STRANOVA, SPIN's computer rating system, Utah quarterfinal predictions for 6A, 5A and 4A football on Friday, November 6, with a sample Davis versus Herriman win-probability card showing how to read it.

First boards of the year. No history to argue with yet, just names at the top and a lot of people about to find out about them.

Cherry Creek took four of the seven spots in Colorado. Karson McKenzie is No. 1 at defensive back in Colorado at a 94 SPIN, Elite, with Alijah Landrum-Hamilton at 93 Elite at receiver and Jeriah Barnes at 93 Elite at linebacker, and Elijah S. Cromwell sitting at 91 Elite at running back. That is one school owning more than half of a state that rated 3,410 players.

Colorado filled the rest out nicely. Marquise Reese of Mountain Vista is No. 1 at quarterback in Colorado at an 89 SPIN, All-State, in a field of 189 rated. Joey Jewett of Legacy is No. 1 at tight end at a 93 SPIN, Elite, and Taushaun Lago of Mesa Ridge leads the defensive linemen at 92 Elite.

Washington ran the same play with a different jersey. Puyallup holds quarterback with Noah Smith at an 87 SPIN, All-State, receiver with Jisaiah Mitchell at 88 All-State, and linebacker with Michael Pulalasi at 83 All-Region. The biggest number in the state belongs to Teaven Jones of Mount Tahoma, No. 1 at defensive lineman in Washington at a 94 SPIN, Elite, with Tytan McNeal of Eastside Catholic right behind the headline at 91 Elite at tight end.

Idaho leaned on Coeur d'Alene, which has the top quarterback in Tannar Stern at 87 All-State and the top receiver in Gibson Comstock at 87 All-State. Dawson Riley is the one Elite in the state, No. 1 at linebacker in Idaho at a 91 SPIN, out of 337 rated there.

Montana belongs to Florence-Carlton and to one very busy man in Three Forks. Marcus Pestel is No. 1 at wide receiver in Montana at a 76 SPIN, Standout Starter, and No. 1 at defensive lineman at an 81 SPIN, All-Region, which is a long Friday followed by another long Friday.

Oregon's top rating sits at tight end, where Knox Smith of Willamette is No. 1 in the state at an 87 SPIN, All-State, out of 30 rated. South Salem claims quarterback with Kellen Bowman at 77 Standout Starter and receiver with Ben Greer at 83 All-Region.

Eight hundred and forty three players rated in Oregon, 3,410 in Colorado, and exactly one of them has to be the guy who ruins somebody's November.

Max Fielder

The first boards of 2026 are open for Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington at the end of the regular season, and every No. 1 is now on the record.

Cherry Creek Stacks Colorado, Puyallup Stacks Washington

You have heard this argument at every tailgate. Team A is better on paper, but Team B has been hot, and nobody agrees on which one matters. Everybody gets loud. Nobody gets graded.

Today SPIN is changing that for ourselves. Meet STRANOVA, SPIN's computer rating system. It reads every game result, adjusts for who each team actually played, and turns the gap between two teams into a win chance for each side. Then we publish the number before kickoff, we freeze it, and we post the final next to it afterward. Hit or miss.

STRANOVA is the product of more than two years of work and thousands of hours to get this model right. We are not showing you a weekend project.

And that is not all. Starting next week, STRANOVA runs SPIN's team rankings, period. National, state and regional boards, every one of them, built by the model with no manual edits. Once a full week of games across the country is in, we run it, and the boards update. Weekly, on a schedule, the way the best computer rankings work. This is the debut, so let's do it the honest way: here is exactly what it says about Friday, and exactly how you can grade it.

STRANOVA is a rating built from scores. It does not know who is hurt. It does not know who just changed quarterbacks. It does not watch film, and it does not care how a team looks in warmups. What it does well is the part humans do badly: it treats a 14-point win over a good team and a 14-point win over a bad team as different things, it does not reward anyone for running up the score on a weak opponent, and it does not let one bad night or one hot streak rewrite a whole season.

What it gives you is a win chance, not a pick. A 90% win chance does not mean a lock. It means that when STRANOVA says 90%, the other team wins about one time in ten. Over a 12-game slate, that adds up. More on that below.

Every game below kicks off Friday, Nov. 6. The home team is the higher seed. Each card shows both teams' records, both win chances, and a short note on what could send the game the other way.

**6A**

| Game | Kickoff | Win chance |
|---|---|---|
| American Fork (7-4) at Skyridge (9-1) | 6 p.m. | Skyridge 81%, American Fork 19% |
| Davis (8-3) at Herriman (9-2) | 4 p.m. | Herriman 57%, Davis 43% |
| Lone Peak (6-5) at Mountain Ridge (11-0) | 6 p.m. | Mountain Ridge 90%, Lone Peak 10% |
| Syracuse (6-4) at Corner Canyon (9-2) | 5 p.m. | Corner Canyon 99%, Syracuse 1% |

STRANOVA win chance card for the 6A quarterfinal, American Fork at Skyridge: Skyridge 81%, American Fork 19%.

STRANOVA win chance card for the 6A quarterfinal, Davis at Herriman: Herriman 57%, Davis 43%.

STRANOVA win chance card for the 6A quarterfinal, Lone Peak at Mountain Ridge: Mountain Ridge 90%, Lone Peak 10%.

STRANOVA win chance card for the 6A quarterfinal, Syracuse at Corner Canyon: Corner Canyon 99%, Syracuse 1%.

**5A**

| Game | Kickoff | Win chance |
|---|---|---|
| Fremont (7-4) at West (11-0) | 4 p.m. | West 96%, Fremont 4% |
| Springville (8-2) at Bountiful (8-2) | 5 p.m. | Springville 52%, Bountiful 48% |
| Pleasant Grove (7-4) at Orem (8-2) | 7 p.m. | Orem 94%, Pleasant Grove 6% |
| Woods Cross (5-6) at Alta (8-3) | 6 p.m. | Alta 90%, Woods Cross 10% |

STRANOVA win chance card for the 5A quarterfinal, Fremont at West: West 96%, Fremont 4%.

STRANOVA win chance card for the 5A quarterfinal, Springville at Bountiful: Springville 52%, Bountiful 48%.

STRANOVA win chance card for the 5A quarterfinal, Pleasant Grove at Orem: Orem 94%, Pleasant Grove 6%.

STRANOVA win chance card for the 5A quarterfinal, Woods Cross at Alta: Alta 90%, Woods Cross 10%.

**4A**

| Game | Kickoff | Win chance |
|---|---|---|
| Highland (8-2) at Ridgeline (11-0) | 6 p.m. | Ridgeline 93%, Highland 7% |
| Crimson Cliffs (8-2) at Snow Canyon (7-3) | 6 p.m. | Crimson Cliffs 83%, Snow Canyon 17% |
| Salem Hills (9-2) at Hurricane (10-1) | 6 p.m. | Hurricane 91%, Salem Hills 9% |
| Provo (7-4) at Skyline (8-3) | 5 p.m. | Skyline 76%, Provo 24% |

STRANOVA win chance card for the 4A quarterfinal, Highland at Ridgeline: Ridgeline 93%, Highland 7%.

STRANOVA win chance card for the 4A quarterfinal, Crimson Cliffs at Snow Canyon: Crimson Cliffs 83%, Snow Canyon 17%.

STRANOVA win chance card for the 4A quarterfinal, Salem Hills at Hurricane: Hurricane 91%, Salem Hills 9%.

STRANOVA win chance card for the 4A quarterfinal, Provo at Skyline: Skyline 76%, Provo 24%.

Two games stand out. Davis at Herriman is a 57 to 43 call, and on a neutral field STRANOVA calls it a coin flip. Springville at Bountiful is 52 to 48, and STRANOVA has Springville ahead on a neutral field. Home field is what narrows it. If either of those games goes your way, nobody should be surprised, including us.

Two other calls go against the host. STRANOVA likes Springville (at Bountiful) and Crimson Cliffs (at Snow Canyon). Crimson Cliffs already beat Snow Canyon 38-16 on Sept. 25.

## The forecast we are committing to in advance

Add up the 12 win chances on the favorite side and you get 10.0. That is STRANOVA's own forecast for Friday: about 10 of 12 favorites win, and about two do not. Two misses is the plan, not a failure. Eight or nine would be a bad night for the model. Eleven or twelve would be a good one. We are saying it now so nobody can say we moved the goalposts on Saturday.

Here is the part we would rather tell you than have you tell us. STRANOVA favors the home team in 10 of the 12 games. So if it goes 10 for 12, the fair reply is that anyone who just backed the higher seed might have done about as well. That is why the win count is not the best test of this thing. The better test is calibration: when STRANOVA says 90% or higher, do those teams win about nine times in ten? When it says 55%, does it look like a coin flip? One slate cannot answer that. A full playoff run can start to.

We are setting the scoring rules before any result exists, and we will not change them:

- **Favorites that won:** how many favorites won, running total each round.
- **Calibration:** how often teams at 90% or higher, 75 to 89, 60 to 74 and 50 to 59 actually win.
- **Projected scores:** the cards also show a projected score. In testing, those projections missed by about 9 points a team on average. Treat them as a rough picture of the game, not a prediction of the fourth quarter.
- **Baselines beside it:** "always go with the home team" and "always go with the higher seed," so you can see what the model adds.
- **Brier score and log loss,** for the people who will check the math.
- **Sample size:** 12 games say very little. Judge it at 100.

Every round we will post the pre-game number next to the final, with no defense and no edits. When STRANOVA misses, we will call it a miss. We will not say the model was wrong about a 57% call, because a 57% call that loses was still 43% right. If we find a data error after the freeze, we will publish a correction with the recomputed number and leave the frozen card exactly as it ran.

The running scoreboard has its own page on spin.media: https://www.spin.media/articles/the-stranova-scoreboard-every-call-graded-in-public/FB574781. It is live before the first post, and every card and every social post links back to it.

The numbers on these cards were locked on Nov. 5 at 7:51 a.m. MT using model version 0.4. The record of those numbers has this fingerprint:

`d1903400887fd7317e688233db7c8b09b7128ebab131bd9a74334eb7ad5d01fe`

Anyone can check that the file we publish matches it. If a single number changed after kickoff, the fingerprint would not match.

We also ran STRANOVA back through this season before showing it to you. Using only the games played before each week, it called the winner in 191 of 232 Utah games between Utah teams, from late August through October, or 82.3%. That is the regular season, and it is not the playoffs. Quarterfinal matchups are closer than the average game, so expect that number to come down. We would rather tell you that than hide it.

## What the model cannot see, and what to do with that

STRANOVA reads scores and schedules. It does not see injuries, lineup changes, weather, travel, or whatever happened in practice Tuesday. Each card carries a short note on something the model cannot see and one way the game could end up differently. Use the numbers as a starting point for the argument, not the end of it.

This is a rating of teams and their results. It does not rate or grade any player, and it is not a betting product. Win chances are for fans, coaches and families who want an honest read on a game. Not for wagering.

Results go up Saturday morning, pre-game number beside the final. Semifinal cards follow once the quarterfinals are done. From next week, every SPIN team ranking, national down to each state and region, comes straight from STRANOVA and refreshes each week once the week's games are in. Nobody at SPIN reorders it by hand. We will show the results each time.

So what do you think? Which of the 12 calls will STRANOVA get wrong? Tell us where we are fooling ourselves, and check back Saturday to see how the first slate scored.

Contributing Writer

Meet STRANOVA. It will tell you who has the better chance to win each game, publish the number before the game, and keep score in public.

SPIN Built a Computer Rating System. Here Are Its 12 Utah Quarterfinal Calls, Frozen Before Kickoff.

STRANOVA is SPIN's computer rating system. It turns the gap between two teams into a win chance for each side. We publish that number before kickoff, we freeze it, and we post the final next to it afterward. This page is the running record. It updates after every round, and every STRANOVA card and social post links back here.

## Round 1: Utah quarterfinals, Friday, Nov. 6

The numbers below were locked on Nov. 5 at 7:51 a.m. MT using model version 0.4. Results post Saturday morning.

| Class | Game | Pre-game win chance | Final | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6A | American Fork at Skyridge | Skyridge 81%, American Fork 19% | Pending | Pending |
| 6A | Davis at Herriman | Herriman 57%, Davis 43% | Pending | Pending |
| 6A | Lone Peak at Mountain Ridge | Mountain Ridge 90%, Lone Peak 10% | Pending | Pending |
| 6A | Syracuse at Corner Canyon | Corner Canyon 99%, Syracuse 1% | Pending | Pending |
| 5A | Fremont at West | West 96%, Fremont 4% | Pending | Pending |
| 5A | Springville at Bountiful | Springville 52%, Bountiful 48% | Pending | Pending |
| 5A | Pleasant Grove at Orem | Orem 94%, Pleasant Grove 6% | Pending | Pending |
| 5A | Woods Cross at Alta | Alta 90%, Woods Cross 10% | Pending | Pending |
| 4A | Highland at Ridgeline | Ridgeline 93%, Highland 7% | Pending | Pending |
| 4A | Crimson Cliffs at Snow Canyon | Crimson Cliffs 83%, Snow Canyon 17% | Pending | Pending |
| 4A | Salem Hills at Hurricane | Hurricane 91%, Salem Hills 9% | Pending | Pending |
| 4A | Provo at Skyline | Skyline 76%, Provo 24% | Pending | Pending |

| Measure | Where it stands |
|---|---|
| Favorites that won | 0 of 0 so far. STRANOVA's own forecast for Friday is about 10 of 12. |
| Calibration at 90% or higher | No games graded yet |
| Calibration at 75 to 89% | No games graded yet |
| Calibration at 60 to 74% | No games graded yet |
| Calibration at 50 to 59% | No games graded yet |
| Always pick the home team | No games graded yet |
| Always pick the higher seed | No games graded yet |
| Brier score and log loss | No games graded yet |

## The rules we set before any result existed

- **Favorites that won:** how many favorites won, running total each round.
- **Calibration:** how often teams at 90% or higher, 75 to 89, 60 to 74 and 50 to 59 actually win.
- **Projected scores:** the cards also show a projected score. In testing, those projections missed by about 9 points a team on average. They are a rough picture of the game, not a prediction of the fourth quarter.
- **Baselines beside it:** always going with the home team and always going with the higher seed, so you can see what the model adds.
- **Brier score and log loss,** for the people who will check the math.
- **Sample size:** 12 games say very little. Judge it at 100.

A miss is called a miss. A 57% call that loses was still 43% right, so we will not say the model was wrong about it. If we find a data error after the freeze, we publish a correction with the recomputed number and leave the frozen card exactly as it ran.

The record of the frozen Round 1 numbers has this fingerprint:

`d1903400887fd7317e688233db7c8b09b7128ebab131bd9a74334eb7ad5d01fe`

If a single number changed after kickoff, the fingerprint would not match.

STRANOVA rates teams and their results. It does not rate or grade any player, and it is not a betting product. Not for wagering.

The pre-game number goes up before kickoff. The final goes up next to it. We keep the running tally here.

The STRANOVA Scoreboard: Every Call, Graded in Public

Results card: Mission Viejo 54, San Juan Hills 44, final, Friday, October 30, 2026, with both school logos. Mission Viejo wins the Alpha League title.

Some league titles get decided in October with a shrug and a handshake. This one took ninety-eight points.

**Mission Viejo**, our No. 35 team in the country, beat San Juan Hills 54-44 on Friday night and won the Alpha League, per the Los Angeles Times and CalHiSports. Nobody on either side seemed interested in saving anything for later.

San Juan Hills spoke through the air. Quarterback **Parker Armstrong** threw four touchdown passes, according to both the Times and CalHiSports, and for long stretches San Juan Hills looked like a team that could score from anywhere on the field.

Mission Viejo answered in a different dialect. It ran.

**Carson Vandermade** ran for three touchdowns. **Jack Junker** ran for two more, per both outlets, and each of them cleared 120 yards on the ground by either paper's count.

That's the whole game in two sentences, really. One team kept throwing haymakers. The other kept leaning on the same door until it gave.

There's an old argument in this sport about whether you'd rather have the quarterback who can beat you in four throws or the line that can beat you in forty snaps. Friday night made the case for the line.

Big plays through the air kept San Juan Hills in it all night. Long drives on the ground kept Mission Viejo in front. Each strike bought a few minutes of hope, and each march down the field answered it.

There's something fitting about a league race ending this way, loud and late and a little ragged. Titles are supposed to cost something. This one cost both defenses a long night.

Mission Viejo is headed to the Division 1 playoffs, per the Times and CalHiSports. The Times had Mission Viejo at 8-1 after the win, and CalHiSports agreed.

San Juan Hills has the kind of quarterback who makes a bracket committee nervous, and an offense that just put 44 on a nationally ranked team.

The neighborhood Mission Viejo is moving into is not a quiet one. Division 1 in the Southern Section is where the heavyweights live, several of them on our national board. Somewhere in that pile, a team whose two backs ran for five touchdowns in a title game is going to make somebody uncomfortable.

That's the thing about a rushing attack in November. It doesn't need the weather or the matchup to cooperate. It just needs five linemen who'd rather move people than chase them, and a couple of backs who don't mind the contact. Mission Viejo showed up with both.

We have Mission Viejo 35th on the SPIN Power 100 and 13th on the Out West 25. A league title in a 98-point game is not the kind of result that pushes a team down. San Juan Hills isn't on either board. After Friday, it at least earned a mention in the room where those boards get built.

The rest of the league can stop counting.

Sloane Carter

No. 35 Mission Viejo beat San Juan Hills 54-44 to win the Alpha League, with three touchdowns from Carson Vandermade and two from Jack Junker, while Parker Armstrong threw four for San Juan Hills.

The week in high school football, in one email.