Early Morning Ramblings and ratings links - January 6th, 2020
I was glad to see the calendar flip from December to January. At my age, every new year gets me thinking more and more about mortality, but not this year. 2020 was very forgettable and I am fully embracing 2021. Things are changing and for the good. Civility, decency, and normality appear to be right around the corner. Maybe even just two weeks away. Well, maybe not normality but civility and decency are on the upswing. Normality might be six or nine months off. While we hunker down for the pandemic, social distancing, and crossing the street to avoid neighbors while taking our walks, I think we all need hugs and when we finally can do that, we may be giving total strangers hugs, just because we can.
Last night was a strange night in many ways. First off, a number of upsets raised my eyebrows. Highly ranked De Smet, favored by 20 points, lost to a good, but not great, Whitfield team by four. In another minor surprise, a very good St. Dominic's squad beat an outstanding U City squad by one when a Lion put-back at the buzzer was waved off. My favorite local team, E-Town, lost a highly defensive showdown with Parkway West. The Wildcats shot a brutal 11% in the second quarter and scored just three points. I thought it would be a showdown of LHBA seniors, between power forward Logan Wich, and grandson Nate Parker, but it was the Longhorn's outstanding juniors that whipped up the three-point win. Grep Uptain has a nice article in the P-D about the game with some great photos by Gordon Radford. Parkway West gets boost from bench to beat Eureka | Boys Basketball | stltoday.com The Longhorns are greatly improved from last year and have a bright future. Better to have that kind of game now than in late February. Every team swoons at some time during the season and better now than in District play-downs.
Speaking of Longhorns, I saw that the Viola Longhorns of north-central Arkansas, coached by former Dora coach, Rick Luna, won their 18th game of the season. I didn't think any team would get 18 games in this pandemic season, but Rick has his team rocking. I put a link to an old NY Times article Payback Time: Why Revenge Tastes So Sweet - The New York Times (nytimes.com) about sweet revenge to a post on their 18-2 record and the first "like" I got was from, you guessed it, the Viola coach. I don't know why Dora kicked the Luna's out but revenge is as good as it gets with this story. Good luck to the Viola Longhorns!
I made some Twitter predictions yesterday afternoon and saw some surprising outcomes. I also pulled one prediction when the host team objected to posting a prediction of a 29 point loss for their team. I shouldn't be so insensitive but the last four years has poisoned my good sense of decency. But the prediction was right-on, with Fort Zumwalt North winning by (drum roll please)...... 29. I had coach Uffman, the boys coach and a math teacher at FZN, interested in my rating system before but, now, he might want to really dig into the statistics.
I also predicted some other games and came up surprised. Here they are:
Blue Springs over Ray-Pec by 9 (the Wildcats won by 27, 60-33) Ooops
Raytown South over Smithville by 5 (The Cardinals won by 5, 74-69) Ka-ching!
Truman over host North Kansas City by 5 (The Patriots beat NKC by 8, 64-56)
Willow Springs over Licking by 8 (Willow Springs "licked" Licking by a score of 85-34). I am pretty sure this was a boys' score as the girls play each other on Thursday. This was a big surprise after I took a lot of heat from Licking fans last week for under-rating them.
I didn't predict the Miller Career-Soldan spread but I thought it would be a great game and it was with MCA coming back from a deficit, starting the 4th quarter, to win by 4. Both teams are the real deal.
If you haven't taken a look at my ratings, go to 810Varsity.com (810 Varsity Missouri State Rankings) and check out my top 20 Missouri boys for all six classes. It is still a work in progress but the team ratings are pretty solid. If you cannot find your team in the top twenty, check out all of the Missouri teams at the links below:
Class six
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Class five
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Class four
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Class three
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Class two
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Class one
| https://gramps2021missourihoops.blogspot.com/2021/01/missouri-boys-class-one-basketball.html |
As always, stay safe and hope and pray for better days ahead. I sense that they are right around the corner.
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