Meet the Contenders

I ran the model just a few minutes ago for both the boys and the girls and while I'm going to do the typical post with the brackets I thought I would wait until after today's games as there is an uncharacteristically large number of games for a Saturday.  That said, I wanted to point out what I generally consider to be those teams with a legitimate chance to win the Sectionals based on the Forecast model.  When a team wins Sectionals they are assigned a 1.000 score.  Last year, the runner up got a 0.889.  The two teams who lost in the semi-finals got a 0.778 and in the quarter-finals a 0.556.  These are calculated based on the number of teams in the section.  Essentially, the teams that make the finals got farther than 88.9% of all the teams in Section 2 and so on.

For my purposes, I tend to think a team needs to get a score from the model greater than half way between the quarter-final and semi-final score, 0.667, to be considered a contender.  In this case, that team would be closer to a semi-final team than a quarter-final team.  My theory is if you are good enough to make the semis, you have just as much claim to be a contender as anyone.  More often than not, and though I've never done the calculation (perhaps I will start now), I suspect a great majority of the Sectional winners were seeded 1-4.

So enough with the theory, who are the teams that right now have Forecast ratings greater than 0.667?  In the boys, Green Tech, Catholic Central and Guilderland in AA, Scotia, Troy and Gloversville in A, Hoosick Falls, Voorheesville, Mekeel Academy and Cohoes in B (Mechanicville is very close at 0.657), Lake George, Hoosic Valley, and Saratoga Catholic in C (Duanesburg is very close at 0.653), and Argyle, Germantown and Hartford in D.  I think the only team who isn't listed above and probably should be is Shen. 

For the girls they are Albany, and Shaker in AA (Shcn is very close at 0.657), Averill Park, Holy Names, Albany Leadership, Queensbury, and Troy in A (Glens Falls is very close at 0.662), Watervliet, Tamarac, Hudson and Greenville in B, Maple Hill, Waterford, and Lake George in C, and Fort Ann, Fort Edward and Heatly in D.  Again, there's only one team here that is missing and that is Hoosic Valley in C.  Here, I would also take off Albany Leadership as a contender. 

I'm fairly confident that all the eventual winners have been listed above and are probably in the top two or three in each class.  Regardless of how it turns out, these are your contenders.