Random HSNCT thoughts Pt. 3: 7-3 teams

Looking for the next 25 teams here.

Bellarmine (San Jose, California)

Previously knocked out of 9 win column due to absence of Tanay.

Carbondale (Carbondale, Illinois)

IMSA (Aurora, Illinois)

Loyola (Wilmette, Illinois)

The Illinois trio are teams good enough for me to consider giving eight wins, but I had to cut somewhere. Here they fall. Continue reading

Random HSNCT Thoughts Pt. 2: Picking the 8 & 9 win teams (UPDATED)

So, I think it’d be worthwhile to try and predict who will make the HSNCT playoffs. This is worthwhile because it will invariably allow for mockery of me, because I will be wrong.

It should be noted that I have no idea who’s going to be playing which teams at all in the preliminaries.

Nine win teams:

LASA A (Austin, Texas)

State College A (State College, Pennsylvania)

Might as well take the easy ones. I think these two teams have proven that they are the two favorites in the HSNCT this year (the NSC, too, but we’ll get to that next week). They are not so far removed from the rest of the field that they’ll inevitably win both tournaments, but they have established themselves as the favorites.

Bellarmine (San Jose, California)

There’s definitely a few candidates for this spot; I feel like going with the team with the team that has the best PPB on an IS set all year, and the one with a performance on ACF Regionals comparable with LASA A’s, is a reasonable bet.

Adlai Stevenson (Lincolnshire, Illinois)

Bellarmine will be shorthanded; Stevenson looks like the best bet to replace them, though there’s certainly other options, MW, Seven Lakes, Dorman, and TJ chief amongst them.

Eight win teams

Maggie Walker A (Richmond, Virginia)

Dorman A (Roebuck, South Carolina)

Seven Lakes A (Katy, Texas)

Centennial (Roswell, Georgia)

Thomas Jefferson A (Alexandria, Virginia)

Northmont A (Clayton, Ohio)

Richard Montgomery A (Rockville, Maryland)

Copley (Copley, Ohio)

Detroit Catholic Central A (Novi, Michigan)

These are all teams that have something of a realistic shot at winning the title, though I think the likelihood generally decreases from the top of the group to the bottom. After this group, I think the likelihood of a title win falls from the range of “definitely possible” and “conceivable if certain things break their way” to “surprising things certainly would have to happen.”

This would give me nine teams, while I have this group slated for 11 teams. So I have to pick two of: Olmsted Falls, Carbondale, Loyola, Dunbar, and IMSA. Looking at their stats, I think the ones that have the best performances on NAQT style sets should get the nod. This leaves me rounding out the eight win group with:

Olmsted Falls (Olmsted Falls, Ohio)

Dunbar A (Lexington, Kentucky)

Of these, I think Olmsted Falls and Dunbar have had the best performances on NAQT sets in this group. The Illinois trio of Carbondale, Loyola, and IMSA will be in my group of seven win teams when I get to it.

UPDATES: Discovered that Bellarmine will be missing one of their key players, Tanay; I’m dropping them from 9 wins to 7, probably. I also neglected Copley. Apologies.

Random HSNCT Thoughts Pt. 1

Looking at the past 5 years of the HSNCT, we can expect about 85 teams to make the playoffs.

Percentage of preliminary records over the past 5 years:

10-0: 0.1%
9-1: 1.2%
8-2: 4.8%
7-3: 11.1%
6-4: 20.6%
5-5: 24.9%
4-6: 19.9%
3-7: 11.4%
2-8: 4.8%
1-9: 1.2%
0-10: 0.1%

Following the bell curve, one can expect approximately this many teams with these records:

9-1: 3
8-2: 11
7-3: 25
6-4: 46
5-5: 55
4-6: 44
3-7: 26
2-8: 11
1-9: 3

Final Pre-Nationals Rankings

I’m not going to say much on this set of rankings. There were not many dramatic changes. I do hope to have some more info about HSNCT and NSC as time allows.

Next up will be the post-nationals rankings, posted after HSNCT and NSC.

Biggest jump: Detroit Country Day from 92 to 68.
Coming in: Livingston (100)
Going out: La Jolla B (100)

Finally, the rankings. Continue reading