High school sports have a lot of variables when just looking at the individual teams in each sport including hundreds of teams in each sport, wide range of school sizes, and vastly different schedules. These are just a few reasons why comparing teams in the state of Missouri can be difficult. There are often times throughout each season in every sport where two teams will play that are 3 or 4 classes different, located on opposite sides of the state, and have no common opponents. I have always been interested in determining a system to compare these teams with a ratings system.
Just like every rating system, this system is not perfect but I believe it gives a very good idea of how teams compare to each other and one of the powerful aspects of the system is that it not only allows for comparison of teams in the same classification but also gives ratings for every team in the state regardless of class. This allows for comparison of a Class 1 team to a Class 6 team even if they do not play each other throughout the season.
Another reason for creating this rating’s system is hopefully aiding the development of a new Missouri High School Playoff format in every sport as there are obvious flaws with the current system. I know every system will have it flaws, but I do believe the current system can be improved upon. The ratings allow us to see that their are certain districts in every class, every sport, every year that may contain multiple top 10 or even top 5 teams in the state while there are other districts that do not even have a top 30 team in the state. Hopefully in the future a ratings system of some sort will be used to optimize the playoffs in an attempmt to get the best teams to play each other at the end of the season to reward those teams and players.
So what goes into the ratings? I track every team’s wins, losses, points/runs/goals scored and allowed, their opponent’s wins, losses, class sizes and their opponent’s opponent’s wins, losses, class sizes. I have gone back through historical data since the year of 2012 to create a formula that factors in a team’s point scored and points allowed and then adjusts for strength of schedule (how difficult were the teams that they played this year) to create an offensive rating, defensive rating, and an overall rating for every team. Exluding volleyball where only an overall rating is calculated.
At the moment, I track every game that is played between MSHSAA Afilliated teams. For instance, if a MSHSAA affiliated team played an out-of-state team then that game would not be factored into my ratings. However, I hope to include these eventually to make the ratings even more accurate especially for those teams in our state that play half, or even more than half, of their games against out-of-state, or non MSHSAA affiliated, teams.