jan 19 rankings

As you may know from reading our articles here at SoCalHoops, we don't really put too much stock into "rankings", but a bunch of our readers have been e-mailing us with requests to put up the newspapers rankings each week. So here are this week's Los Angeles Times and Daily News Rankings for the week of January 19 through January 25, 1998. We don't necessarily agree with this stuff, but since some of you asked, here it is. Well, at least this week, the teams appear to have the same records, which means that the Daily News is finally catching up.

But we really do have to question the Daily News' selection of Simi as the No. 1 team, and dropping Chaminade to No. 3. Let's see, what happened. Simi Valley lost to Newbury Park. So Newbury should move up, right?

And San Fernando, which was No. 3 in both polls last week, doesn't get any upset victories, it just keeps winning. So they should stay ranked No. 3, right? They probably should not move up based upon who they played and the relative strength of the opponents they played versus the other top ranked teams.

But if you read the Daily News, something definitely doesn't make sense here.

Chaminade, which was ranked No. 2 by both polls previously, got a huge, emotional and hard-fought win over Harvard Westlake last week. It was not really an "upset", but H-W is no pushover, and they were ranked the No. 4 team by both polls, and as we all know H-W still holds the title of "State Champions" in Division III (even if that was really a completely different team).

So, Chaminade which plays a highly ranked opponent, and beats them convincingly, should move up, and Simi, which lost to a highly ranked opponent, should move down right?

But if you read the Daily News, you'd find that Simi, which lost, is still No. 1. And instead of moving up, Chaminade, has actually dropped to No. 3.

Daily News Boys' Rankings January 19, 1998
No	School	Record	Last Week
1	Simi Valley	16-3	1
2	San Fernando	15-2	3
3	Chaminade	15-1	2
4	Newbury Park	15-4	5
5	Montclair Prep	16-3	7
6	La Canada	15-4	NR
7	Harvard Westlake	14-4	4
8	Cleveland	11-6	8
9	Moorpark	15-4	6
10	Grant	11-6	NR

LA Times Boys' Rankings January 19, 1998
No	School	Record	Last Week
1	Chaminade	15-1	2
2	Simi Valley	16-3	1
3	San Fernando	15-2	3
4	Newbury Park	15-4	5
5	Cleveland	11-6	6
6	La Canada	16-4	7
7	Montclair Prep	16-3	8
8	Channel Islands	13-3	10
9	Valencia	15-4	NR
10	Harvard Westlake	14-4	4

See, that's why we don't really understand or like these things. They make no sense at all. They truly are mythical rankings. They actually mean nothing.

Like last week, in the Southern Section it's still Ruben Douglas of Bell-Jeff.

He continues to lead all scorers in the region, and in 18 games, he's compiled 617 points (193, increasing the margin by 62 points over the next leading scorer from last weeks margin of 131 more than the second leading scorer Kerry Yates who's averaging 26.5, 424 points in 16 games. Ruben is now averaging 34.3 down 0.8 points per game for the week, but still just incredibly impressive. Ruben is apparently off the Time's list of assist leaders (or he's missed the cutoff); last week he was averaging 3.8 assists per game, with 61 in 16 games; even assuming that he didn't have any though in the last two games, he'd still be averaging 3.38 per game. Ruben's teammate, freshman point guard Chris Jones continues to lead the Southern Section in the Valley region with 152 assists in 18 games, averaging 8.4, down .2 per game with Ruben's drop in scoring. Defensively, Ruben is still second in steals, now only 2 behind the Southern Section region leader Luther Staine of Newbury Park, who has 80 steals in 18 games-- Ruben has 78 in 18 games, and is averaging 4.3 per game. Ruben is also averaging 8.1 rebounds per game, up from last week's 7.5 rebounds per game, and has now collected 1146 boards in 18 games.

In the City Section, guess who's leading? It's still Gilbert Arenas, last week's leader.

Gilbert has scored 544 points in 17 games, and is averaging 32.0 (down slightly from 32.9 last week) per game. He's also still second in assists, with 107 and continues to averaging 6.3 assists per game, same as last week. Oh, and what about steals? Gilbert continues to lead the City Section for the region in that category also, with a total of 75 in 17 games, averaging 4.4, up from last week's 4.3 per game. Amazingly, for a guard, Gilbert is also ranked fifth, down one from the fourth spot he has last week, in rebounding average, with 9.0. The leading rebounder in City Section for the region is Richard Harrison of Chatsworth, with 11.3 per game (180 in 16 games).

We'll continue to try to get our scanner to cooperate with the stats, which we couldn't get to work last week, but we think we've got that licked now: We'll just have to enlarge them, and then scan them in, because the newsprint is simply too small for even our best scanner at work, a $1,000 HP flatbed.