East Tennessee high school football projections, week 5

Outside of one major upset that several people have yelled at me for calling an upset (it was an upset), this projection system went a solid 24-5 (82.8%) last week, bringing the season total to 98-25 (79.7%). After week one’s craziness where the projections only correctly predicted 22 of 33 games, it’s on a 76-14 (84.4%) tear over the last three weeks. I’m interested to see how long that holds.

As a reminder, you can keep track of the season via this spreadsheet:

Click over to your favorite team’s page for fully updated win projections throughout the season. Also, a new update: the Running Win Totals tab now also accounts for Region Wins throughout the season. I’ve reorganized the tab to show the projected standings in each region, though, of course, it only covers the 51 teams that this site covers.

Here’s this week’s games and their projected outcomes:

THURSDAY

• South-Doyle 28, Sevier County 14

FRIDAY

• Bearden 33, Science Hill 15
• Farragut 39, Jefferson County 3
• Greeneville 46, Pisgah (NC) 9
• Oak Ridge 27, West 10
• Knoxville Catholic 52, Soddy-Daisy 13
• Hardin Valley 30, Morristown West 19
• Ooltewah 39, William Blount 23
• Alcoa 75, Pigeon Forge 0
• Rhea County 27, Lenoir City 26.7*
• Chattanooga Christian 28, CAK 21
• David Crockett 32, Cocke County 23
• Greenback 36, Oliver Springs 21
• Grace Christian 33, Webb 19
• Fulton 51, Karns 2
• Halls 28, Carter 20
• Tennessee 35, Morristown East 19
• Anderson County 43, Howard 11
• Powell 31, Clinton 12
• Campbell County 32, Gibbs 21
• Central 29, Seymour 6
• Gatlinburg-Pittman 33, Scott 28
• Meigs County 43, Rockwood 8
• McMinn County 39, Heritage 14
• Signal Mountain 28, Loudon 26
• Kingston 32, Northview 20
• Mt. Juliet Christian 33, King’s Academy 18
• Union County 24, Sullivan East 22
• Harriman 47, Sunbright 10
• Coalfield 58, Oakdale 1
• Happy Valley 43, Cosby 4

Some notes on this week’s games…

• Obviously, I blew it on Alcoa. I personally thought the game would be closer than 29, simply because Alcoa-Maryville always appears to be close…but I also thought Maryville would win by 2-3 touchdowns. I do not make subjective adjustments to the ratings in any way, so I ran with the objective numbers that I figured would be more correct than my assumptions. Turns out that the early-season points boost Maryville got for beating Oakland might’ve been premature, and Alcoa absolutely wasn’t given enough credit in computer systems for obliterating their first three opponents. Anyway, Alcoa-Pigeon Forge is tomorrow night, and I already feel bad for what’s about to happen.
• Sevier County and South-Doyle isn’t the game of the week or anything, but it does represent a great opportunity for both schools: South-Doyle could use a rebound after their beatdown by Bearden last week, while Sevier County, even if it’s not a win, badly needs a good performance; they’ve been trending in the wrong direction ever since they led 21-0 Week One against Jefferson County.
• Had Science Hill-Bearden been held on August 13, I think most people would’ve expected a close Science Hill win. On September 13, Bearden is projected to win by 18. It took FOUR GAMES, but Bearden finally allowed double-digit first downs to an opponent…and then out-first-downed said opponent 23-12. Farragut-Bearden on October 11 is beginning to look like the best game left on the schedule at least in East Tennessee; only Oakland-Blackman projects to be a better game statewide.
• Oak Ridge-West has the most local buzz of any game this week, and it may be underrated by the sheet above: West, albeit against poor competition, has rebounded from an 0-2 start and looks to possibly be finding an offense, while Oak Ridge has to figure out how to return after a tough 20-14 loss at home to Farragut. I don’t even think this game hits the suggested 37 point total; West’s path to victory likely depends on holding OR to 14 or less in regulation, and it’s not that unreasonable to think they can.
• Rhea County-Lenoir City is the first projected tie of 2018. Of course, you can’t have ties in high school football, but the projected margin is Rhea County by 0.3 points. This actually represents a pretty huge opportunity for Lenoir City: Rhea County has been kind of disappointing so far, as what should’ve been a 3-0 start is now 2-1 with a tough road game coming up. A 1-3 start for Lenoir that peaked with a terrible loss at CAK last week could be redeemed by a win here, and it would get them back on the path to a playoff bid.
• Finally, two games that no one expected to be interested in a month ago, but here we are: Greenback-Oliver Springs and David Crockett-Cocke County. The first of these is almost entirely due to the stunning 3-0 start from Oliver Springs, their first since 2005. Greenback has played to expectation so far – AKA, blowing out three opponents and comfortably beating Loudon – but what looked like a cakewalk schedule a month ago has suddenly gotten tougher. If Greenback makes it through the next four games unscathed, a second straight 1A title feels like a formality. For the second game, Cocke County’s start is just as stunning: 3-0, but with two blowouts and a road win at Carter. Now, Cocke County is on its way to their first winning season since 1998, per athletic director A.C. Willis. (TSSAA suggests 1996, but I’m taking his word for it.) If they beat David Crockett, they’re looking at a strong likelihood of a 6-0 start.

