This was an interesting School Top 50 to work with because we did have a couple of lower-ranked teams beating higher-ranked teams.

We also had the Gonzaga Tournament, which gave us a lot of comparisons (albeit in a short-form context).

We feel like we didn't see enough from Greenwich to support their earlier ranking which was mostly bolstered bby a close loss to Aspetuck. Staples, meanwhile, solidified their position. Note also that Staples beat Georgetown Prep by an almost identifcal score to that recorded by Gonzaga.

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We are getting more and more sold on Regis Jesuit, and Dwenger and LaSalle both move up. Bright HS in Utah was securing good results but against not-particularly-strong opposition. But beating West Valley was impressive so they come into the Top 50. Rye HS also enters the rankings. BC High's defeat of Delbarton moves them up.

And finally, let's have a look at Jesuit of Sacramento. Jesuit is, by our count, 7-7. (Their website lists them at 4-4 but we count a couple of games listed as "scrimmage" and a couple of results that are, for some reason, not shown. Regardless, it's also worth pointing out that have only four non-ranked games in that list. That's right. They've played 14 games and 10 were against ranked opposition. Yes they were 4-6 against those 10, but the results were all competitive (how many teams have scored 21 against De La Salle, or 17 against Granite Bay?). This past weekend Jesuit played Xavier and Danville on consecutive days; neither team particular is easy to deal with, and Jesuit won both convincingly. Teams can improve over the course of a season and for sure we have seen Jesuit improve.

So, yes, a team with a .500 record is now ranked in the Top 10. 

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How does 10 ranked opponents (11 if you take into account that Mother Lode was not ranked at the time but was later) compare to other top teams? Gonzaga has played nine full-length games against ranked opponents, plus four shortened games and two against high-level Canadian opponents. Jesuit's average opposition ranking of 12 is better than Gonzaga's, which is about 19. St. Ignatius, still holding onto that #1 ranking, has five ranked games plus three very strong opponents in France. The average ranking is 14. Herriman has five ranked games, average ranking 22. De La Salle has seven ranked opponents, average ranking 19. Staples has just five teams on their list, three of them shortened games, but the average is a solid 13. 

So Gonzaga, by virtue of sheer volume, might be argued to have the toughest schedule so far, although four of those games were 44 minutes. But it's fair to say that Jesuit Sacramento is right up there in terms of regularly playing tough games and not wilting. That's the point of this little rant—why Jesuit Sacramento is ranked so highly is because of their competitiveness, even in losses, in an extremely tough schedule.

(Why, then, isn't Gonzaga higher than 4th? Well Herriman remains the defending national champs and hasn't done anything to imply a significant dropoff; De La Salle has won all of their games and most by significant margins in a very tough league; St. Ignatius beat Gonzaga. One could argue that DLS and Herriman are too isolated to be be #2 and #3.)