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ORDER GAME PHOTOS
As I sat on the couch at my parents' place in Montana between second and third helpings of Christmas Dinner leftovers last week, an interesting Twitter thread popped up as I was scrolling.
Essentially, the conversation boiled down to one fundamental question: how much stock should we take in the MaxPreps rankings of Idaho's best basketball teams?
The answer: not much. At least not yet.
There is probably enough data at this point of the season to identify which girls basketball teams are worthy of top-ranked status but, for boys basketball, there haven't been enough games yet. Which leads to some wonky rankings early on.
Bottom line: since the IHSAA uses the MaxPreps rankings to seed teams at state tournaments, those numbers will ultimately have the final say, whether you like it or not (and by the way, most people I talk to are ok with it).
But as a fun exercise, I'd like to introduce the IdahoSports.com Top 25 daily basketball rankings.
That's right, this will be a daily ranking of Idaho's Top 25 boys and girls basketball teams, regardless of classification.
"But wait," you ask. "How are these rankings determined? Surely it won't be on the whims of that (insert favorite swear word here) Brandon Baney."
Don't worry, we're calculating these based strictly on what the computers say. Specifically, the computers that tabulate the IdahoSports.com Power Rankings.
Our Power Rankings differ from those of MaxPreps, for a few different reasons. While MaxPreps uses a predictive metric that can penalize you for not defeating a team you were "expected" to beat, our rankings are based strictly on the actual results - classification of opponent, home or away, final score, etc. Also, while MaxPreps rankings cap a team's margin of victory (in order to avoid teams running up the score), our rankings don't hold any such barriers.
Is our system perfect? Of course not. Is it better than MaxPreps? You'll get a different answer depending on who you talk to. For me personally, I'm not sure I'm ready to make that claim just yet. (Editor's note: I think our system is better. - Paul Kingsbury)
But this should give you an idea of who is performing the best in Idaho basketball on any given night. We'll highlight one noteworthy game or performance involving one of our Top 25 teams every weekday morning, with a newly curated list of the Top 25. We'll do a separate post each day for boys and girls basketball, as well.
As always, these rankings thrive on our ability to have the most complete scoreboard in the state of Idaho. While we're not batting a thousand with missing scores, the number is in the single digits. Coaches and fans have been fantastic at sending us scores every night. You can continue to do so by emailing scores@idahosports.com.
Stay tuned tomorrow morning for our first edition of the IdahoSports.com Top 25 Daily Basketball Rankings!
Agree? Disagree? Join the conversation on The Boards, SportsBoards.com!
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