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ORDER GAME PHOTOS
Earlier this week, I attempted to launch a new daily feature here at IdahoSports.com: the Boys and Girls Basketball Daily Top 25 rankings.
Mimicking something similar to what college basketball does, the idea was to highlight one notable game/team each weekday morning, and how the outcome of that game altered the basketball landscape.
I was too chicken to rank the teams myself, so I defaulted to the IdahoSports.com Power Rankings as a guide for the Top 25 rankings.
What I failed to understand (and what my incredibly intelligent boss Paul Kingsbury explained to me) is that the Power Rankings are separated by classification, and there's an important reason why.
Generally speaking, the smaller schools in Idaho have larger Power Ranking numbers, because of a larger number of lopsided scores. As the classifications get larger, the competition is typically tighter, which leads to overall smaller Power Ranking numbers for everyone involved.
So when I released the initial Top 25 lists this week, I caught a lot of flack. You all pretty much hated it, and I heard you loud and clear.
So I thought to myself, "People don't seem to like this feature too much. Should I just bag it?"
But in returning to the original reason why I wanted to launch this feature in the first place, I have decided to stick it out.
The main reason I want to keep going is so I can feature a different team or game each night. Outside of the final score, I find that a lot of games or team performances sometimes don't get the coverage they deserve. We can see that a game went to overtime, but what actually happened in the contest? We can see that a team is piling up wins, but why is that team playing so well? That's the context that is lacking.
So in the spirit of the Top 25 rankings, we'll march on, but with a slight adjustment.
I'll still list the Top 25 teams according to our Power Rankings formula. But instead of listing them 1 through 25, I'll instead group them by classification. We can still debate where certain teams rank compared to others in their classification, but we shouldn't have to ask why a 1AD1 school that's 13-1 is ranked ahead of an undefeated 5A team.
So stay tuned Monday, when we'll (re) launch the (hopefully new and improved) Boys and Girls Basketball Daily Top 25 rankings.
Agree? Disagree? Join the conversation on The Boards, SportsBoards.com!
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