WW girls - wk of Dec 31

As we turn the corner into the New Year, with about 4 weeks of basketball left before the girls' state tournament begins, this year's girls' Winless Watch finds eight teams with the 0 around their necks for the season so far, as two of the last week's winless teams dropped out with wins last week. Both squads finding themselves solidly in the middle of last week's rankings.

First, congratulations to the LaVille Lancers, last week's #4 team in the WW rankings. The Lancers were on the cusp of victory on a couple of occasions this season, and finally broke their 10-game winless skid to start the season with a 6-point victory over Culver in the third-place game of the Caston Tournament last weekend.

Also, congratulations to last week's #5 Muncie South, who snapped their 11-game losing streak in the consolation game with a win over Guerin Catholic at Monroe Central's holiday tournament. The Rebels almost broke through earlier in the day with a three-point loss to Northeastern before sealing the deal over the Golden Eagles.

Two of the three teams I alluded to above with my "three-team horse race" comment are neck-and-neck, and the slightest change in strength of schedule can cause the two teams to switch positions. Such is the case this week, with last week's top two teams Wes-Del and Gary Wirt trading places despite the fact that Wes-Del didn't play last week, while the Troopers improved their average margin of defeat with a 29-point loss to Gary Roosevelt.

With that, here are this week's Winless Watch rankings, with records and average margin of defeat, as well as last week's results and upcoming games, included for informational purposes only:

1. Gary Wirt (0-7 record, avg margin -33.7 points per game) – Last week's ranking: 2. Lost 62-33 to Gary Roosevelt. Will face Gary Wallace (1-10) on January 4.
2. Wes-Del (0-10, -25.2) – Last week's ranking: 1. No games last week. Will play Cowan (5-6) on January 3 and Knightstown (5-6) on January 5.
3. Fort Wayne Blackhawk (0-9, -24.1) – Last week's ranking: 3. No games last week. Will play Fort Wayne Canterbury (6-4) on January 4.
4. Morristown (0-8, -21.5) – Last week's ranking: 6. No games last week. Will play Triton Central (9-1) on January 3.
5. Southridge (0-11, -15.2) – Last week's ranking: 7. No games last week. Will play North Knox (8-4) on January 3.
6. Mount Vernon (Posey) (0-8, -16.7) – Last week's ranking: 8. Played Washington (3-5) last week, no score reported. Will play Mount Carmel (IL) (15-3) on January 3 and Vincennes Lincoln (11-2) on January 5.
7. Fort Wayne Northrop (0-10, -14.3) – Last week's ranking: 9. Lost 59-41 to Fort Wayne North. No games this week.
8. Southport (0-10, -25.1) – Last week's ranking: 10. Lost 49-24 to Whiteland. Will play Indianapolis Pike (4-6) on January 5.

The WW formula (explained here last week) shows that, if things continue down their current course, the race for WW Team of the Year will come down to the top 3 teams, as #4 Morristown has a very solid strength of schedule and thus quite a bit of distance from the top 3. Still, all of these teams have half or more of their schedule remaining to play, and there will be solid opportunities for each team to garner that first win of the season.

WW boys - wk of Dec 31

Last week, the Indianapolis Star alluded to the fact that at one time, the Hall of Fame Classic was pretty much the only game in town as far as getting your high school basketball fix over Christmas break.

No longer. While the prestigious one-day, four-team tournament still features four of the top teams in the state (both boys and girls), all playing at the world's largest high school gymnasium in New Castle, the Hall of Fame Classic now shares the stage with any number of tournaments large and small (35 total just this week).

This proliferation of holiday classics, shootouts and invitationals not only fills a two-week scheduling void over Christmas, but also oftentimes counts as only one game against a team's 20-game limit, even if they play 3 or 4 games during the course of the tourney.

All of this is well and good, but as far as Winless Watch is concerned, the primary benefit of these tourneys is that they allow teams to shed their "winless" label for the season! Don't believe me? A whopping eight teams played their way off the WW list last week, six of them taking part in these holiday tournaments.

The #3 team in last week's Winless Watch rankings, South Putnam, won its first game of the season over North Vermillion in its own tournament. Also, last week's #6 and #7 squads, South Vermillion and Bethesda Christian, scored their inaugural wins in the Pizza Hut Wabash Valley Classic. South Vermillion opened up the tournament with a one-point win over Riverton Parke, while Bethesda knocked off Linton one night later.

