Boys Strength of Schedule

Before we put the 2021 season to a close, we had a few more interesting tidbits to share. While we've been busy wrapping up postseason awards for the state and national levels, we've also gone back to do a (very) basic look at each team's strength of schedule. To be able to make it a numerical view, we took a base number (1.25), multiplied it by the team's opponent size and then multiplied it by the opponent's winning percentage.

While we understand that to get a more accurate assessment would be to include the opponent's vs. opponent's winning percentage, that is just a little more work than what we have the time to do for now, so we'll stick to this model as just a simple way to see how difficult each team's schedule truly was for 2021.

As always, these schedule vary due to many uncontrollable factors. Some schools are locked into conferences (the home/home conference schedule especially limits schools when it comes to being able to play different teams), while others deal with geographic or financial/budget issues. Others simply are stuck playing schedules that were put into place without much thought by AD's. There is also the uncontrollable factor of how opponents fare in their other games. Many schools often fluctuate in success over an extended period of time, so scheduling a team that had a big year in 2019, for example, may have been a boost for the strength of schedule in 2020, but dropped significantly if that school had a drop off due to graduation or other factors.

http://www.mosoccercoach.com/21BoysStrengthofSchedule.html

(The link is also on our main web page.)

Tomorrow (12-16) we will release JUST FOR FUN a "what if?" classification and district assignment for the boys based on a promotion/relegation format. We took the previous 3-year average of Missouri Power Rankings (MPR) scores and placed the top 64 into class 4, the next into class 3, class 2, etc. just as if MSHSAA would do it based on the MPR numbers. (By the way, figuring out district assignments is no easy task - MSHSAA has a lot to deal with there, for sure!) For those who would love to see the schools placed into classifications more "equally" and based on recent success, this should be a fun look at what that would look like. More on that tomorrow...