouldn’t want to patrol the hilltop now, would we? OK, that was during the Goodwill games, snatching sandwiches from the mouths of four year olds in 1990. Nowadays Tacoma Dome food-Nazis work for an outsourced security firm. Today protecting $9 hot dogs in Tacoma—tomorrow getting billion dollar contracts to kill Iraqis waiting in gasoline lines.

Ranking comparison update

After 96 regional games, LM-pts (aka TeamBrunnhilde points, MY ranking) has 80 correct. Next is MaxPreps 73, Composite 70, LM-wl (see below) at 69, Evans Ranking at 68, WIAA RPI and Won-Loss at 67, Captured W-L at 64. Of the 57 games which all rankers agreed, 51 were picked correctly, nearly 90%. Overall, rankers did better this year than last at regionals, were the top ranker had only 73 right and WIAA RPI had 60 right. Do bad games make for better rankings?

Linear Model using win-loss, while coming up with reasonable answers (4th place so far), is upon further review not the using an optimum regression technique for binary win-loss kind of data. I’ll have to revisit my binary data texts from 35 years ago—a task for this coming off-season.

Contentious matchups for Wednesday, judging by the disagreements among the rankers, are Taholah v Almira Coulee Hartline (1B Boys), Prairie v Wilson (3A Boys), Lewis and Clark v Sunnyside (4A Boys), Entiat v Mount Rainier Lutheran (1B Girls), Seattle Christian v Lakeside (Nine Mile Falls) (1A Girls), East Valley (Yakima) v Port Angeles (2A Girls), Black Hills v White River (2A Girls). Thirty of 48 games on Wednesday are unanimous choices.

Examining the MaxPreps data Sunday morning just after seeding was announced.  Missing games: 130.  Other errors, yes.  Between boys and girls, 245 missing games, maybe total errors 300.  That’s > 3% error rate for ~9000 games.  Are you feeling confident that the RPI calculations are correct?  Some seedings are decided by less that 0.001.  Here is the whole report.  There may be other errors and omissions not included.

On the WIAA RPI report, the out-of-state teams records are not reported.  Looking at the OSAA database, these are apparent.  It is not possible to determine what the WIAA RPI calculation is using, if anything.

During the season, I look at the MaxPreps results daily.  I noticed games were not timely reported, but figured they’d come in eventually.  The usual MaxPreps errors: games entered multiply, wrong opponents, are fairly minimal.  Missing ~3% of the games played is not.

I run a script now and then to compare the MaxPreps database with mine.  I occasionally find a game I’ve missed.  Some of the tiebreakers this season, for instance.  But even if I don’t have every game, nobody is depending on my database to make calculation to five decimal places.  Not so for the MaxPreps/WIAA database.

I ran my script today, after tournament pairings were announced.  By my count there were 115 varsity games that I’ve recorded that are not included in the MaxPreps/WIAA database.  Most of these MaxPreps has the game scheduled, just no result.  There were several double counted mistakes, some wrong team mistakes.  Do games against Australian teams count?  If they do, they should all count.  But some games are ‘non-varsity opponents’ in MaxPreps lingo.  So I guess those don’t count anyway.

Here’s the full details.  If it was my database I’d be embarrassed.  But there is no shame at MaxPreps.

RPI = 0.25 * WP + 0.50 * OWP + 0.25 * OOWP

That’s the well known WIAA RPI formula. It helps to win games. Those get weighted 25%. It helps to play good opponents. That gets weighted 50%. And if those opponents also play good opponents that helps too, weighted 25%.

Comparing Gig Harbor with Prairie (the poster child for RPI victims, at least according to the Vancouver Columbian)–

Prairie has a better win percentage: .833 (10-2) v .692 (8-4). Prairie will win all their league games. They haven’t lost a league game since 2000. The only possible loss is to Rogers (Puyallup), but that is still a likely Prairie win. Gig Harbor is favored in 7 or their 8 remaining games. Both teams are likely to see an increase in their WP, although the higher WP is, the less impact a win has on increasing WP.