Meanwhile, Randolph Southern, who found themselves at #13 last week, scored a big win over Seton Catholic in the Franklin County Tournament, while Boonville edged out one-win South Spencer in the PSC Holiday Classic, an eight-team affair in the far southern part of the state. And Elkhart Central broke its 10-game losing streak to start the season by blasting Mishawaka Marian in the seventh-place game of the Northern Indiana Conference Tournament.

In addition, North Posey, last week's #19, pulled off a moderate upset over Evansville Bosse – last year's Class 3A runner-up - in a regularly scheduled contest, less than a week after the Bulldogs steamrolled through the eight-team Toyota Classic, while then-#15 Hammond Morton almost doubled up Lake Station to snag its first win of the season.

Congratulations to all of these teams on their maiden victories for the season!

All of this shuffling leaves 18 winless boys basketball teams in the state. While it appeared that last week's #1 team, Evansville Day, would have a stranglehold on the #1 spot thanks to its defeats of 57 and 66 points in the Graber Post Buildings Classic, the teams that trounced Day School in those losses (North Daviess, Southwestern (Hanover)) raised the Eagles' strength of schedule to the point where they fell from the top spot all the way to #3.

This opens the door for a new #1 in this week's Winless Watch rankings; however, they'll likely just keep the seat warm for Terre Haute Holy Cross, whose 0-4 record includes an average margin of defeat of 48 points per game. The Knights don't play again until January 5 against a non-IHSAA outfit called the Tippecanoe Tornadoes; a loss will almost guarantee them the top spot in the WW rankings, while a win would keep them off the list this season. (As a reminder, WW requires a minimum 0-5 record for inclusion in the rankings.)

This week's Winless Watch, with records and average margin of defeat, as well as last week's results and upcoming games, included for informational purposes only:

1. Shoals (0-6, -34.2 points per game) – Last week's ranking: 2. No games last week. Will face Washington Catholic (1-7) on January 4 and Wood Memorial (4-6) on January 5.
2. Whiting (0-8, -22.0 ppg) – Last week's ranking: 4. No games last week. Will face LaCrosse (6-2) on January 4 and Lake Station (3-5) on January 5.
3. Evansville Day (0-11, -39.4 ppg) – Last week's ranking: 1. Lost 72-15 to North Daviess, lost 84-18 to Southwestern (Hanover), lost 66-28 to Washington Catholic. Will face Mount Carmel (IL) on January 5.
4. Eminence (0-7, -11.4) – Last week's ranking: 5. No games last week. Will face South Putnam (1-7) on January 5.
5. Hamilton (0-6, -18.2) – Last week's ranking: 9. No games last week. Will face Westview (7-1) on January 4.
6. Adams Central (0-9, -18.1) – Last week's ranking: 10. Lost 68-50 to Bellmont. Will face Garrett (4-4) on January 5.
7. North Harrison (0-8, -20.1) – Last week's ranking: 8. Lost 69-45 to Perry Central, lost 61-52 to Corydon, lost 48-38 to South Spencer. Will face Austin (4-5) on January 4 and Scottsburg (4-4) on January 5.
8. Milan (0-6, -11.5) – Last week's ranking: 11. No games last week. Will play Batesville (6-2) on January 3 and either Jac-Cen-Del (6-0) or South Ripley (2-4) on January 5.
9. Pioneer (0-7, -10.2) – Last week's ranking: 12. No games last week. Will play Frontier (4-4) on January 4 and Rensselaer Central (3-4) on January 5.
10. Sheridan (0-5, -19.8) – Last week's ranking: 14. No games last week. Will play University (2-5) on January 4 and Fountain Central (3-4) on January 5.

The rest (in order of WW ranking): Tri-Central, Highland, Lebanon, Greenfield, Indianapolis Scecina, Westfield and Lawrence Central.

There is still plenty of basketball left to play, and plenty of opportunities for these teams to play themselves off this list.

A smattering of interesting articles to tide you over between the holidays:

The Evansville Courier-Press recently ran a couple of great articles about the days before such luxuries as dressing rooms and showers and concession stands and 84-by-50 floors became commonplace. Check out Odd-sized gyms were once commonplace in high school hoops and Gyms once truly multi-purpose.

Also appearing in the Evansville paper is a nice write-up on Lloyd Bateman, Indiana high school basketball's first 2,000-point scorer. Bateman played for Plainville, which is just up the road from Winless Watch's base of operations. "Big Lloyd," as he was called, is getting a long-overdue induction into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. Before consolidation into North Daviess High School, Plainville had a charming old nickname alluded to in the headline of the story about Bateman: He was a man among the Midgets.

