Proof over hype

Team Rankings

Built from 0 played games — not from which events a team paid to enter. Beating a strong team moves you a lot; beating a weak one barely moves you at all, so strength of schedule is the mechanism rather than an adjustment.

Nothing below 13U is published here. Younger teams are rated, and that rating is visible to the athlete, their parent and their coach — but a public ranking of a ten-year-old serves a parent's ego rather than the child.

No 13U-and-up team has played a completed game yet. Rankings appear as soon as games do.

How this is worked out

Each game moves both teams by the gap between the expected and the actual result. Winning margin is capped at 20 points — the same cap the standings use — because an uncapped rating rewards running up the score on children.

A national position is only shown where a chain of games actually connects the teams being compared. Youth basketball clusters regionally, so ranking a Virginia team against an Ohio team with no games between them would be inventing a number.