MIAA tournament seeding is biased in favor of teams in the Bay State conference

[Guest]

Norwood used to be in the BSL. They left because they could not compete.

No one is actually suggesting moving Norwood. It's an illustration of what's wrong with the MIAA rating formula. Adding Norwood would lower the ratings and the seeding of every team in the Bay State. That is a great example of the problem with the current formula. The point is to fix the formula for soccer.

Also keep in mind that the leagues generally cut across all sports, and are influenced by geography. Another reason why the discussion is not re-aligning leagues.

Although the tough schedules in the Bay State surely help prepare those teams for the tournament.

Not that the Globe rankings should be taken too seriously, but their rankings do seem to recognize that the MIAA ratings are off. Hopkinton is at #3 (#2 if only looking at D1 schools), and #7 in the MIAA D1 list. Brookline is #17 in the Globe list, #3 in the MIAA D1 list.

[Guest]

Here's the Power Rankings:
https://www.miaa.net/tournaments/tou...power-rankings

[Guest]

No one is actually suggesting moving Norwood. It's an illustration of what's wrong with the MIAA rating formula. Adding Norwood would lower the ratings and the seeding of every team in the Bay State. That is a great example of the problem with the current formula. The point is to fix the formula for soccer.

Also keep in mind that the leagues generally cut across all sports, and are influenced by geography. Another reason why the discussion is not re-aligning leagues.

Although the tough schedules in the Bay State surely help prepare those teams for the tournament.

Not that the Globe rankings should be taken too seriously, but their rankings do seem to recognize that the MIAA ratings are off. Hopkinton is at #3 (#2 if only looking at D1 schools), and #7 in the MIAA D1 list. Brookline is #17 in the Globe list, #3 in the MIAA D1 list.

How about you play 1 game against each conference team, and then play remaining games cross conference based on a formula derived from previous years standings. It’s the only real way to gauge cross league levels. Since Hopkinson is the focus of most people’s displeasure, take them for example. They crushed most of their league, but other than 1 solid cross conference win against Brookline, how can anyone be sure of their dominance. Detractors can point to a loss to Westwood and 2 ties to D2/3 teams as evidence of weakness. Introduce a cross conference schedule and eliminate the biases and questions. You could then use the same power rankings without the built in penalties. It’s not difficult.

[Guest]

I'm a pretty strong advocate of the power rankings system (it holds up very well in the playoffs), but I'm willing to agree with this thoughtful post saying that the 3 goal cap deserves another look. I have kids in Bay State, so I admit bias, but on the girls side I strongly believe that Hopkinton has been affected adversely by the cap in this particular year. I would support a modification that counted GD above 3 with some sort of declining weight. Say the 4th goal counts for 0.5, 5th for 0.25 and so on. It would preserve the intent of the rule while allowing some benefit for repeated high margins.

Maybe there's a way to make that work, but that isn't large enough to fix the problem. (The problem being that just playing a very low rated team will lower the ratings of everyone who plays them, and not having any very low rated teams gives Bay State teams a substantial edge in seeding). It would still bring down the team's average. If teams at #15 to #5 are at 3.0-4.0 ratings, it needs to go beyond 3.75 max.

Something more like
a. the GD would need to be able to go as large as the rating difference between the teams.
b. Or, just don't include that game in the ratings, if a team wins by more than the max GD but the max GD is less than the rating difference between the teams.

The two are pretty much equivalent. a makes it equal to a team's average, b excludes it from the team's average.

[Guest]

In the situation where you have no choice but to play a bad team (i.e. they're in your league) changing the formula reduces/removes the penalty for that, but it creates a new issue of incentivizing teams to schedule all of their non-league games against much weaker opponents so I would say if it went that route there should be one equation for league and one for non-league

[Guest]

Move Norwood into the Bay State. Simple.

That would make a difference in both leagues. Right there is the proof that something is way off with the MIAA system.

Also, no shade on Hopkinton, but seeing a team come together and get a win like Westwood did is one of the great things about this game.

No chance of Norwood moving up considering they were there before and soccer in that town, both genders, has been a disaster since the respective programs began.


Hopkinton belongs elsewhere enrollment-wise; the town is a large land mass and considerable housing has been built there and continues to be built.

[Guest]

I mean the Bay State is just more talented, coming from a coach outside the bay state, every bay state team we have come against just have an grittyness that DCL, Middlesex and Tri County don't have. The rankings will never be perfect, for instance should a .500 brookline be in the top 5, no. But no system is perfect, and honestly I don't get all the moaning about seeding, it's annoying when your team is lower than it should be (there are teams ranked above my team that we beat handily) but honestly all it means is you have your big test earlier. I hate to break it to you but if you get bounced by Natick in the quarters, probably would've been bounced by them in the semi's or the final. What's the alternative, getting rid of GD max and inflating GD importance will encourage coaches to never play their bench and the MIAA in favour of sportsmanship won't want an influx of 10+ goal wins. If we go back to before the power rankings, good teams have to go a road trip to beat up on some team who haven't played a real D1 team all year as their first round game. No system is perfect, just play your schedule.

[Guest]

My you Bay State parents are really full of yourselves!

Let’s look at some facts shall we?

Going back from now through 2006

Most Championships

Ludlow 4
SJS 2
Needham 2

By Region

WMass 6
S EMass 5
N EMass 4
CMass 2

BSL Champions 3

So let’s agree the previous system was biased against EMass. The current system is now biased towards EMass and even more so the BSL. Even with that said, EMass teams outside the BSL won the past two. LOL!

[Guest]

High school soccer is just an extension of town soccer.
It isn't competitive.
it isn't elite.
Nobody cares.
Move along.

[Guest]

Seriously, I'd rather talk about boys club soccer than girls high school kickball.

[Guest]

Seriously, I'd rather talk about boys club soccer than girls high school kickball.

Then go to another thread. Life’s not all about you.

[Guest]

High school soccer is just an extension of town soccer.
It isn't competitive.
it isn't elite.
Nobody cares.
Move along.

Agreed. All the best players aren’t allowed to play HS any more. Just rec league soccer. Poor tournament. Alex is talking to himself on the other thread. No interest.

[Guest]

Here's the thing: If you arbitrarily limit the goal differential, but don't arbitrarily limit how low an opponent's rating can be in calculating the game result - the rating result is not going to be anywhere near an accurate reflection of the performance of the two teams.

That has a big and different impact in different leagues.

So if there's some argument in favor of a max GD of 3, then that is also an argument in favor of a minimum opponent rating when a team wins by more than the max GD. Even that would still probably favor Bay State, but not as much.

[Guest]

The old system was horrendous. It was getting annoying watching a 20 seed bsl team wipe out the overmatched top seed every year.

To the person who brought up titles, that’s not really the point. There are a fair number of teams outside the bsl that can win the title. But if you look at the results on balance the bsl almost always out performs everyone else.

[Guest]

Agreed. All the best players aren’t allowed to play HS any more. Just rec league soccer. Poor tournament. Alex is talking to himself on the other thread. No interest.

what are you talking about, now that DA is dead there's no rules preventing the girls from playing for their local HS team