Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Counting the Days

I haven't actually looked, but I think we're about a week away from the end of the regular season.  Usually at this late of a date, there aren't too many games that change our perceptions too much, nor too many that change the Forecasts a great deal.  Though I haven't entered all the games tonight into the database yet, I think there are at least two that have the chance to have done just that.

The first, and probably the more surprising was the Voorheesville girls beating Watervliet by 2.  Voorheesville certainly isn't a bad team.  They only have one loss this year that I would call a blow out, but they did lose to Vliet by 11 earlier in the year and Watervliet, aside from their loss to Holy Names, has been pretty dominant the whole season.  I actually thought they would beat Holy Names.  Now, in each of these losses, one of their five leading scorers (outside Teagan Clough they have four other scorers with nearly identical points) didn't score a point.  I don't know the cause of that, whether it was good defense, poor individual performance or injury but this loss has to raise some concerns if you're a fan of Watervliet.

It by no means says they can't win Sectionals, but at this point, I think you have to give Tamarac the nod for the #1 seed.

On the boys side there was an upset not nearly as shocking, given the recent strong performances of the team that won and the overall lack of dominance of the team that lost.  I'm referring to Rensselaer's win over Taconic Hills.  I've been watching Rensselaer all season as a darkhorse in the class C bracket and mentioned last week how Taconic Hills' MOV is less than stellar despite a pretty good record.  What this means for the future is that Mechanicville should move into the fifth spot, where they belong, and the Patroon has little chance for a Sectional title in the B bracket.  For Rensselaer, it just confirms what I've suspected all along, they tend to finish strong and are a threat for perhaps an upset or two, depending on seeding, come Sectionals.

On a different track, I wanted to point out there was discussion in the comments section on the Girls' Forecast #3 that I encourage you to read.  I make every effort to be as transparent as possible with regards to the models I use for this blog and whatever shortcomings they may have.  For the boys there are individual cases, like Shen, where they are always going to be undervalued due to their enrollment comparative to those teams they play (and how that compares to the rest of the section).  That should sort itself out once I'm able to run a model for each class (hoping next season for that, if I can get them set up in time). 

The girls forecast contains a lot less data, but has what may be a fatal flaw that I've detailed in those comments.  I don't want to waste space typing it again, but it's something I need to re-evaluate in the offseason and see if there aren't some other options I can use to make the model more useful.  I'll post the final seedings prior to the real brackets regardless, given I have the time but definitely before the first games, for those of you who are still interested.  If I can get some time this week, I want to do something a little different for the girls bracket so cross your fingers I can get a few hours to get it done.

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