Lakeville South Football Team Not Happy With New Seeding System

Heading into last Wednesday's final regular-season game, was third in the points system standings in Section 1AAAAA. That night the Cougars went out and took care of business against Burnsville, beating the Blaze to improve to 6-2 on the season.

But when the final points system standings came out the following morning, the Cougars found themselves in fifth place, having been leapfrogged by a pair of Rochester schools.

“Obviously it's very flawed,” Lakeville coach Larry Thompson said of the seeding system. “All I know is we shouldn't be going as the .”

Even Ryan Weinzierl, the inventor of the QRF points system that is being used to seed for the first time this season, admits the system might have gotten it wrong.

“Probably not,” he said when asked if he thought QRF “got it right” in Lakeville South's case. “But I don't think it's very far off and that's why we let the kids play it off on the field. I had a region secretary (say) last week that no team has ever made it to the state tournament from a seeding meeting.”

The final points standings in the race for the No. 3 spot were extremely close, with Rochester John Marshall (719), Rochester Mayo (712 points) and Lakeville South (701) separated by 18 points.

All three teams went 6-2, and all of their wins were worth the same number of base points. So the difference in points between the three has to do with the bonus points they received based on strength of schedule, or number of opponent wins.

Teams Mayo beat won the most games (21), followed by JM (20) and South (19). But South played only Class 5A opponents, who also played only in-class games, meaning 100 percent of South's points came from games only involving Class 5A teams.

Mayo played four Class 5A teams and four Class 4A teams, and JM played four Class 5A teams, three from Class 4A and one from Class 3A. And both Rochester schools' Class 5A opponents also played a mix of opponents from multiple classes.

The Class 3A team JM beat, Como Park, went on to win two games this season, beating Humboldt (an 0-7 Class 2A team) and Minneapolis North (an 0-8 Class 1A team).

Weinzierl said even if Como Park had gone 0-8 against better competition, those lost bonus points for JM would not have been enough to help South, though it would have been enough to flip-flop Mayo and JM for the third and fourth positions. While it didn't affect the standings, Weinzierl said the situation was a concern.

“The Como Park win is the part I’m most concerned about and how it was applied in this case,” he said.

Similar situations exist in other sections, but MSHSL officials are quick to point out that QRF worked in the overwhelming majority of cases.

“Overall the rankings were very accurate,” said Kevin Merkle, associate director for the Minnesota State High School League. “There are 48 sections and as of this time we are aware of five situations where one could argue that there were inaccuracies (and) of those only three were of real concern. With that said we will certainly continue to work to make it better. But no matter what system is used it won’t be perfect or said another way, not everyone will ever agree that the outcome was 'right.'”

While Weinzierl admits his system—which he's been using to rank teams unofficially on his Minnesota-scores.net website since 2002—has flaws, he too said the system worked in most sections.

“There was one section that was very wrong—Hill-Murray and Mahtomedi—and one section that might be (Totino-Grace and Mounds View); I consider 1AAAAA to be 'might be'.

“On the whole, 40 sections used the QRF and I think 37 got it right, which for the first time through is acceptable on the whole.”

He said it's important to focus on the entire body of work, not just one or two games.

“Lakeville South’s resume doesn’t have a win over a seven-win AAAAA team (which Rochester Mayo's does), so they needed to 'make-up' those points somewhere else with their schedule that plays all AAAAA teams,” Weinzierl said. “Unfortunately it wasn’t quite enough this time, but it did get close. A small change to a value here or there will fix that.”

But for now, it's up to Lakeville South to fix things itself, starting Tuesday night at Rochester Mayo.