Comparing the non-league opponents, Gig Harbor has a much stronger slate

Gig Harbor			Prairie
opponent	WP	TBPts	opponent	WP	TBPts
Kentlake	.769	30.2	Tumwater	.273	-5.4
Curtis	.750	25.0	Camas	.615	35.8
Kentridge	.923	46.4	Battle Ground	.250	-0.9
Snohomish	.833	33.2	Skyview	.357	18.7
Lynden Christian	1.000	45.5	Union	.769	27.0
Garfield*	.750	47.8	Whitney (CA)	.643	N/A
			S. San Fran (CA)	.727	N/A
			San Joaquin Mem (CA)	.667	N/A
			W.F. West	.909	48.3
			Rogers* (Puyallup)	.615	24.4

* not yet played

The WP record is calculated without the game involving the Gig Harbor or Prairie.

For league opponents, start with 0.500 for the average league opponent for league games not involving Prairie or Gig Harbor. Then combine with their WP for non-league games. The rest of Gig Harbor’s league is a combined 30-9 in non-league games. The rest of Prairie’s league is a combined 15-33. Gig Harbor’s non-league OWP is very high, and is likely to drop as league games are played. But the 30-9 record will cushion that drop. Prairie’s OWP will also drop but the 15-33 record will accelerate the decline.

Since league opponents have a lot of opponents in common (they’re in the same league) the overall record of a league in non-league games impacts the OOWP. Again the weakness of Greater St. Helens 3A will pull down Prairie’s OOWP. The strength of SSC will help Gig Harbor’s OOWP.

There is no better 3A league in non-league games than South Sound Conference. There is no worse 3A league for non-league games than Greater St. Helens 3A. Gig Harbor will likely remain highly ranked in RPI. Prairie is actually likely to fall as league games against the very weak GSHL 3A start to count in RPI.

So howcum Gig Harbor is #1 for RPI? They belong there.

Did Gig Harbor schedule for RPI? I think so. But a lot of other teams did too. When you’re rewarding people based on a measurement, and people know what that measurement is, you can expect people to try to optimize that measurement. I’m surprised that Prairie did a poor job of non-league scheduling. Prairie knows it is in a weak league. They’ve known that for decades. The only way they can counteract that for RPI purposes is the non-league schedule. Or maybe Prairie realizes that no matter what they do, they won’t be in the top 8 in RPI anyway.

The TeamBrunnhilde blog, which you are reading, is a moderated blog. Thus even tough the number of readers may exceed four, the profusion of comments generated by this multitude must be approved by the Blog Czar before they appear in the comments for the blog. So far only one (1) comment has made it through the gauntlet. I wonder what those other comments had to say.

Somebody, probably a Russian—at least his email domain name is Russian, wrote in Latin that he protested this. Exactly what ‘this’ is undefined. The kind of post where the poster is just checking to see if the post appears in the site. Included is a URL. Then I get a post, also from a Russian, letting me know that I am wrong and he can prove it just give him a call. That is basically all it said, the kind of reply that fits anywhere. You can write posting program to puke it out where it finds a niche. The Russian version of the Nigerian scam. A bunch of URLs follow. Most of those from Russian domains. My guess is they are all vectors for malware.

How could I resist this adoring comment from February? (also from a Russian):

Simply desire to say your article is as astonishing. The clearness in your post is just cool and i could assume you are an expert on this subject. Well with your permission let me to grab your feed to keep up to date with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please keep up the rewarding work.

Sometimes I can tell at least one reason for the comment is to trick search ranking rules. Somebody wants to get a particular URL referred from as many sites as possible. Ergo, stick the URL into the comments on blogs, all over. Russians, yeah. Others too, maybe.

Funny also is the amount of hits on the site from Russia. Now I don’t get a lot of hits anyway. And a lot of hit are just bots. But even the bots—a bunch are from Russia. And the 404 errors. Somebody is trying to hit likely unpublished directories, hoping for a hit on a hidden login or something. And a bunch of these are from Russia.

How cum? They might not be Vladimir Putin, but they’re at least a bunch of crooks.

In three weeks the high school basketball season will be well underway.

November is the month I gather schedules. For 2016-2017, there were 7668 scheduled games for 764 teams. With a new high school, but other schools taking a hiatus, likely about the same number this year.

