The Out West rankings carry fifteen teams this week instead of ten. Six of them are new. Arizona has four, Northern California has two for the first time this season, and Hawaii is on this list at all for the first time.
Utah has one, and it came close to having none.
| # | Team | State | Rec | Natl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Santa Margarita | CA | 3-0 | 2 |
| 2 | Sierra Canyon | CA | 2-0 | 8 |
| 3 | Centennial, Corona | CA | 1-1 | 10 |
| 4 | Bishop Gorman | NV | 3-1 | 12 |
| 5 | Mater Dei | CA | 3-0 | 13 |
| 6 | St. John Bosco | CA | 2-1 | 14 |
| 7 | Hamilton | AZ | 2-0 | 20 |
| 8 | Liberty, Peoria | AZ | 2-0 | 21 |
| 9 | De La Salle | CA | 2-0 | 22 |
| 10 | Folsom | CA | 2-0 | 27 |
| 11 | Corner Canyon | UT | 3-1 | 28 |
| 12 | Orange Lutheran | CA | 2-1 | 33 |
| 13 | Basha | AZ | 1-1 | 39 |
| 14 | Centennial, Peoria | AZ | 2-0 | 47 |
| 15 | Mililani | HI | 4-0 | 50 |
Utah held on by one spot
Corner Canyon of Draper is 28th in the country, which makes it the eleventh western team on the national hundred. At ten teams this would have gone out without a Utah school on it.
That is worth sitting with. Utah had a team in the ten as recently as last week, and the only reason it still has one comes down to five extra lines.
There is one thing to know about how this is built, and it explains the whole column. Out West is not argued separately. It is the national hundred filtered to California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Hawaii and then renumbered, so a team's place here is decided by its national number and nothing else.
Corner Canyon lost 38-24 at Liberty of Peoria last Friday. Liberty is 21st. The head to head settles the national order, the national order settles this, and Utah's best team sits three places below the Arizona program that beat it.
Arizona has four of the fifteen
Hamilton of Chandler is seventh, Liberty of Peoria eighth, Basha of Chandler thirteenth, Centennial of Peoria fourteenth.
Three of those four beat a team from another state on the same Friday night. The fourth lost to one.
Hamilton shut out Arbor View of Las Vegas 44-0 and has given up six points in two games. Liberty beat Corner Canyon by fourteen at home. Centennial went into California and won 22-14 at Servite, which is the least expected of the three.
Basha is the fourth. It lost 23-17 to Orange Lutheran at Orange Coast College, which is Orange Lutheran's own field rather than neutral ground, and it has been Arizona's No. 1 since the preseason and is not anymore.
Only one of the four has lost a game all season. A state has to keep that up for a month before anybody outside it starts changing their mind.
Northern California arrives, and one game did both halves of it
De La Salle of Concord is ninth and Folsom is tenth. Neither has appeared out here this season.
De La Salle beat Cardinal Newman of Santa Rosa 42-3 and is 22nd nationally. Folsom beat Mission Viejo 35-21 and is 27th.
That second result did two things at once. It put Folsom on and it took Mission Viejo off. Mission Viejo is 54th in the country now, and it is the only team that was in the ten and is not in the fifteen.
One game, one team added, one team removed. It is rarely that tidy.
California still holds eight of the fifteen, six of them southern, but the shape of that eight has changed. Orange Lutheran of Orange is new at twelfth, on the back of the Basha win. St. John Bosco of Bellflower is sixth and has one defeat all year, to the team two places above it on this list.
Hawaii is here for the first time
Mililani is fifteenth. No Hawaii school has been ranked out here before.
The reason is the same method that put Corner Canyon at eleven. A Hawaii team reaches Out West only by entering the national hundred, and Mililani entered this week at 50, carrying a 42-0 win over Saint Louis of Honolulu from August 22.
That is the same Saint Louis side IMG Academy beat 41-0 last weekend, which is the closest thing anybody has to a straight read on where the top of Hawaii sits against the top of the country. Two teams, one opponent, two weeks apart, and one point between the margins.
The top five have lost twice all season
Santa Margarita has led this list all year and is second in the country. Sierra Canyon is 2-0, has not played since August, and has not been beaten. Mater Dei is 3-0.
Centennial of Corona is 1-1 and third, because the only team that has beaten it is the one at the top of this list, by a point, on a blocked extra point.
Bishop Gorman is fourth after winning 38-14 at Lone Peak of Highland, Utah, and it remains the only Nevada team on the national hundred.
Add those five records up and you get two defeats between them since August. One was to Santa Margarita. The other was to Columbus of Miami, which is seventh in the country. Neither is the kind of loss that tells you anything you did not already know.
The list did not get softer by adding five teams. It got honest about how many were already out here.