Dead Horse Watch: This is the 10th year for class basketball in the state of Indiana; previously, the tournament was a single-class affair. Marking a full decade of the four-class tournament, the Terre Haute Tribune-Star solicited the opinions of a few local coaches regarding the 10 years that have passed: Opinions still mixed on multi-class hoops.

Hebron High School has just the third female head coach of a boys' varsity basketball team in state history. The story of Brenda Drook can be found in the Indianapolis Star article Coaching Crossover.

WW Girls - wk of Dec 24

The girls' basketball schedule in Indiana has barely reached the halfway point for many teams, but we are already assured of a new Girls WW Team of the Year, as the two-time defending Team of the Year Indianapolis Howe has tasted victory for the first time since January 2005. The Hornets defeated Indianapolis Manual 43-39 on December 4 – congratulations to Howe!

Other recent WW alumna have also broken into the W column this season. In addition to Howe, 2006-07 winless squads North Vermillion, South Newton, and Indianapolis Tindley have posted victories this season, as have 2005-06 WW teams Churubusco, Lake Station, Sheridan, Lawrence Central and Gary Wallace.

This leaves 10 winless teams in the state with about 5 weeks to play. The girls' Winless Watch rankings, with records and average margin of defeat included for informational purposes only, are below:

1. Wes-Del (0-10 record, avg margin -25.2 ppg)
2. Gary Wirt (0-6, -34.5)
3. Fort Wayne Blackhawk (0-9, -24.1)
4. LaVille (0-9, -14.7)
5. Muncie South (0-10, -34.2)
6. Morristown (0-8, -21.5)
7. Southridge (0-11, -15.2)
8. Mount Vernon (Posey) (0-8, -16.7)
9. Fort Wayne Northrop (0-8, -13.9)
10. Southport (0-9, -25.1)

Please see this post for an explanation of how I arrived at these rankings, and how an 0-9 team that's losing by over 25 points a game could be ranked lower than an 0-9 team losing by under 15 points a game. It's complicated.

WW Boys - wk of Dec 24

One of the charter schools making its IHSAA debut this year, Fall Creek 21st Century has embarked on what could be the most ambitious, adventurous schedule in the state. When compiling its schedule for the season, the Indianapolis-based Engineers' philosophy seemed to be, "Need a game? We'll play!" without regard to geography, size of opponent or off-days.

With only 5 home games slated for the season, the Engineers have already made road trips to New Harmony, Madison, and Fort Wayne. Later this season, their schedule will also include trips to Evansville, Auburn (in the northeast corner of the state, north of Fort Wayne), and Clinton (on the western edge of the state, north of Terre Haute).

Perhaps the most daring portion of the Engineers' slate of games will come this weekend, the 28th and 29th of December, where they will play four games in two days. On Friday, they will play two games in a one-day tournament at Covenant Christian High School in Indianapolis. The following day, they'll get on a bus and take a two-hour trek on I-70 over to Richmond, just inside the Indiana-Ohio border, and play two more games in the Red Devils' holiday tournament (opening against 4A Richmond). (If they are gassed by about halftime of their second game that day, tough – the school's mission statement includes a "no excuses" philosophy!)

The good news is that Fall Creek has met its schedule head-on with some success thus far. The Engineers carry a 4-2 record into the holidays, and their marquee win thus far has been against recent sectional champions Shawe Memorial on the Hilltoppers' home court. There are bound to be some bumps along the way as Fall Creek attacks the meat of its schedule – in addition to the aforementioned game against Richmond, the Engineers also face 4A Evansville Reitz, who is #3 in the latest Sagarin ratings, and 3A South Vermillion later this season – but thanks to its ruthless schedule, they should be a tough out come tournament time.

*****

Winless Watch #1 for the boys finds 26 teams statewide without a win to their credit this season (not to mention 26 undefeated teams – how's that for parity?), with a little over two months of basketball left to play before the state tournament begins. All of the teams who appeared in the last two seasons' final Winless Watch rankings have posted at least one victory this season – 2006-07's representatives Indianapolis Tindley and North Newton posted early wins this season, while Cannelton, Howe Military and Cowan have combined to post 9 more wins this season than they did in 2005-06, when each went 0-for-their-schedule.

