St. Louis Area Large and Small Schools Boys Basketball ratings - February 1st, 2021

 I give!  I am throwing in the towel and going with the flow.  Everyone has a different idea of what defines a large school and a small school.  I took a literal interpretation of the Post-Dispatch definition of large schools as being 1000 students or more, unless (and this is implied, not stated), you are De Smet, CBC, or Chaminade.  So, rather than redefine the existing large and small school designations, I will go with the flow.  It is a little more complicated on the girl's side so I may adjust the designations there.

What is more important is the ratings themselves.  There was a lot of chatter yesterday about my attendance at basketball games.  One individual questioned my ability to rate high school basketball teams without being physically present at games.  The problem is that he has probably never bothered to read my blog.  I do not blame him for questioning my credentials.  I provoked him by bringing up a school whose fans are constantly harassing him for not including their deserved team in his top 10.        I think they belong.... but you should never poke the bear in his cage.  And then there was a little trouble with a school's live streaming capability (or lack of) that I criticized.  

I should behave better, but at my age, as Mark Twain exclaimed, I do not have to behave anymore.

If you have not heard me say this before, I AM NOT A BASKETBALL EXPERT. 

Basketball experts usually have a long history in basketball playing the game, coaching, announcing, and training players.  They have a good eye for individuals' talents. You can find the experts at Prep Hoops Missouri and other good places. 

That is not what I do and I have never contended that I do that.  Someone pointed out that I have attended countless youth games over the past fifteen years, watching the current high school athletes, some from kindergarten to high school seniors.  Yeah, I know a few players.  I also coached a little Parkway Basketball 30 years ago, but I was a college track athlete and marathon runner.  The closest I came to basketball was pickup games with the redshirt freshman at the University of Minnesota when the coach would kick them out of the varsity practice.

 I AM A STATISTICIAN.  

The foundation of my ratings is mathematics.  I use a mathematical model that is a simplistic version of the Jeff Sagarin USA Today ratings that so many people are familiar with.  And, as I said yesterday in one of my responses, I doubt whether the statisticians at Sagarin and Company, spend any time at D-1 college basketball games and I don't need to either to rate teams.  I just need to find basketball scores for as many teams and as many games as possible to make the ratings robust.

Besides, I am a 72-year-old man with some medical issues.  Nothing that would kill me soon, but enough that I would never venture out to a gym in this wicked pandemic.  Any reasonable person would understand that you do not risk life and limb to madly run headfirst into a virus that is close to killing half a million people.  My wife and I will probably still mask and social distance, even after we get a vaccination in the next month or so.  I think we should all be wearing masks for the next year or so.

So, I have said my peace.  You probably are not even interested in this explanation.  You just want to see how your favorite team is rated, right?

So here are the St. Louis Area "Large" and "Small" school boys basketball ratings.  If you want to see the top 20 boys by class, check out my post at www.810varsity.com.  If you would like to see all 545 boys teams, I will post that later in the week after I check out 300 more game scores and add them to the model.  And NO, you will not see me at any games this week, either.

I put the school attendance by most schools for this post and then I will put it to bed.  I have extended St. Louis "Area" to about 75 miles from St. Louis and when the Illinois teams get going, I might add them in also.  There a couple of North County teams* that have estimated ratings until they play their first games this week.

Oh, and if you missed it, I blogged yesterday about the South Iron Panthers, who upset another outstanding CBC squad on Saturday.  You can read that at In case you are wondering? (gramps2021missourihoops.blogspot.com)