insane

SoCal High School & Prep Report

High School Hoops Insanity:
And You Think We're Crazy? --(January 5, 1998)

A lot of people have been telling us that we here at SoCalHoops were a little crazy for trying to take on most of SoCal basketball, from youth, to prep and high school, to college to pro, to international. They thought we were nuts for compiling links to virtually every basketball site on the web, from the pros to international, to coaching resources, tournaments, player pages, news, and more. It is pretty insane if you ask us. But then we really aren't in a position to know, because we're suffering from extreme delusional dementia.

And there are few we know who would disagree with that assessment. But we're not alone here. There are other basketball lunatics in the world. More than you know. We've linked to a few, but we're finding more every day.

For example, more than a few people would also classify Mike Miller of West Coast Hoops as insane. He does a tremendously fine job, with some of the best personal insights and information on players teams and coaches found anywhere. He had a monumental task just trying to cover the "coastal" states of California, Oregon and Washington, but now he's really gone nuts, and added Nevada, Arizona, and portions of Western Canada to his West Coast Hoops site. We see Utah, Idaho and Hawaii on the horizon (sorry Michael, we just couldn't help it). A great writer, with fine insights, but he's insane. Yes, truly crazy.

Another example of this blend of lunacy is Greg Swaim, with his MidwestHoops. Originally his site focused on only Oklahoma and the Panhandle area of northern Texas, and was called "Oklahoma Hoops". Not content with that, he's gone whole hog and renamed his site "Midwest Hoops," and is now covering the entire Midwestern area of the U.S. from the Gulf to the northernmost regions of Michigan. Truly nuts.

But if you think that's crazy, how about a site which attempts to compile stats on virtually every high school team in the United States?

If you don't believe me, then check out Elverson Sports, at http://www.elverson.com.

These guys should be locked up.

Or maybe they should get out a bit, because they're obviously locked up already. They must be to be able to do what they do. And it's not just basketball, but baseball, football, horse racing, and basketball.

Don't believe us? Check out their High Basketball Database. Unbelievable. Truly astounding.

There you'll find scores and computerized "strength" ratings for virtually every high school in the country, including almost every high school in California. In fact, we don't know of a school that's missing. But then we don't pretend to know about every school in California, just most of them.

If you don't find your school, then don't blame us. And don't blame the Elversons either. But you might let them know about it. And, if the scores aren't all there, don't complain, just let them know about your school's scores.

This site is run by two brothers, the Elverson brothers, and it's truly a massive undertaking. Think about the enormity of the task. Just look at California alone. The complete list of schools appears to be about 300 long (no we didn't really actually count it). They've got statistics (scores and composite records) from the 1996-97 season, and they've just begun to compile the scores for the 1997-98 season (which they list as 1997). They've also got a "rating" which looks to be similar to the Sagarin ratings, although we're not sure how they weight the teams so they all come out on the same scale. But it's pretty interesting.

We do know that some of the scores are not yet complete and some school's records are only partial, and in at least one instance we've verified, a score was wrong, but hey, considering that for California alone they've already had to get an average of 10 scores this season in just the month of December for 300 teams, that's 3,000 scores (or actually 1,500 assuming that most schools played each other, but that's not true either, since a lot of out-of-state schools played in California and vice-versa, during December). Multiply that number of scores by the other 20 "regions" (states) they are covering, from Arizona to Washington, Colorado to West Virginia, and you've already got something like 30,000 to 60,000 different entries being made in just the month of December, 1997. Actually, it's probably even lower than 30,000 since in addition to each school having to play someone, the numbers of schools in other regions is a lot less than California, which appears to be the largest (but then look at New York or Indiana). So let's say it's only 10,000 to 20,000 scores. Hell, let's assume that it's only half that, at 5,000 to 10,000 scores, on the assumption that we've really over-inflated our guesstimates.

That's still an incredible, seriously bent undertaking by the Elversons. And they've told us that they're going to keep it up through January, February and March.

We applaud you. We salute you. We worship you. But we don't know how you do it. And maybe we don't want to know. Just keep it a secret. But keep doing it.

Actually we heard from one of the Elversons this weekend, and they tell us that they depend upon people like us and you to send them scores. Obviously, they also depend upon newspapers and online versions of those papers. So if you have scores, or want to write to them, go ahead. Just be nice.

The Elverson High School Basketball Database is a great tool to keep track of what teams are doing throughout the season. As we said, we don't quite yet have a handle on the "formula" that the Elversons are using to "rate" the schools, and aren't sure if it's something like the Sagarin formula, but it's still impressive.

We have only one minor, very minor criticism of the "rating" they've established for some schools, and question it's real usefulness for anything other than the novelty value, at least insofar as they currently have it set up. The reason for our concern is that the current rating combines (or appears to combine) the records from 96-97--the entire year--and the month of December for the 97-98 season into a single "rating". This of course means that the rating consists of comparing or combining "apples and oranges", because there are few teams (if any) who have exactly the same players this season as they did last season. Thus the number for the rating would not really mean much to someone who wanted to know which was the strongest team this season, because it would include a "rating" from a team which no longer exists.

Maybe the Elversons will correct this, and separate out the ratings so that last year's teams will be discrete from this year's team ratings. Maybe we're misinterpreting it. But we don't think we are.

Anyway, it's a pretty fun site, and there's obviously a lot of hard work which goes into it.

And again, we here at SoCalHoops applaud you. We salute you. We worship you.

We're not worthy.

So maybe we've really found someone nuttier than any of us here.

See for yourself. And have fun. Just bring along a note from a doctor in case anyone asks why you're there.