I found that Richland boys are playing in an event: “Free Tax USA Shoot out” in Orem Utah. Is that where all the tax-dodging American Oligarchs are given firearms, put in a pen, and have a gun fight? No. It’s just a tournament sponsored by a company that offers tax filing for free. Either possibility has entertainment value.

Athletic co-operatives continue to change. After losing longtime partnerships Tekoa-Oakesdale and LaCrosse-Washtucna in recent years, Odessa-Harrington has split up. Odessa retains the league team for NE1B while Harrington appears to have the limited schedule of an independent, or even quasi-JV, team. LaCrosse has resurfaced in an enlarged co-op with St. John-Endicott. Kittitas has combined with Thorp. What about Easton? Are they this season’s Washtucna?

MaxPreps does it again.

If you really want something screwed up, you can depend on MaxPreps. MaxPreps index pages for girls basketball and boys basketball are missing a lot of teams. They had them last season. What happened? How did it get to publication? Is anybody checking?

There are schools I didn’t know had basketball teams, even schools I didn’t know existed. ‘Harbor’ high school in Aberdeen for instance. I do recall years ago seeing ‘Harbor’ in the teams with results at a state swim meet. If appeared to be several of the schools around Grays Harbor combining to offer a swim program. On MaxPreps, ‘Harbor’ has five boys games over three seasons (2010-2013). None of the games have scores. All are actually scheduled games for FRIDAY HARBOR, which is not near Aberdeen by many measures. First of all MaxPreps database is wrong for having these games given to a fictitious high school. But now, they have resurrected that school, without even a spurious result for four years, and proclaimed it to be an active basketball school in Washington state, while dropping many other schools, like Rainier Beach. Central Valley and University apparently have combined into one boys’ team and Bothell, Inglemoor, and Woodinville have combined for a girls’ team. Cascade (Leavenworth) is there but Cascade (Everett) is not. You can look at the page and can likely pick out dozens of schools you know are playing basketball this season, who MaxPreps has dropped. While MaxPreps has elevated ‘Harbor’ to actuality as a school in Aberdeen, Aberdeen high school itself has disappeared from the list.

These are the guys running the database upon which WIAA RPI calculations depend.

I’ve posted final checked data for the season.  It is a month after the championship games, but it takes a while to give the data one more look.  By my count there were 8,834 games played.  There were also a number of canceled games, of which I have retained the canceled league games in the database.  A dozen years hence one may wonder whatever happened to the girls game between Lynden and Ferndale.  Not played; canceled; don’t bother looking for it.

Although the season lasts three months (or a bit more), gathering the data takes five months.  November is for gathering the schedule data–always subject to change and more so this season.  March is spent cleaning up and verifying.  I attempt to get at least two sources for every score I post.  Even a difference of a single point means that only one of those sources can be used and that I need to find some other corroborating source, and then make a call as to which is the score I’ll post.  A little over 6% of the games have a difference in reported score between various sources.  Sometimes there are three different scores reported for a game.  Single sources for a score are used for just over 6% of the games, although that includes the 180 games played March 1-4 (about 2%) for which I just trusted WIAA to have the right information.  Both WPAN and MaxPreps have some claims for official status, but often differed on what the game score was.  Both sources agreed on outcomes, though.  Just a few outlets, notably the Seattle Times, had scores reversed.  The quality Seattle Times game data has declined substantially since that function was outsourced to SportNGIN.  Kitsap Sun has apparently dropped their attempt at a database entirely.

The differences in reported scores reveals a problem with an official rating that uses the actual score.  With RPI, it was only necessary, once one got the schedule right, to know the winner of a game.  By the end of the season, the handful of games where the score was reversed at some point during the season on MaxPreps were all corrected.  But if ratings depended on whether the score was 67-49 or 64-48, there are hundreds of such games where official reporting disagreed as to score.  In some cases, the best evidence indicated that neither official source was correct.

Of the 8,824 games with scores, I have valid quarter scores for nearly 80% of these.  I’ve updated the quarter score report page to include data through 2016-2017.  Likewise the home/away report page has been updated.

