The Out West board was fifteen deep. It is twenty five now, and the footprint it covers got wider at the same time. Colorado, Oregon and Washington are on it for the first time, which makes eight states.
Eleven of the twenty five are new. Ten of those eleven are new because the board grew by ten places. The eleventh is new because Basha came off.
| # | Team | State | Record | Move |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Santa Margarita | CA | 4-0 | hold |
| 2 | Sierra Canyon | CA | 3-0 | hold |
| 3 | Mater Dei | CA | 4-0 | up 2 |
| 4 | Bishop Gorman | NV | 3-1 | hold |
| 5 | St. John Bosco | CA | 3-1 | up 1 |
| 6 | De La Salle | CA | 3-0 | up 3 |
| 7 | Centennial (Corona) | CA | 1-2 | down 4 |
| 8 | Hamilton | AZ | 3-0 | down 1 |
| 9 | Liberty (Peoria) | AZ | 3-0 | down 1 |
| 10 | Folsom | CA | 3-0 | hold |
| 11 | Corner Canyon | UT | 4-1 | hold |
| 12 | Orange Lutheran | CA | 3-1 | hold |
| 13 | Centennial (Peoria) | AZ | 3-0 | up 1 |
| 14 | Cherry Creek | CO | 3-0 | NEW |
| 15 | Mountain Ridge | UT | 5-0 | NEW |
| 16 | Mission Viejo | CA | 3-1 | NEW |
| 17 | Mililani | HI | 5-0 | down 2 |
| 18 | Chandler | AZ | 2-1 | NEW |
| 19 | Skyridge | UT | 4-1 | NEW |
| 20 | Pinnacle | AZ | 2-1 | NEW |
| 21 | Serra (San Mateo) | CA | 2-1 | NEW |
| 22 | Central East | CA | 3-0 | NEW |
| 23 | Puyallup | WA | 2-0 | NEW |
| 24 | Orem | UT | 3-2 | NEW |
| 25 | West Linn | OR | 2-0 | NEW |
This board is not an opinion
Out West is extracted from the national Power 100, in national order. It is not ranked separately and it is not hand adjusted. If a team sits above another team here, it is because it sits above it nationally.
That is why Centennial of Corona is seventh at 1-2 and Cherry Creek is fourteenth at 3-0, and why nobody at this desk gets to argue about it on this board. The place to argue is the national board, and the argument was had there.
It also explains something a reader will notice. Mountain View of Mesa is fifth on our Arizona board and it is not on this one at all, while Pinnacle, which Arizona has sixth, is twentieth here. That is not an inversion. Pinnacle is inside the national hundred at 74 and Mountain View is not inside it yet, and a team that is not on the national board cannot be extracted onto this one.
Rows one through twenty three are pure extraction. Rows twenty four and twenty five are the exception and they are marked as such. Orem and West Linn are not inside the national hundred. When a ten place expansion runs past the number of teams the footprint has on the national board, the last two seats are editorial picks, and these two were made deliberately.
The two 2-0 teams, because that number needs an explanation
Puyallup is 2-0. West Linn is 2-0. On a board where Mililani is 5-0 and Mountain Ridge is 5-0, that looks like a team that has barely started or a team with games missing.
Neither is true. Both teams played their first game of the season on Friday September 4. Puyallup has played exactly twice, September 4 at Rocky Mountain of Meridian, Idaho, and September 12 against Bellevue. West Linn has played exactly twice, September 4 against Central Catholic and September 11 against Westview. There is no missing game and no unreported result. Their seasons are two weeks old because their seasons are two weeks old.
The spread across this board is a calendar, not a quality gap. Hawaii opened the weekend of August 7 and Mililani played its first game on August 14, which is why Mililani has five in. Colorado opened August 20 on a Week 0 schedule, which is why Cherry Creek has three. Oregon's own first permitted contest date was August 28, and West Linn still did not play until a week after that. Utah, Arizona, California and Nevada all sit somewhere in between.
Anyone reading a 2-0 next to a 5-0 on this board and drawing a conclusion about the two programs is reading the wrong column.
Who came and who went
Basha is the only team that left. It was on the board a week ago and it is off both this board and the national one, after losing 40-7 to Pinnacle, which was unranked at the time and is twentieth here now. It stays on our Arizona Top 10 at seventh, because Arizona is a smaller field and its August win over Chandler still counts there.
Of the eleven arrivals, Utah supplied three, California three and Arizona two. Colorado, Washington and Oregon supplied one apiece, and those three are the reason the footprint moved at all.
Cherry Creek is the highest of the eleven arrivals at fourteenth, and five of the eleven have not lost a game. Cherry Creek, Mountain Ridge, Central East, Puyallup and West Linn are all unbeaten. Mountain Ridge is the best record of the group at 5-0, and it is second in Utah behind a Corner Canyon team that has lost once and is eleventh here.
What is worth watching
Eight of the top thirteen are from California. That has been true all season and it is not interesting by itself.
What is new is that the bottom half of this board now reaches into states that were not on it a week ago. Cherry Creek is the first Colorado team on this board, and Puyallup and West Linn are the first from Washington and Oregon.
Whether they hold those places once their schedules deepen is the question this board will answer over the next month, and it is the reason the footprint was widened rather than an accident of it.
Rankings are compiled by the SPIN desk from verified results. The Out West board is derived from the national Power 100 by extraction, in national order, except where noted.
