Football Regional Friday

These games might not be great

As promised in this week's podcast with Michael Hoffer, there's a WILD story out of Rhode Island.

Mt. Hope sued the RIIL (Rhode Island's MPA) over their seeding in the playoffs, which is certainly a choice.

Surely there's more? Oh yeah.

So Mt. Hope is a program that hasn't been good for a while, but they're having a good year, finishing 6-2, but getting the 5th seed in RPI, which is what Rhode Island started using this year, and is calculated like so:

RPI = (0.60 × Modified Win Percentage) + (0.40 × Opponent Win Percentage)

If you think that looks a lot like Crabtree, you're right.

One difference is that the game you played against your opponent is not counted in the Opponent Winning Percentage, which eliminates the problem of you being undefeated and beating a team, thus lowering your opponent's winning percentage and your Crabtree. This still doesn't fix the primary flaw that it (and Crabtree) doesn't care who you beat, but I digress.

The problem starts in Mt. Hope scheduling a team from out-of-state and not telling anyone before the deadline of August 1st. They juuuust missed it when they noticed on September 23rd. The RIIL accepted the form anyway. You can imagine how annoyed they were.

Then, Mt. Hope noticed the out-of-state team wasn't given the weight they thought they should be given--they're a co-op team and Mt. Hope assumed the combined enrollment of the schools would be used. It wasn't and Mt. Hope tried to claim that they wouldn't have even scheduled that school if they had known! Mind you, it took them 2 months to even realize they hadn't submitted the paperwork, but they definitely would have scheduled a different school if only someone had told them.

Act like you've been there before, guys.

So they sued, hoping a court would delay the playoffs until they could be rightly installed as the #1 seed and not the insult that was the #5 seed.

Time being of the essence, lawyers were arguing this case as players were getting on buses to go to their first round games.

Ultimately, a judge weighed in.

Certainly, this court is sympathetic to the notion that it is a hardship to play a lower-seeded team, which could make path to a championship more challenging," he said. "However, stopping all games and forcing high school football players across the state to push their playoffs and the championship to an unknown date is certainly more burdensome than having the games continue with Mt. Hope starting at the fifth seed.

As for Mt. Hope? They lost in the first round.

Ball don't lie.

J.P. Estrella put up 8 points in 9 minutes as Tennessee blew out Montana, including this nice run.

what a sequence for @JPESTRELLAFAN pic.twitter.com/53yHBim8BR
— Tennessee Basketball (@Vol_Hoops) November 14, 2024

Brunswick alumni and 2024 State Champions Dakota Shipley and Maddy Werner found themselves in the unfamiliar position of having to guard each other in UNE's 58-44 win over USM.

Knowers of ball already have started working on their Mr and Miss Basketball shortlists. But true knowers of ball? Pure hoop heads? They're working on the pronunciation guides.

It’s almost that time of year again! Madelynn Deprey will likely be in the Miss Basketball running, so please… say it with me.

DEPP-RAY. Not Duh-pray, or Do-pree.

DEPP-RAY! pic.twitter.com/mEDmME2b4H
— Steve Carmichael (@Carmichael15) November 10, 2024

While we're at it, let's start putting pronunciation guides on the rosters! And if you're still sorting it by anything other than uniform number, for the love of god stop.

Wemby went off.

Victor Wembanyama with 50 points in 26 minutes The future is now, old man.
— Justesbaraheni (@justesbaraheni.bsky.social) 2024-11-14T03:06:14.110Z

The migration of social media from Twitter to Bluesky is moving fast.

As people have noted, once sports reporters and, crucially, the teams and leagues move over, it might just be Game Over for the Website Formerly Known as Twitter.

Also, things are getting worse by the day over there.

When Stephen King says you've gotten too dark...

Anyway, claim your handle. Check it out. Follow me and I'll add you to the Starter Pack.

This is very cool and 100% my jam.

Jeff Wall has put together this data viz showing the progression of State Championships by school over the last 100 years.

Regional Finals

First off, I'll warn you that tomorrow's games might not be good.

All of these teams have played each other this year and none of the games were close. The best of the bunch was Wells/Winthrop, won by Wells 30-13 in week 8.

However, the Model seems to think Kennebunk and Deering could be the best of the bunch. Kennebunk won the regular season matchup 41-0. That was one of the bigger surprises of the season, but the Model wasn't thrilled with the Rams needing overtime to get by Marshwood last week and was impressed with Deering blanking Massabesic. It's worth noting the playoffs are worth twice as much as regular season games. It also, by design, doesn't care that Team A beat Team B, because that's not, by itself, a reliable indicator for the rematch. We'll see!

If you're thinking of streaming, WHOU has some of the games this weekend (and the state games).

I believe I have the rest of the streams on the Scoreboard and I'll update it in the afternoon if anything changes.

As always, the Model's picks are after the jump.