The Winless Watch Top 10 through games of December 22 (with record and average margin of defeat included for informational purposes only) – minimum 5 losses to be included:

1. Evansville Day (0-8 record, average margin -34.0 ppg)
2. Shoals (0-6, -34.2)
3. South Putnam (0-6, -11.6)
4. Whiting (0-8, -22.0)
5. Eminence (0-7, -11.4)
6. South Vermillion (0-6, -24.4)
7. Bethesda Christian (0-6, -19.0)
8. North Harrison (0-5, -23.6)
9. Hamilton (0-6, -18.2)
10. Adams Central (0-8, -18.2)

The Winless Watch rankings are determined by a formula that takes into account number of losses, margin of defeat and strength of schedule according to Sagarin. Margin of defeat is weighted according to strength of schedule; if a Class A school is losing by 20 points a game but has a 4A-level SoS, that weighs in their favor. This explains why a Class A school like Tri-Central doesn't appear in the top 10 – their average margin of defeat is over 22 points a game, but they've played the 70th-strongest schedule in the state (out of 401 teams).

However, if a 3A school is losing by 15 points a game with a Class A-level SoS, that weighs heavily against them. South Putnam is a 2A school losing by an average of under 12 points a game, but their strength of schedule is ranked at 372, which penalizes them to the point where they are listed "ahead" of other teams with worse average margins of defeat.

Other winless teams (in order of WW rating formula) include Milan, Pioneer, Randolph Southern, Sheridan, Hammond Morton, Highland, Lebanon, Indianapolis Scecina, North Posey, Tri-Central, Boonville, Greenfield, Elkhart Central, Westfield and Lawrence Central. Also not included in the list above is Terre Haute Holy Cross, who is losing by 48 points per game and would have assumed the top spot in the rankings but have gotten a pass this week thanks to the fact that they are but 0-4 (and I included an entirely arbitrary cutoff of minimum 5 games).

A hearty "hello" and "welcome"!

Welcome to Winless Watch!

A monument to futility, Winless Watch celebrates Indiana high school basketball and the players who perennially come up just short in their quest for a victory.

I started keeping track of the state's winless teams a couple of years ago on my primary blog, Bramble Tamble, and thought that the theme would make for a great blog. So here it is! As I move forward, I'll migrate the Winless Watch posts from Bramble Tamble to this site, for a bit of historical backdrop; in the meantime, you can find them here.

Lest you think that this blog will focus solely on teams that don't have a win on their ledger this year – it won't. This site will also celebrate nicknames, anomalies, and other ephemera related to Indiana high school basketball. But the focus on winlessness will be the site's primary focus.

Now, to your questions:

Hey! Stop making fun of these kids – they're just kids, after all, and they're trying as hard as they can!

Who's making fun? You certainly won't find it in these quarters. I'm not making light of their struggles, not in the least. No, I'm glorifying these teams, raising awareness of their struggles on the field of play – and hoping that they can taste victory the next time out.

Listen. I went to a school that won a total of 4 basketball games during my four years in high school. I played basketball my freshman year (on the freshman and junior varsity teams, seeing mop-up time on the JV and only getting significant playing time on the freshman team because there were but five of us to take the floor), and kept stats the other three years. That means I was exposed to a lot of bad basketball – we lost 80 varsity games when I was in high school, and almost that many JV games.

Point is – I understand and greatly empathize with the struggles that these teams are going through. As such, you're not going to find a bigger fan of the teams profiled here than me. If it appears I'm making fun, I'm sorry – that's not the case at all.

What resources do you use?

My two primary sources for the information that you'll see here is John Harrell's Indiana High School Basketball site and Jeff Sagarin's high school basketball ratings. Basketball fans owe a huge debt to these two men for researching, compiling and quantifying our great state's high school hardwood results.

In addition, for projections, a great tool I stumbled across is calpreps.com. You can plug in any two teams – not just from Indiana, but from across the country, as long as a team has played three games that season – and get a projected outcome for those two teams' contest. It's a great time-waster; I used it to simulate an Indiana single-class tournament a couple of years ago. You can find those results here.

Maybe as this site grows, I'll be able to get actual first-hand information from coaches, players and other folks connected with these teams. Who knows? But for now, my mission is only to tell a story about the numbers that you see in the agate type on your local paper's sports page.

Are you focusing only on basketball, or can I tell you how bad my school's (football, volleyball, lacrosse, soccer, tiddlywinks) team is?

Indiana high school basketball is the primary focus of this site. I would also include football in this blog, but because of the shorter schedule and fewer opportunities for victory, we usually have around 30 or 40 winless football teams in the state at season's end – way too many for this staff of one to cover and write something snarky about.

As for any other sport – no. The resources just aren't there for tracking results, and neither is the tradition. Sorry.