Now, for season-long updates.

• Biggest overachievers versus preseason expectations: Bearden (+2.76 wins above expectation), Cocke County (+2.64), Oliver Springs (+2.46), Harriman (+2.37), Powell (+2.04).
• Underachievers: Webb (-3.06), Pigeon Forge (-2.95), King’s Academy (-2.80), Loudon (-2.10).
• Still looking at about four undefeated teams, most likely. The top contenders to go undefeated are Alcoa (97% chance of 10-0), Greeneville (89.3%), Anderson County (70.1%), Farragut (52.4%), and Greenback (46.8%). Second-tier contenders: Bearden (15.7%). Teams on the periphery: Fulton (2.9%), Oliver Springs (2.8%), Cocke County (1.4%).
• Unfortunately, there’s a good chance that we get an 0-10 team. Heritage is now 81% likely to go 0-10.

That’s it for this week. Good luck to all teams involved, and have fun at the games this weekend.

East Tennessee high school football projections, week 4

Last week was almost all chalk – a 27-2 record for this system’s projected favorites, with only a couple small upsets: Carter (+1.5) over Seymour and Brainerd (+2.5) over Loudon. Generally, this will happen when the vast majority of the games feature large favorites, but to see every team that was expected to win by a healthy amount take care of business was pleasing. This brings the projection system’s record to 74-20 (78.7%) on the season, which is a little ahead of my goal of 75%.

As a reminder, you can keep track of the season via this spreadsheet:

Click over to your favorite team’s page for fully updated win projections throughout the season.

Here’s this week’s games and their projected outcomes:

THURSDAY

• Anderson County 40, Clinton 13

FRIDAY

• Farragut 26, Oak Ridge 22
• Maryville 41, Alcoa 12
• Bearden 28, South-Doyle 15
• Greeneville 45, Science Hill 13
• Knoxville Catholic 45, Cleveland 20
• Hardin Valley 24, Central 17
• Fulton 33, Austin-East 14
• McCallie 43, Webb 16
• Dobyns-Bennett 39, Sevier County 11
• Campbell County 31, Morristown East 24
• David Crockett 28, Gibbs 17
• West 27, Halls 13
• Jefferson County 30, Carter 9
• Oneida 35, Harriman 23
• Gatlinburg-Pittman 37, Hampton 30
• Lenoir City 34, CAK 19
• William Blount 39, Heritage 20
• Sequoyah 33, Loudon 28
• Rockwood 28, Kingston 24
• Powell 42, Karns 9
• Seymour 28, Cherokee 23
• Oliver Springs 33, Northview 18
• Union County 28, Claiborne 27
• Coalfield 43, Sunbright 12
• Midway 45, Unaka 0
• Wartburg 40, Oakdale 16 (!)
• Cosby 25, North Greene 20

Some notes on this week’s games…

• Farragut-Oak Ridge is the game of the week, though Alcoa-Maryville will steal headlines. A win on either side, despite this not being a Region game, is quietly pretty huge: pre-Week 5 rating adjustments, Farragut would become 56% likely to go undefeated with a win. It’s even bigger for Oak Ridge: about 76% odds of 10-0 with a victory. The season-ender with Fulton still looms large for OR, as does Farragut’s Week 9 road game at Bearden, but the path is clearing for both.
• Alcoa-Maryville is probably a blowout in waiting, but that’s fine; it won’t change the fact that Alcoa currently is favored by at least 25 points in every Region game and that their worst realistic record heading into November is 8-2. Maryville is 92% likely to go 10-0, and this is the toughest remaining challenge on the schedule, besides questionably Fulton.
• South-Doyle and Bearden probably wasn’t in the top six or seven games for this week at the start of the season, but it’s the best of the undercard. S-D has run through their first three opponents with ease – an average score of 48-10 – while Bearden simply might have the best defense by a non-Maryville/Oakland team in 6A. It’s still yet to be seen if Bearden’s offense can produce points when needed, which makes this game pretty interesting to me. Also, it’s a game between two teams outperforming their preseason expectations massively; both were expected to go 6-4 or so, but S-D is now favored to start 7-1 and Bearden 6-1.
• On the flip side, Science Hill-Greeneville was expected to be a much better game a few weeks back. While Greeneville has wrecked everything in their path, SCHS has gone 1-2 in coin-flip games, getting upset by Elizabethton in Week One, upsetting Ooltewah in Week Two, and then receiving another upset from 0-2 Dobyns-Bennett in Week Three. They seem to possess the ability to make any game close, but until further notice, it’s hard to envision a Greeneville game being close.
• Hardin Valley-Central should be fun: a team with its back against the wall staring down a 1-3 start in Central trying to squeak out a win over an HVA team that just obliterated Heritage. (More on poor Heritage later.)
• Other lower-tier games with close expected finals: Morristown East-Campbell County (two 1-2 teams that could use a win), Gatlinburg-Pittman and Hampton (GP has been impossible to figure out week-to-week, while Hampton is trending sharply upward right now), Sequoyah-Loudon (two teams that have looked worse each week), Rockwood-Kingston (a rivalry of sorts), Cherokee-Seymour (Cherokee badly needs a win after three straight double-digit losses), Claiborne-Union County, and Cosby-North Greene.