Sources for 2016-2017 results are:

Aberdeen Daily World, Longview Daily News, MaxPreps, Oakville HS, Bellingham Herald, Everett Herald, Peninsula Daily News, District 9, Spokane Spokesman-Review, Emerald City League, Seattle Times, Facebook, Twitter, idahosports.com, Manson HS, Mid-Columbia Conference, Tri-Cities Herald, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Martin Luther College, District 4, District 3, Goldendale Sentinel, Islands Sounder, Kitsap Daily News, Kitsap Sun, Tacoma News Tribune, Oregon Prep Sports Net, Oregon School Activities Association, Associated Press, Vancouver Columbian, Yakima Herald, Eugene Register-Guard, South Central Athletic Conference, WPAN: Washington Prep Athletics Network, ranchomirageholidayinvitational.com, Ellensburg Daily Record, Northeast A League, WIAA, basketballtravelers.com, Columbia Basin Herald, Douglas County Empire-Press, Gig Harbor HS, myself, Portland Oregonian, Port Townsend Leader, Renton Reporter, surfnslam.com, theholidayclassic.org, Marin Catholic HS, Walla Walla University, Cusick HS, Bear Creek HS, Cle-Elum/Roslyn HS, Davenport HS, Kettle Falls HS, Brewster HS, Methow Valley News, sportsmx.com, Nike Tournament of Champions, Bill Pierce, tourneymachine.com, socalholidayprepclassic.com, Santa Barbara TOC (sbtoc.com), West Coast Jamboree, Whidbey News Times

 

This year I mapped out six regional games featuring big school girls teams (my general interest).  Two in Bothell on Friday, and on Saturday two at Puyallup HS, and two at Rogers (Puyallup) HS.  Four games decided in the final seconds.  One twice (it went to overtime).  I can’t recall a cluster of games like that at a girls state tournament.  Three of the games were winner to Thursday/loser to Wednesday, so lacked the urgency of a loser out game but competition was still fierce.  The final of the four was the loser out between Wilson and Bethel.  The final quarter with end-to-end rushes, spectacular plays, lead changing back and forth as the team desperately tried to assure that trip to the Tacoma Dome.  Everything one hopes for in a state tournament game.  Thank you, Mercer Island, Bishop Blanchet, Gig Harbor, Kamiakin, Camas, Kentlake, Wilson, and Bethel.  A well spent weekend watching basketball.

Last year there were four games total out of 48 girls regional games that were decided by five points or less (or in overtime).  This year there were 16 in all.  A third of the games.  The average margin dropped from 16.8 to 12.9, nearly four points closer.

Ratings Comparison Update

With 96 of the 276 tournament games in the book, just over a third of the state tournament is complete.  Of those 96 games, using the WIAA RPI, 60 of 96 higher seeds won, 62.5%.  That is about the same as if one were picking winners based on win-loss percentage: 59 of 94 (two games had teams teams with the same w-l records), 62.8%.  With a better RPI that uses playoff games and available out-of-state win-loss records, RPI would have a 67.7% correct mark (65 of 96).  My TeamBrunnhilde points rating picked 73 of 96 games correctly for 76%.  There are still 180 games to go, but the WIAA RPI isn’t looking like God’s gift for seeding teams.

That is not to say the WIAA should just seed based on win-loss and forget the RPI rigmarole.  If seeding was based on won-loss there would be a lot of games scheduled against the Little Sisters of the Poor.  When one announces the basis for ranking, behavior is altered to optimize the ranking.  One can see that in how teams scheduled this year with RPI in mind compared to last year.  It is to say that one should be able to create an open ranking system (not a secret one that nobody knows what goes into it), that can more accurately assess better teams than the WIAA RPI did for 2016-2017.

MaxPreps Update

As soon as the WIAA not need accurate data from MaxPreps, MaxPreps is back to their old tricks.  Playoff game data is badly incomplete.  Look for the regional games and you’ll see many are missing from the schedule entirely.  So for all the effort expended in getting the WIAA RPI data accurate, no lasting reforms are forthcoming at MaxPreps.  It will be the same work next year just to get to the same spot.