Boys School HS Rugby Rankings Final for 2022
Boys School HS Rugby Rankings Final for 2022
We do have several changes in the final Boys HS School-team Top 50, all based on results.
BC High did a good job in winning their semifinal and move into the Top 50. Also joining the Top 50 are Medina (winners of the school D1 bracket in Ohio), Christian Brothers (made the final in New Jersey), and, as mentioned, BC High. Rye's close loss to Xavier bumps them up five spots and Trumbull's similarly solid showing in their playoffs move them up five spots.
Moeller played pretty well in their Ohio state final loss to #1 St. Ignatius (who didn't let off even after winning nationals), and we nudge them up a spot. Bishop Dwenger, which had enjoyed some good results, had sort of the opposite trajectory of Archbishop Moeller—while Moeller improved, Dwenger struggled late ... both teams had injuries, but Dwenger's were later in the season.
And then the big shift is among Staples, Xavier, and Greenwich. Earlier we explained that we basically had to throw out a result among those three. Xavier beat Greenwich at the national tournament; Greenwich beat Staples at Nationals as well. But earlier in the season Staples had beaten Xavier by a significant margin. Making things a bit more complicated was that Staples and Greenwich had played before Nationals, with Staples winning, and a week later Greenwich had beaten Xavier by a point.
So going into the final games of the spring we had, among these three teams:
Staples 2-1 PF78 PA49
Greenwich 2-2 PF86 PA86
Xavier 1-2 PF49 PA78
But what we decided to do was throw out that earlier Staples win over Xavier because Xavier had lost to Greenwich by a point, and then beaten Greenwich by seven. Greenwich, meanwhile, had beaten Staples. And so we ranked them: Xavier-Greenwich-Staples.
Then Staples played Greenwich a third time, and won 36-7. That's a pretty emphatic rubber match (aggregate score: Staples 76 Greenwich 53).
Xavier won their New York playoff, and now we felt we should bring that earlier Staples vs Xavier result back into play. That score was 38-3 on March 12, and was eerily similar to the Staples June 10 win over Greenwich. We've established that Xavier and Greenwich are about the same, so this made sense to us.
So despite relatively disappointing results at the National Championships, Staples, overall, is the stronger of the three.
Now Xavier vs Greenwich. We can look at their results against each other and common opponents (if someone plays a common opponent more than once, we average it down to 1 game):
Xavier W1 L4 PF73 PA177
Greenwich W1.3 L3.7 PF90 PA121
Looking at it that way, and not handing significantly more weight to the National Championship (something we often do, and did with regard to Jesuit of Sacramento), it looks to us that, overall, Greenwich was a little more consistently better. Even if we take into account that the Greenwich 33-5 loss to Gonzaga was in a shortened game, and was probably closer to 50-8 in a 70-minute game, Greenwich's numbers would still look slightly better.
So we made a change there, putting Staples at #7, Greenwich at #8, and Xavier at #9. If we had a round-robin among these three tomorrow, they would probably all go 1-1.
Thanks everyone for the season; it was fun.