Seeking Enlightenment: Quest For National Rankings

Sailing to the new world, climbing Mt. Everest, flying the Atlantic, landing on the moon, understanding hip-hop music as a 52 year old…all challenges once considered impossible but subsequently conquered. (Except for that hip-hop thing which I still don’t  get!)  Time and again as a society we take on the seemingly insurmountable and find a way to knock down its barrier and add it to our list of accomplishments.

Well, we may have found the one true confrontation that man simply cannot win.  The ultimate test of mind and spirit that lies beyond our intellectual, emotional and physical reach has always been right under our noses.  Yes, wider than an ocean, higher than a mountain and further than the moon…the national rankings of high school girls basketball teams may be the one endeavor that no individual or group will ever bring to its knees.

OK, while I thoroughly enjoy the sarcasm, I’ll get to the point.  Ranking high school teams on a national basis may be the single toughest job in girls’ basketball media.  Even at its best, it’s still a no win proposition.  I’m not talking about the usual arguments and debates that come with college rankings.  On the colligate level  greater exposure, the consistency and maturity of the athletes, and a greater likelihood of head to head or “in-common” competition provides a much more reliable base to work from.  Most college rankings are done by panels of coaches or journalists who have seen most, if not all, of the top teams live or on the tube.  The use of a group can also help filter out or at least water down any bias that an individual doing rankings solo has to navigate in the information collected from their sources.

Flash back to those scholastic ranks and you’ll find very few polls to start with and then most of them done by individuals rather than groups or panels.  Our own Go To Top 25 is compiled by the experienced and respected Chris Lawlor who has a network of coaches, contacts and evaluators he relies upon for insight and input.  Still, the rankings themselves are ultimately an attempt to compare teams who have more varying attributes than President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner.  You’ve got schools of different sizes from different parts of the country playing different levels of competition.  Add to that the fact that high school athletes are evolving, growing and developing quicker than they will at any other point in their career.  Throw in the freshmen coming in that are an unknown and unproven.  Calculate some upperclassmen are getting their first opportunities after sitting behind older players.  Never underestimate the contributions of those players who have suddenly “seen the light” and surprise their coaches and even themselves with stepped up performances.  Oh yeah, sadly these days you also have to add in the dynamic of transfers much more often.  Between private schools, open enrollment and the occasional legitimate change of address, additions and subtractions from rosters are becoming as common as Lindsay Lohan’s legal problems.  And they haven’t even played a game yet.  Sure you want the job?

Once they do tip things off, the folks doing the rankings have to find a way to measure a 10 and 0 team in Baltimore against a team with the same record in Dallas and then to an undefeated teams in Kansas City and another still in Los Angeles.  Of course at the same time they have to determine if they add others to the mix that might have smaller enrollments and are not playing in their state’s top classifications.  Is a team more viable for ranking because they come from a metropolitan setting, the suburbs or a rural setting?  How much stock goes into the private school versus public school debate and let’s not even get into prep schools and their place in the rankings. Good luck with those comparisons and questions.

Logic says good teams are the result of good players…sort of.  Of course you have to give weight to rosters that have nationally regarded talent as well as the signees and commitments that the college folks are giddy about.  The sheer scope and number of scholastic teams makes it an essential in sorting out those teams not seen firsthand.  At the same time that abundance of potential doesn’t always translate to on floor performance the way one might imagine.  Just ask the talent laden top 10 team who walked onto the big stage at the Nike Tournament of Champions last December and promptly dropped three of their four games by an average of 22 with their only win coming by just a single point.

This leads us to the value and necessity of competing in high profile tournaments.  Basketball is game played on the floor not on message boards, Twitter and any other electronic medium available to those with a viewpoint.  If a high school team wants to be included in the national conversation it’s imperative that they take on more than just the teams in their own backyard.  Yes, we’ve got plenty of opinionated folks that think the competition in their own geographic area is proving ground enough but history has shown time and again that no one region can legitimately (or rationally) make that claim.  There are plenty of tournaments that offer the opportunity for a high school team to prove themselves against top tier competition.  The caliber and number of national level tip off and Thanksgiving tournaments is growing and the Christmas holidays offer several venues to strut your stuff against opponents that can give you credibility in the ranking debate.  The Martin Luther King weekend provides a large number of tournaments as well and one last opportunity to make a statement before everyone heads into the local and conference elements of their schedule.  It’s important to recognize that there are many programs that have their hands tied by state association guidelines or budgetary restrictions.  Their road to the top 25 is inherently tougher and any hope to lay claim to a spot has to be accompanied by a schedule that, at the very least, includes the best teams in every classification that can legally and financially make it onto the agenda.  Oh yeah, you have to convincingly win all of those games as well if you want to be considered with the big dogs who happen to be playing each other.

Which brings us to easily the most valuable scheduling tool for those teams hopeful of a national ranking.  This week’s Nike Tournament of Champions is the single greatest opportunity for high school teams to put their money where their mouth is.  No other event has provided the opportunity for the top teams around the country to line up with each other as the TOC has over the years.  Double figure “national championships” have been claimed by TOC participants and another 133 that have taken the floor have gone on to claim state titles.  Teams have proven they belong in rankings conversations by way of competing in the Tournament of Champions and, just the same, others have been exposed as overrated or the product of wishful thinking.  Last year’s Joe Smith Division champs, St. Mary’s (Phoenix, Ariz.) pretty much laid claim to the top of any rankings by taking down Christ the King (Middle Village, N.Y.), Good Counsel (Olney, Md.), Breanna Stewart and Cicero North (Cicero, N.Y.) and perennial power Riverdale Baptist (Upper Marlboro, Md.) in the championship game.  Hard to argue with the statement that kind of success makes.

Still, the ranking of the top teams nationally on the scholastic level is nothing more than opinion and entertainment.  As such, they’re never right, nor are they ever wrong.  They’re the genesis for debate and discussion about accuracy but nothing to put stock in or take as gospel.  You may not agree that a team is or is not ranked, that they’re number 7 or number 17, or that yours or another geographic region is under or over represented.  Regardless, it’s not cause to question the integrity of those doing the rankings or the virtue of their mother.  As you look at any rankings consider the challenges of doing it on the high school level and keep perspective about what they really mean in the bigger scheme of things.   As evidenced by the heartbreaking news headlines of the past week, it’s just not that important.