Gramps 2024 Boys Girls MO HS BB ratings

 I have been posting the most improved Missouri boys and girls basketball teams by class since I started rating teams back in 2017 and 2018.  One of those teams was on top of class two for BOTH boys and girls! Know what town that was? Chadwick, Missouri. And then you have to ask, where in the heck is Chadwick Missouri?  Well, I will tell you about Chadwick and why they have been so good these past four or five years.  Well, I learned a lot about Chadwick from Taylor Daugherty, a member of the boy's 2009 final-four team.  While Taylor was a sub on that team, he has been a die-hard fan and supporter of Chadwick for the past 14 years. First, a little bit about Chadwick from Wikipedia " Chadwick   is an   unincorporated community   in eastern   Christian County ,   Missouri , United States. [1]   It is located approximately six miles southeast of   Sparta   along   Missouri Route 125 . The community of   Oldfield   is approximately three miles to the north along Route 125. [2]   I

                                                                                                                             

 Updated January 18th, 2024 This will be the blog site where I will update the ratings of all Missouri Boy's Basketball teams by alphabetical order. Below is the listing for all teams from the 2022-2023 season.

I have taken readers through several predictive formulae that leave something to be desired.  The best predictive tool is the Pythagorean Win Percentage which is calculated by taking the points scored minus the points allowed to some magical power.  Unfortunately, you have to play the games to calculate PWP and the season is over.  You know how successful your season was already. I said in my last blog that I had a better tool and you can do this yourself.  Take your team's schedule for this coming 2023-2024 season and look at Gramp's ratings for this past season.  For each opponent, write down their rating at the end of last year.  Then subtract their rating from your rating.  If the number is positive, give yourself a win.  If the result is negative, chalk up a loss.  Once you have done this for your entire schedule, count up the W's and L's.  That will be close to your record this coming year. Now Grama says, "Don't do that!"  "Kids can change and

  The following contains all 50 boys' basketball teams used in the analysis for Gramp's prediction model. Assumptions made in this model: 1. Schools were selected across all six Missouri classes (One through Six) 2. Approximately 25 schools were selected from the final four in each class. Most of these schools had good winning records. 3. Approximately 25 schools with average or losing records were selected to make the model more robust. 4. The school's rating was the last rating of the 2021-2022 school year (which is my initial rating for 2022-2023).  All opponent ratings were also based on the 2021-2022 Gramp's final ratings. 5. Actual spread is the teams points minus the points against.  The predicted spread is the team's rating minus the opponent's final rating for 2021-2022. 6. Predicted wins were totaled from positively predicted spreads.  Losses were totaled from negative spreads.  Ties were considered wins. 7. Teams are listed in no particular order.  Yo

 I blogged about defense , scoring differential , and the definition of Pythagorean Win Percentage in my first three blogs of the 2023-2024 basketball season.  You can click on the links for each blog by clicking on the words above. Some of you may have read these discussions and said "So what!".  Some people who have a keen interest in statistics and their power of prediction devoured these blogs.  I don't guarantee that I will entertain everyone as we wait for the season to start. I will be putting out pre-season rankings once the MSHSAA sets up the class assignments for all teams, which typically only happens about mid-November.  However, I am working on improving my early rankings with predictive statistics.  Once the season starts, ratings will be based on head-to-head games and comparative game results to develop a dynamic algorithm.  My formulae are set up so that a team can improve their ranking for early season wins if the teams they beat get better and converse

 It is a mouthful, isn't it?  Pythagorean Win Percentage Sounds like something right out of Algebra class, right? And math is boring, right? No, baby.  Math is important because it helps us manage our lives and can even be used to predict our future and that is what Pythagorean Winning Percentage can do.  Predict your basketball future. Let's start by making this easier for both you and me.  Let's call the Pythagorean Winning Percentage "PWP".   PWP is a lot easier to pronounce than that math thing. So what is it anyway?  Remember we talked about defense and scoring differential in the last two blogs? Well, PWP is an estimate of your team's winning percentage based on scoring differential.   The definition of PWP is the average points scored for a team raised to some power divided by the sum of the average points scored for a team raised to the same power plus the average points scored against your team raised to the same power. Whew!  So that's a mouthf

 The first blog of 2023-2024 Missouri HS basketball was about defense.  If you don't play defense, you don't win games.  Of course, the converse of that is if you don't score baskets you don't win either. Coaches do worry about both aspects of the game but kids tend to just think offense.  Isn't that where the glory is?  Scoring points?  The point guard would like to score a bunch of points but he or she might serve the team better by giving out dimes, passing to a teammate who has a higher percentage shot.  And the complete player is putting in the same effort on both ends of the court, offensively and defensively. So defensive points allowed per game represents about half of the statistical explanation for winning percentage (refer to the last blog ) and then offense represents the other half, right? When we look at point differential (points scored minus points allowed per game), we see about 90% of a winning percentage is explained by differential.  Duh?  Makes

 It is almost time for Missouri High School basketball season and there will be a lot of posturing with pre-season polls.  I spent a couple of years working on ways to predict the record for boys' and girls' teams based on returning scoring, returning VPS (Value Play System ratings), and point differential.   The long and short of it was that the final record for a team at the end of the season was explained by other factors.  Return scoring explained about 7% of the final record, and VPS for returning players explained about 40% of the final record.  The best prediction of the final record boiled down to point differential for the actual season, unfortunately, you don't know the team's point differential until they have played the games. But what is point differential anyway?  Well, it is points scored minus points given up.  The more points you score or the fewer points you give up, the more likely you are to win games.  But it starts with Defense.  You may not always