Who's showing up tonight? A listing of Missouri Boys Basketball teams by Consistency

 Who's showing up tonight?  That might be a coach's biggest worry from one game to another.  Will the team respond to the coaching this week?  Will the players give their best effort?  Will the team perform as expected?

Those are some questions that are hard to answer for a group of boys between 15 and 18 years of age.  How well will they all perform in a game in which the opponent's coaching staff has been working to defend against your strengths and take opportunities with your team's weaknesses to win the game?

It happens every night somewhere in the state of Missouri.  I rate teams on their season performance vs other teams and those ratings help me predict 80% of the winners.  What about the other 20%?  Something happens to disturb my karma.  LOL  Something happens in which the end result is unexpected, an upset or a blow-out between two equally rated teams.  

It happened when Blair Oaks ripped Nixa for a 26 point win when the game should have been decided by a last-second shot.  It happened last night when Eureka effectively shut down Marquette's offense by triple-teaming Marquette's top scorer whenever he touched the ball inside.  It happens when one team doesn't show up mentally, ready to do battle when the other team is well prepared and ready to go to the mat from the opening tip.

So I took a look at what I call a Consistency rating.  How close does a team come to their season rating, game by game?  I measured that Consistency with the standard deviation of their individual game ratings.  I thought maybe the best teams would also be more consistent but I was wrong.  The Scatterplot chart of team rating vs. consistency (Std) is a shot-gun plot.  THERE IS NO RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HOW GOOD YOU ARE AND HOW CONSISTENT YOU ARE.

You can be one of the best teams in the state, but if you do not show up mentally for each game, you will get beat by lesser teams who have prepared.  Looking at my ratings and figuring you will win by 10 doesn't work if you do not treat every opponent as the best team you have played.

So, coaches, if you are looking to motivate your squad, take a look at the list and show it to your team.  Challenge them to be prepared for every game.  To show up mentally and physically ready to play, from the opening whistle to the buzzer.

Here is the list of the top 100 most consistent teams in Missouri boys basketball.  It does not mean they are consistently good.  They could be consistently bad.  But they are consistent and I can expect to wake up in the morning and not see an upset when they play another team.

Below the top 100 is an alphabetical listing of every Missouri boy's team for Consistency.  Liberty North, Battle, Blue Springs South, and Webb City are a few of the most consistent teams in the state, and Blue Springs South is something like 1-17 but they are consistent and probably the best 1-17 team in the state.

You can catch all the Missouri boys rankings HERE:

You can catch all the Missouri girls rankings HERE:

Aristotle supposedly said "We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence is not an act, but a habit"

Here is the entire list of Missouri boys basketball teams in alphabetical order...