Boys School HS Rugby Rankings Week 8
Boys School HS Rugby Rankings Week 8
This was a very fruitful week with over 30 ranked teams playing games and right around 30 games being between ranked opponents.
There was significant buzz surrounding the St. Ignatius 54-0 win over Royal Irish, but cooler heads will say take that result with a grain of salt and don't award SIHS a national championship just yet. Hey, they don't even get to #1 given that De La Salle won almost as convincingly over Jesuit. With so much going on we will try to limit our comments to the major movers. What might come up is the question on why a team did really well and didn't move up much. We'll look at a couple of those, too.
Gregory the Great played Gonzaga close and followed that up with a shutout of #27 Kingfishers. With four Top 10 team idle GGA had an opportunity to move up 11 spots. Aquinas and Georgetown Prep also move into the Top 10. None of those spots are particularly secure. Cardinal Gibbons did lose and drops down, but the score was 17-12 to a very good Boca team so they don't get dinged too badly.
Regis Jesuit drops down but their #8 ranking was as we were waiting for other teams to get on the field. Regis lost a close game to East HS and on another day we might have dropped Regis down only two or three places but a) our policy when something like a #40 beats a #8 (which often happens early in the season) is usually to move the winner up and the loser down and they sort of meet in the middle, and b) in this case several teams in the 11-25 range had good results, meaning you're moving down a bit while several others are moving up a bit.
Hence, for now, Regis drops to #20.
East HS, which beat Regis in a close game, moves up to #16. We will need more results before things settle down in Colorado.
We brought in Long Beach Poly after waiting perhaps too long to put them in. We just didn't know where they fit considering their initial result against Torrey Pines was a 30-point loss. With a five-point loss, we can say, OK, LB Poly is for real. And since they will play Jesuit this coming weekend, we have LB Poly and Jesuit Sacramento ranked next to each other this week.
Bishop Dwenger moves up after winning two games in a small tournament. Shortened games so they move up, but not too far. Preseason results in the Lindenwood Tournament move all the teams somewhat. Penn drops down a few spots.
Strake Jesuit's 50+ loss to Woodlands puts them down from #11 to #23. As we said, timing ... several teams did something this week. Meanwhile, remember we had moved Archbishop Moeller down significantly because we just flat weren't sure they deserved the pressure of being #13. We needed to see results, and in shortened games we saw Moeller lose twice, but very close games (and better margins than those suffered by St. Xavier). So up they go, from #13 down to #45 to #27. We'll keep an eye out.
Conestoga joins the rankings after beating Berks, and Olympus joins after a very close loss to a strong SLV Rhinos. And watch out for Loyola Blakefield. They tied Gonzaga's Black team, which is their 2nd side, but a very good side, and this time around they beat #37 Cumberland Valley 45-10. What? Yes, that's a big deal, partly because Loyola Blakefield and Calvert Hall play in their Maryland Interscholastic league, and don't play a ton outside of their league. So this result gives us something to calibrate with.
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One note on teams not in the Top 50. We dropped out St. Augustine and Delbarton out of New Jersey, but they can easily come back in. Notre Dame de la Salette lost a couple of tournament games but were competitive. We could easily have dropped out another team and put La Salette in. Instead we're waiting for one more result.
Games worth a look this week:
#1 Da La Salle vs #5 Torrey Pines
#17 Long Beach Poly vs #18 Jesuit Sacramento
#15 St. Edward vs #27 Archbishop Moeller
#2 St. Ignatius vs #21 Bishop Dwenger
Recently de-ranked St. Augustine NJ vs #8 Georgetown Prep