OFSAA AAA Rankings have been released

2016 OFSAA Senior Boys AAA Rankings (Windsor)

# 1 Henry Carr
#2  Vaughn
#3 Oakwood
#4 St. Mikes
#5 Pine Ridge
#6 Bishop Reding
#7 Sir John A Mcdonald
#8 St. Annes
#9 HB Beal
#10 West Humber
#11 St. Joseph
#12 Catholic Central
#13 Sir Allan MacNab
#14 St. Patrick's
#15 Holy Cross
#16 Collingwood
#17 Adam Scott
#18 St. Mary's College

Here's the link to the official Boys AAA OFSAA website ...
http://www.ofsaa.on.ca/boys-aaa-basketball/schedules-results/competition-schedules

a few rumblings have been surfaced about the seedings. I dont know what gets determined in selecting due to teams from the Windsor (Lakeshore area) being #8 over West Humber or Macnab.

Seeds 1-7 were very predictable, Joes being #11 looks about right

Typical rumblings. Somewhat irrelevant once you get past top 1 to 6 ( may be top 8 ) teams. It may come down to 1 playing 4 and 2 playing 3 in the semi's. Can some of the teams ranked 5 through 8 play exceptionally and make it through to the semi-finals? As I have less information / context as to the lower ranked teams I would hope that OFSAA has got these team ranked, generally, in the relative right order. Good Luck to all teams and congrats on making it to OFSAA - that in itself is a significant achievement!!

i already have my QF and SF matchups predicted, hopefully im wrong, be interesting to see some upsets

When they rank teams, an emphasis is placed on winning your region as opposed to being the second qualifier out of the region. So Oakwood winning out of the city of Toronto would earn more points than West Humber being the runner up in Toronto. Realistically, West Humber should be ranked higher than Beal or St. Annes if you look at their body of work for the entire season but Beal won the region in their SWOSSAA region in the greater London area and St. Annes won the WOSSAA region in the greater Windsor area so they get pushed ahead in the rankings.

They also look at your overall record and your strength of schedule. Did you play against a lot of the teams in the OFSAA field? What is record your record against other teams in the OFSAA field? Who did you beat and who did you lose to? The bottom teams are ranked low because their strength of schedule is weak and they probably didn't play against any teams in the OFSAA field.

The top teams are somewhat easy to slot. Henry Carr has one loss against Canadian High school competition and that loss was to Vaughn. Henry Carr is #1. Vaughn has two losses to Ontario High School teams and those losses are to Henry Carr at the beginning of the season. Vaughn is #2. Oakwood at # 3 is questionable. Oakwood beat St. Mikes at the very beginning of the season. How much stock do you put into that? I think Oakwood should be ranked #4 or #5 based upon their overall resume and schedule. They didn't play a lot of games against the top teams in comparison to Henry Carr, St. Mikes, Vaughn and Pine Ridge especially later in the year. However, they committee rewarded them on their work in early November so they got the three spot.

Sir Allan MacNab should be ranked higher than 13th. They played a strong schedule and competed against the top teams in the OFSAA field. They lost a lot of close games to the best teams due to the fact the Macnab team is a relatively young squad. Macnab should be ahead of Beal, Lakeshore and St. Joseph. The committee definitely got it wrong there. Now, Macnab has a tough first round game against SJAM. That will be the best match up in the opening round by far!

As someone who was actually part of the seeding process 2 years ago, I thought I would shed some light on the process. Bear in mind that none of this is a commentary on this year's seeding and should not be seen as endorsement nor as criticism.

Seeding is not done by OFSAA itself, it's run by the convener (unless he/she is coaching in the tournament) and (hopefully) a seeding committee that the convener arranges. OFSAA does not actively take part in the process though the Boys basketball committee chair is consulted either during or after the process to ensure requirements for scheduling are met (primarily avoiding potential games between teams from the same region too early in the tournament) and also to make sure there aren't any egregious errors.

No one factor dominates the seeding process though record, strength or schedule, and success of teams/regions at recent OFSAA championships are given significant weight. Two other factors also play an important role:

- head to head results between teams in the tournament
- results in the latter portion of the tournament

I will correct rerun and say that winning a region is not necessarily that important since almost all the teams are regional champions. The seeding committee can easily justify seeding the 2nd berth from a stronger region ahead of the champion of a region that has not done well historically or that does not have a strong strength of schedule. Where champion over wild card does come into play is when there are two teams from one region in the championship. In that case, the champion would almost always be seeded ahead of the second representative, except for extreme circumstances. (e.g. the runner up won all previous head to head meetings comfortably and they were shorthanded in the regional final)

The process works best when the committee is independent and has seen as many of the teams involved play on multiple occasions. I believe that is why our championship in 2014 generally received positive feedback for the seeding as the committee consisted of Barry Hayes from Hoopstars Canada and Elias and Tariq Sbiet from Northpole Hoops. The three of them were not seen as affiliated with any particular region and they had probably watched more Ontario high school basketball than any other person in Ontario.

Where is the link to watch these games?

The link to watch OFSAA AAA basketball is in the second posting.

Rimrocker! You are right! My reference to the strong consideration that is given to a regional winner goes back to 2010. I guess it is more of a unique set of circumstances. J Clarke Richardson caught fire late in the season that year and won a number of tournaments in and around the GTA but lost the LOSSA Title game to Pickering. However, Durham had two births that year so both teams qualified for OFSAA AAAA.

Pickering ended up getting the number #1 seed and J Clarke ended up getting a number #3. We were told that a second regional qualifier historically should not be ranked ahead of regional winners from areas that have played well in the tournament over the years.

#7 Sir John A MacDonald upsets #2 Vaughan in Quarterfinals.

rerun wrote:Rimrocker! You are right! My reference to the strong consideration that is given to a regional winner goes back to 2010. I guess it is more of a unique set of circumstances. J Clarke Richardson caught fire late in the season that year and won a number of tournaments in and around the GTA but lost the LOSSA Title game to Pickering. However, Durham had two births that year so both teams qualified for OFSAA AAAA.

Pickering ended up getting the number #1 seed and J Clarke ended up getting a number #3. We were told that a second regional qualifier historically should not be ranked ahead of regional winners from areas that have played well in the tournament over the years.

That would fit my comment about regional champions almost always getting ranked ahead of wild cards from the same region. The situation you mentioned is somewhat similar to eventual OFSAA champion Oakwood and Eastern when we hosted in 2014. Oakwood had the better second half of the season and, had they won the TDSSA final, would have been seeded 3rd but, since they lost the final to Eastern and the results clearly placed d'Youville ahead of Eastern, we had had to push Oakwood down to 5th and shifted the other two up one spot each.