Albany Academy v. Scotia

Every time I read the comments on the TU blogs there is inevitably someone out there who has to comment on where Albany Academy is better than Scotia or vice versa.  No one will agree and it's pretty amazing how biased some of the comments are. 

Just to set the record straight, I have no allegiance to either team and I'm not from either city.  I don't know anyone on either team or really care either way.  I'm from a small school and never really paid much attention to the large schools before I started working on this project.  To be perfectly honest, I find the whole debate ridiculous since Albany Academy doesn't play in our Sectionals and if they chose to, it wouldn't be in the A bracket, but rather the AA bracket. 

That being said, I think it's fairly clear, if they were to play in our Sectionals, they would be the favorite to win the AA bracket.  Based on the analysis I did last week, Green Tech was slightly better than both Guilderland and Shen and a little bit farther ahead of CCHS.  That may have changed now that they played and beat another Suburban school (I haven't had the time to add it up yet), but Albany Academy beat both Guilderland and Green Tech by double digits.  While you may say that Shen also beat Guilderland by double digits (a point I can't argue), how they fared against common opponents suggests that score may be a little more than you could expect on average. 

Luckily, Guilderland and Shen should end up playing again, so we'll have yet another data point later on to confirm that.  For the time being though, I would say Albany Academy is #1 with Green Tech, Shen, Guilderland and Catholic Central about 10 points back each, give or take a basket.

So where does that leave us when comparing Albany Academy and Scotia?  It's not as easy a comparison as you would hope, but when I did the common opponent analysis CCHS was fourth in the AA bracket.  CCHS has the one and only common opponent of all the AA teams with Scotia, both having played Schenectady.  Their respective average MOV against Schenectady is 6.5 for CCHS and 7 for Scotia.  If you were looking at houses, CCHS and Scotia would be very good comps for each other (I think in more ways than one).  So, if CCHS is fourth in the AA bracket and they are roughly as good as Scotia, that would put them behind Albany Academy.  So as much as it pains me to agree with some of the Albany Academy fans, I do think they are better than Scotia and the comps spell that out.

Unfortunately for those Albany Academy fans, it's a pointless and tired argument.