Gramps Braggin Rights Boys Basketball Pre-season prognostications - Southwestern Conference Metro East 9/28/2021

 You ever make a wrong turn and end up somewhere you didn't want to ever be?  I did that once with a fellow engineer in Philadelphia.  He turned on to a toll bridge to Camden and I told him to do a U-turn in the middle of the bridge rather than go to the toll booth.  There wasn't any traffic at that time of night but he went to the toll booth and asked the "gentleman" if he could make a U turn behind the toll booth and not go into Camden? The guy gave us circuitous directions to get back to the entrance of the bridge and and asked for $5 for the toll.  When my buddy asked again about a U turn the A$$hole stuck his face into the car and, in his best New Jersey accent, said "Hey Listen $hit face.  If I said you could make a U turn, would I have spent all my precious time giving you directions?"  We drove around Camden for about 10 minutes and made our way back to toll booth entrance where he charged us another $5.  I said I would never go back to New Jersey ever again, although I spent a lot of time auditing food companies in Eastern Jersey the past 10 years.

Well, I made a wrong turn yesterday too.  No, I wasn't driving because I am home on a wound vac and 30 days of antibiotics for a staph infection in my big toe.  I made the mistake of responding to a bogus HS football poll on one of the local Metro sports Twitter accounts.  They do a great job with videos but they suck at polls and they are totally bogus in their podcasts.  They talk about teams where they have not even checked their record or stats.  They even admit they don't know the teams record when they analyze them.  Totally unprepared for a deep discussion on the team's statistics.  Just blathering about nothing.  But I love their videos.  I should have just stayed out of football rankings.  When I would bring up team A beat team B by 5 and team A beat team C by 21 but they rate team C much higher than team B, it drives me nuts.  They deflect all responses with "we think" answers.  No data, just opinions. I have done football ratings in the past but I don't want to take the time to rate them with my model.  I want to focus on basketball with hard statistics....not I think BS.

So now, I am taking another wrong turn, so to speak, and going over to Illinois for the Southwestern Conference.  I really did not intend on doing Illinois teams but the SW Conference is an elite conference and I will give it a good college try.  I do not know the teams or players as well so it is a little riskier.  I might end up like these other guys.  Talking without any knowledge.  But at least, I am taking a deep dive into solid team statistics and that is better than "I think".

You decide but wait until the end of the season to tell me I was full of it.  If players have transferred, you can message me and I will adjust the team analysis.

The feedback has been great on the St. Louis conferences, especially from several coaches and I will take that affirmation any day.

You can find all of the conference links HERE.

 Here are the Southwestern Conference predictions.  I think East St. Louis and Edwardsville will vie for a title.  All the teams are good but in a tough league, you can have 10 losses even with a good team:

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