Archbishop Riordan, Danville Oaks, West End, Granite Bay.

Archbishop Riordan (stripes) v Granite Bay in league play on NorCal. Dan Bandoni photo.

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It's no surprise that three teams from the toughest league in the country - the NorCal Varsity Premier - get listed among the toughest schedules. Riordan, Danville, and Granite Bay all played each other, plus Jesuit of Sacramento. Danville then went on to win the Pacific Cup, while Granite Bay won the Boys HS club national championships. So they loaded up with some impressive opponents. 

Riordan didn't play in those competitions (although most of Riordan was in the Bay Barbarians team that was in the Pacific Cup). But Archbishop Riordan did tour overseas, which also bolsters their schedule strength.

West End had some tough opponents in their regular league, and added a few extras in the Jesuit Classic, and then the Tier II of the Boys HS Nationals. So the mix is different for them. Granite Bay and Danville played mostly top-level opponents, plus a few lower-ranked. Riordan played either top-ranked opponents or overseas teams. West End's schedule was evenly-distributed between top-ranked, middle-ranked, and lower-ranked teams.

So why are these teams not in the top 10? Well as you will see, other programs played a LOT more opponents in the top 25. These four played on average six top-25 opponents. No team in the ten toughest schedules played fewer than eight top-25 teams, and most played more than six Top-10 opponents. The bar is just really high.

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