All Metro STL ratings and When is team A better than team B?

 I know I just posted All-Metro St. Louis ratings a few days ago, but there have been some significant scores in the past few days and I thought it was important to put my ratings in perspective.  

JUST BECAUSE TEAM B BEATS TEAM A, DOES NOT MEAN THAT TEAM B WILL BE RANKED HIGHER.

Many of you will look at my ratings and say, "my team beat so-and-so" but they are not rated ahead of them!  When I re-examine those game results, I either re-adjust the ratings (because I have not captured every game in the state, at least not yet) or I let them know my ratings stand, as is.  Why?

The ratings are calculated based on the entire season unless there are some extenuating circumstances like a key player was lost to injury for a significant time period.  I might weigh the games he or she has played more than the games where they were absent.  If a team upsets another team, I need to look at how close the ratings were before the game.  Here's a few examples:

SLUH 66, Chaminade 57

Lafayette 65, Eureka 53

Carnahan 71, South Iron 69

Let's look at each one, one at a time....

SLUH was rated at 135 and Chaminade was 142 ratings prior to this game.  SLUH, behind Billiken's bound Nick Kramer, took it to the Red Devils.  The teams were closely rated and I had no problem adding multiples of this game result to the calculation (which is weighting the results) to put SLUH above Chaminade in the updated ratings below.  When teams are within 5-7 points, I don't consider it an upset with the lower-rated team wins.

Lafayette beat a short-handed Eureka team last night, with two big men out with an ankle sprain and the flu.  Lafayette was rated 124 and Eureka was rated 135.  Knowing that 15 points were off the table before the opening tip, I would have expected Lafayette to win by 5, but that does not make them a better team for the season.  Based on the overall records and spreads, Eureka is still a better team and if and when they play again, you might see a much different result.

Carnahan beat South Iron on the Panther's home court.  Impressive!  But South Iron has been rated a solid 125 all season.  Carnahan was rated a 95 prior to the game.  The Panthers should have won this game by 30 but something else was going on here.  I expected that half the Panther starters were home sick, but Coach Dinkins indicated that Carnahan played great and the Panthers just had a bad game.  Chalk it up to 15-17 year-olds having a bad night. I could never rate Carnahan above South Iron with a 30 point spread prior to the game.

That's my thought for the day and here are my updated All-Metro boys top 50 ratings: