Twenty five of the fifty teams on our five regional boards have not lost a game. Eleven of those twenty five are in their region's top three. The other fourteen are ranked behind at least one team that has already been beaten.
That is not sloppiness and it is not an accident. It is the whole argument these boards make. A record tells you how many times a team walked off the field happy. It does not tell you who was standing across from them.
Utah: the best team in the state is 4-1 and four unbeaten teams are behind it
| # | Team | Record | Move |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Corner Canyon | 4-1 | hold |
| 2 | Mountain Ridge | 5-0 | hold |
| 3 | Skyridge | 4-1 | hold |
| 4 | Orem | 3-2 | up 2 |
| 5 | West (Salt Lake City) | 5-0 | down 1 |
| 6 | American Fork | 4-1 | down 1 |
| 7 | Herriman | 5-0 | hold |
| 8 | Lone Peak | 3-2 | hold |
| 9 | Ridgeline | 5-0 | hold |
| 10 | Davis (Kaysville) | 3-2 | NEW |
Mountain Ridge, West, Herriman and Ridgeline are all 5-0. They are ranked second, fifth, seventh and ninth, and the team above all four of them has a loss.
The case for Corner Canyon at first is the schedule. It beat Davis 51-14 in August, and Davis is now on this board. Mountain Ridge has the better record and it also owns a head to head, 41-26 over Skyridge, which is why it is second and Skyridge is third rather than the other way around.
Orem moves up two at 3-2, and that is the placement worth explaining. Its losses are not soft, and Skyridge beat it 21-14, a one score game against the team now ranked third. A team that loses close to the top of its own state is a different team than its record suggests.
Davis comes on at tenth at 3-2. The obvious objection is that Hurricane is unbeaten and Davis is not. The answer is that both of Davis's losses are to Corner Canyon and Mountain Ridge, this board's first and second, by 51-14 and 42-7, and Hurricane has not played a ranked team. Three straight wins since.
Arizona: three unbeaten teams fell a place, and two head to heads did not survive
| # | Team | Record | Move |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hamilton | 3-0 | hold |
| 2 | Liberty (Peoria) | 3-0 | hold |
| 3 | Centennial (Peoria) | 3-0 | up 1 |
| 4 | Chandler | 2-1 | up 1 |
| 5 | Mountain View (Mesa) | 2-1 | up 1 |
| 6 | Pinnacle | 2-1 | up 4 |
| 7 | Basha | 1-2 | down 4 |
| 8 | Desert Edge | 3-0 | down 1 |
| 9 | Desert Mountain | 3-0 | down 1 |
| 10 | Williams Field | 3-0 | down 1 |
Desert Edge, Desert Mountain and Williams Field are all 3-0 and all three moved down. Nobody beat them. Teams with losses moved past them, which is the same sentence written from the other side.
The part that will draw mail is Chandler fourth and Basha seventh, because Basha beat Chandler 37-26 in August. Our rule is that a head to head binds unless its winner has since lost by more than one score. Basha then lost 40-7 to Pinnacle. That is four scores. The claim yields.
It does not force a reversal, it just stops constraining the order, and the rest of the evidence puts Chandler higher. Basha has now scored 37, 17 and 7 in three games against progressively better defenses.
Pinnacle moves up four on that 40-7 win, and it stops at sixth behind Mountain View of Mesa, which beat it 26-15 on September 4.
That head to head does not bind either. Mountain View then lost 27-3 to Centennial of Peoria on September 11, and 24 points is more than one score, so by the same rule the claim yields. Yielding is not a reversal. It stops holding the order in place and leaves the decision to everything else, and everything else still has Mountain View fifth and Pinnacle sixth.
Centennial of Peoria reached 3-0 with that win and moved up one.
Nevada: a 3-1 team is first and a 5-0 team is second
| # | Team | Record | Move |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bishop Gorman | 3-1 | hold |
| 2 | Churchill County | 5-0 | hold |
| 3 | Palo Verde | 4-0 | hold |
| 4 | Pinecrest Academy (Sloan Canyon) | 3-0 | hold |
| 5 | Mater Academy (East Las Vegas) | 3-0 | hold |
| 6 | Foothill (Henderson) | 3-1 | hold |
| 7 | Damonte Ranch | 4-0 | hold |
| 8 | Liberty (Henderson) | 2-2 | up 1 |
| 9 | Coronado | 3-1 | up 1 |
| 10 | Faith Lutheran | 2-3 | down 2 |
Seven of these ten held, and three of the top five did not play at all. Bishop Gorman, Pinecrest Academy and Mater Academy were all idle. That is a fact about the schedule rather than about the teams.
Bishop Gorman stays first at 3-1 because of who it has played and who it has beaten. Churchill County at 5-0 is the best record in the state and it is second, and nothing that has happened on a field this season argues it should be first.
Liberty of Henderson is eighth at 2-2 and both of its losses are to out of state opponents. It beat Desert Oasis 42-0 on September 10. A 2-2 record built entirely against a national schedule is not the same 2-2 a reader assumes.
Coronado beat Desert Pines 46-10. Palo Verde handled Durango 38-18 to reach 4-0. Damonte Ranch won the Cross Saw 28-7 over Galena. Faith Lutheran falls two after losing to a Utah opponent and sits at 2-3.
NorCal: the newcomer is 1-2
| # | Team | Record | Move |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | De La Salle | 3-0 | hold |
| 2 | Folsom | 3-0 | hold |
| 3 | Serra (San Mateo) | 2-1 | hold |
| 4 | Central East (Fresno) | 3-0 | hold |
| 5 | Pittsburg | 2-1 | hold |
| 6 | Oak Ridge | 2-1 | hold |
| 7 | Central Catholic (Modesto) | 2-1 | up 1 |
| 8 | Cardinal Newman (Santa Rosa) | 1-2 | NEW |
| 9 | Clovis | 3-1 | hold |
| 10 | Del Oro (Loomis) | 3-0 | hold |
Archbishop Riordan was seventh and is off. It was shut out 31-0 at Cardinal Newman of Santa Rosa, a team that had not won a game. Cardinal Newman comes on at eighth at 1-2.
We are not going to pretend both of its losses were respectable. It lost 23-17 in overtime at Folsom, which is this board's second team, and then it lost 42-3 at De La Salle, which is not close by any measure. The case is the overtime game and the shutout of a state ranked opponent eleven days later, not a claim that the season has been uniformly good.
Del Oro sits tenth at 3-0 and owns a 19-17 win at St. Francis of Mountain View, which is the best road result anybody in the bottom half of this board has. Anyone who wants Del Oro and Cardinal Newman the other way around has a real argument. We took the shutout of a ranked team over the one point win at a ranked team, and that is a judgment call rather than a rule.
Central East beat Turlock 56-7. Oak Ridge beat Crean Lutheran 28-21. Clovis won 24-7 at Los Gatos.
SoCal: three unbeaten teams are ranked eighth, ninth and tenth
| # | Team | Record | Move |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Santa Margarita | 4-0 | hold |
| 2 | Sierra Canyon | 3-0 | hold |
| 3 | Mater Dei | 4-0 | up 1 |
| 4 | St. John Bosco | 3-1 | up 1 |
| 5 | Centennial (Corona) | 1-2 | down 2 |
| 6 | Orange Lutheran | 3-1 | hold |
| 7 | Mission Viejo | 3-1 | hold |
| 8 | San Clemente | 4-0 | hold |
| 9 | Carlsbad | 4-0 | hold |
| 10 | Bishop Amat | 4-0 | hold |
Six teams on this board are unbeaten. Three of them are in the bottom three places.
That is the clearest statement any of these five boards makes. San Clemente, Carlsbad and Bishop Amat have not lost, and they are ranked behind four teams that have, because those four have played and beaten opposition that these three have not seen yet.
Mater Dei and Centennial swapped on one point. Mater Dei won 10-9 in Santa Ana. When two ranked teams play each other the winner finishes above the loser, and the rule does not scale with margin.
Centennial at 1-2 is fifth, and the record is misleading in a specific way. Both of its defeats are by a single point, 21-20 to Santa Margarita and 10-9 to Mater Dei. Nobody has beaten this team by more than a point all season.
Santa Margarita beat Inderkum 41-0. Mission Viejo beat Lincoln of San Diego 56-0. Orange Lutheran won 35-0 at Serra of Gardena. Bishop Amat beat Culver City 65-13.
What we checked and what we could not
Every record on these five boards was put through a two source pass before publication. Fifty rows, and forty six of them cleared at two independent publishers.
Three did not, and we are naming them rather than burying them. Churchill County's fifth win, Pittsburg's third game and Carlsbad's record each rest on a single publisher. Nothing contradicts any of them. Each was played, and in Churchill County's case the broadcast of the game exists while the score has not been posted anywhere but one place. They are printed because the editor ruled them in, and they are flagged here because that is the honest thing to do.
One record came to us three different ways from three publishers. Bishop Amat is 4-0, and we settled it by going back to the four individual games, all of which check out twice over, rather than by picking a number.
Every team that also appears on the Out West board or the Power 100 carries the same record in all three places. That cross check runs before anything is rendered, and it passed on all six boards this week.
Rankings are compiled by the SPIN desk from verified results. Where a result rests on a single source, it is used to order the board but flagged in the copy.
