Iowa Week 1 Power Scores: Where Do We Agree and Disagree?

The Prep Hoops Power Scores are live and can be found here. The formula takes into account a team's record, point differential, and strength of schedule. I suspect that as the year progresses, the Prep Hoops Power Scores will become more in line with the way I'm seeing things around the state, but in this initial week's scores, there is quite a bit of disagreement. Let's take a look at that here.

In Class 4A, the top team in the Prep Hoops Power Score is Bettendorf, with a 93.23 score. The Bulldogs are 1-0 on the year, posting a nice season-opening win over Linn-Mar. It was a nice win, to be sure, but that's also a Lions team that lost four starters from last year's team. We don't currently have the Bulldogs ranked, but they were one of the teams under consideration for the final spot in the top 10, currently held by Roosevelt. Five other teams in the current 4A top 10 in Power Scores aren't ranked in our newly updated top 10 - #2 Ames (92.68), #4 Muscatine (92.06), #7 Des Moines East (91.39), #9 Clinton (91.04), and #10 Ankeny (90.35). The bigger outliers here are Des Moines East, a program that has won a total of 28 games in the last nine years, and Clinton, a program with 17 wins in the last eight years. It's nice that both of these teams are off to good starts, but history is not on their side.

The class that we are the closest to the Power Scores on is Class 3A, where we both have the same #1 team - Clear Lake. Sergeant Bluff-Luton, Storm Lake, Xavier, Ballard, and Wahlert Catholic are also all ranked in both the Power Scores top 10 and our top 10. The biggest difference we have is Humboldt, ranked #8 in the Power Scores but a team that we don't currently have under consideration for our top 10. I have to imagine that the Wildcats are being buoyed a bit by a 32-point win over Manson-Northwest Webster. The schedule will get tougher for the 'Cats pretty soon, and we'll see which ranking system is closer to being accurate.

We agree again on the top-ranked team in Class 2A, with both systems liking Kuemper Catholic at the top. We also both have Treynor, Cherokee, and Underwood ranked, but I am much higher on Treynor than the Power Scores, ranking the Cardinals 3rd while the Power Scores have them 8th. The biggest outliers in Class 2A right now are Sioux Central (3rd in Power Score), Centerville (5th), and Waukon (7th). Sioux Central has blasted Estherville Lincoln Central and Newell-Fonda by a combined 70 points to open the year, and with point differential being part of the equation, it makes sense that the Rebels are so highly regarded by the Scores. Similarly, Centerville is boosted by a 54-point win over Cardinal, and Waukon's 32-point win over New Hampton has to be helping them out.

There is very little agreement between the two rankings in Class 1A, with only Notre Dame (6th in PS, 8th PHIA), Lynnville-Sully (8th PS, 10th PHIA), and MMCRU (9th PS, 9th PHIA) finding themselves in both sets of rankings. With PHIA #2 Bishop Garrigan and #3 Boyden-Hull suffering losses to bigger class teams that we have highly regarded, it's no surprise that they aren't in the PS rankings. Ultimately, I think that my eye test of those teams will win out in this argument, but maybe the PS is seeing something I'm not.

This should be a lot of fun to keep track of over the course of the year, a sort of man vs. machine. Tune back in next week when we take a look at the Week 2 Power Scores and see if we start to get a little closer to each other.