Tomorrow is the first official day of basketball tryouts and it is always a challenging aspect of being a high school coach to reshape the team and develop chemistry with a new group of players, often many of whom have not played at the varsity level.   It has to be both challenging and rewarding.   Challenging to find enough talent to put a representative team on the hardcourt and rewarding when all your hard work as a coach, and all the hard work the team members put into the tryouts and pre-season practices, all come together with a resounding YES!  Of course, not all teams and not all coaches come into pre-season with the same level playing field.  For some teams, a highly oiled feed program brings talent to the high school each year.  For some private schools, a good job of recruiting results in a full-court of talent.  For other schools, transfers and new student-athletes make for successful chemistry.  For the less fortunate of ...

 Is there a tougher girls basketball conference in Missouri than the  Metro Women's Athletics Association? Incarnate Word won the conference, went undefeated, and claimed the class six MSHSAA championship.  Whitfield, the number two team in the conference was the class five state champion.  Where can you find that kind of excellence? On top of that, St. Joseph's has six state titles, Nerinx Hall has two fourth-place finishes and the rest of the league, sans Villa Duchesne, can challenge any team in Missouri. Here are my picks for the MWAA conference with statistical modeling of the winning percentage based upon returnee scoring, Value Player System ratings, point differential, and defensive points allowed.  Of course, it does not take many statistics to know that the undefeated IWA team, with everyone back, is on track for another class six title and a possible undefeated season.

 Here are my Girls St. Louis Suburban Blue basketball conference prognostications.  Hazelwood East, University City, and a surprisingly good and young STEAM Academy (McCluer South-Berkeley) team will all take a shot at the Suburban Blue conference title:

 I blogged on Suburban Yellow and Red Girls basketball and now we come to Suburban Green.  For those that do not know, Suburban conferences were set up several years back to get teams of equal basketball competence into the same conferences.  Yellow has the elite suburban teams, followed by Red, then Green, and Blue, not necessarily in that order.   The Green League has been quite competitive with Clayton, Lindbergh, Fox, Northwest Cedar Hill, Mehlville, Oakville, and Seckman. Look for some teams that have not done well in the past to continue on a rapid improvement.  Oakville should win the conference but Northwest Cedar Hill is ready for a breakout season with Lindbergh a close third.

 I enjoy running analytics on teams to identify areas of opportunity.  These analyses are far more than just the regurgitation of statistics.  If you read between the lines, you can see the opportunities.  So, while I might be gloomier on one team vs. another, it is intended to help the team discover themselves and where they do not come up to snuff. This Friday, I am covering the Suburban Red Conference girl's teams.  Technically, Pattonville, with a 6-1 record, won the division although Parkway South had the best overall record.  I am sticking my neck out and predicting a tight race by McCluer North, Parkway South, and Pattonville this year. Suburban Yellow link: Here is how I see the Red Conference:

 I have spent the last two months studying boys conferences in the St. Louis Area.  Somewhere's along the way, I wondered if the winning % prediction equation would work for girls, as well as the boys.  I had used the Eureka boys 22-year history to evaluate the boys winning % equation and decided to look at the Eureka girls team to validate the equation. Well, it did not work.  The model did not predict strong winning seasons and very weak losing seasons.  It was like kissing my sister, I just did not get any vibe out of it.  So I trashed the boy's winning % equation and spent some time developing a new equation for the girls.  And after careful evaluation and many iterations of the components (VPS, point differential, defensive points allowed and returnee scoring), I think I have something that works. So given the new equation, I set about to evaluate the toughest girls conference in St. Louis, the Yellow conference.  Webster Groves edged out Mar...

 I recently published an interview with Smithville head basketball coach Eric Bennaka, who talked about how he was trying to change the culture in the school and town and build a more successful basketball program.  I thought that Eric had some great points and it was worthwhile to share on the blog.  Check it out HERE . Since then, I saw some Tweets about the Eureka Wildcat feeder program skill nights.     The Eureka Jr Wildcat feeder program is run by Matt Benz as part of the Eureka Basketball Booster Club which helps sponsor the program.   The program is run under the careful eye of Eureka boys head coach Austin Kirby, and James Alsup, Eureka girls head coach, who are the chief architects of the program.    It is a great success story and, again, a worthwhile read.  I have watched both the girls and boys Eureka high school teams for about six years and have always been impressed with the teamwork and cohesiveness of the team...

  Updated:  10/3/2021 114:45am I was advised by @PHLathletics that Cleveland ROTC and Northwest Academy have closed and Gateway Science is an independent charter school and is not part of the PHL.  The revision is reflected below. So far, I have received great reviews from coaches, writers, and basketball experts who think the Pre-season analysis is very beneficial.  If you are a coach who has not taken statistics seriously, take note.  If you are a sportswriter, feel free to use my blogs to build your own prognostications.  Trust but verify. At times, I can be a little snotty with people, especially people that think my ratings are a joke.  That happens early in the season when teams have not played many games and the statistics are still on thin ice.  I might be proven correct over time but I just do not like snippy comments.  It is like Marty McFly in "Back to the Future" when someone calls him "Chicken".  It just set him off and it d...