You can access it above, but here’s the season-long win projections page for discussion.

Quick statistics to catch you up:

• Biggest risers versus their preseason expectations: Cocke County (+3.07 wins), Midway (+2.45), South-Doyle (+2.35), Bearden (+2.29), and Powell (+2.01). More on Cocke in a minute.
• Biggest underachievers: Kingston (-3.21), King’s Academy (-2.83), Webb (-2.67), Pigeon Forge (-2.65). Brutal year for local private schools and 3A-2 teams not named Alcoa.
• Still looking at about four undefeated teams, most likely. The top contenders to go undefeated are Maryville (91.9% chance of finishing 10-0), Greeneville (91%), Greenback (46.3%), Anderson County (44.5%), Farragut (33%), and Oak Ridge (31.4%). Other contenders on the fringe (1%-10%): South-Doyle (10.5%), Bearden (8%), Cocke County (3.6%), Alcoa (3.4%), and Oliver Springs (1.1%).
• There is only one team with a serious chance of going Defeated right now, and unfortunately, it’s pretty high: Heritage has a 38.9% chance of going 0-10. Karns (8.39%) and Cosby (16.7%) are on notice.

Lastly, I want to discuss a story that we’re going to watch develop this year. No one locally has covered it yet, so let me be the first: Cocke County is in great position to find their first winning season in 22 years. The Fighting Cocks (yes, their real name) are 3-0 on the season, with an expected final record of 7.67 wins and 2.33 losses, or 7-3/8-2. (Massey expects about 6.3 wins, for the record.) At the very least, they’re staring down just the second .500 regular season finish in 17 seasons. If all breaks as projected, they’re on track to have the best season at the school since the 1996 Fighting Cocks team that went 8-2 and lost to Greeneville in overtime in the first round of the 4A playoffs.

Yes, Cocke County started 3-0 last year, defeating the same three teams…but their schedule was quite a bit tougher last year, too. I have them projected as double-digit favorites in at four remaining games, with Morristown East the only one of those that could drop below a 10-point expected win. Even better, no game is out of their hands, as they aren’t more than an eight-point underdog in any game at the moment (Daniel Boone, week 9). This is more of a “keep it on your periphery” thing at the moment, and Cocke doesn’t even play this week. But: if week seven rolls around and Cocke County is sitting at 5-1 after beating Pigeon Forge and Cherokee, take note – this is potentially the best story in East Tennessee high school football in 2018.

Good luck to all teams this week, and remember to check back in next week.

College football upset spotting, week two

First off, an apology: our normally pretty good system went a solid 0-3. It required Tennessee to get outgained by nearly 300 yards and win, along with West Virginia failing to convert in the red zone, but it still went 0-3. This week, we’ll get at least one upset correct. Maybe.

• 50-59% (2-0 on the season, expected record of 2.32-1.68): #23 TCU (at Arkansas) (54.4%), #6 USC (vs. #14 Stanford) (57.6%), #17 Louisville (at North Carolina) (59.6%), #24 Notre Dame (vs. #15 Georgia) (59.9%)
• 60-69% (2-0 on the season, 1.38-0.62): #2 Ohio State (vs. #5 Oklahoma) (67.9%), #3 Clemson (vs. #13 Auburn) (69.6%)
• 70-79% (2-1 on the season, 0.71-0.29): #20 Washington State (vs. Boise State) (70.8%)
• 80-89% (3-0 on the season, 0.81-0.19): #4 Penn State (vs. Pittsburgh) (81.0%)
• 90-99% (11-0 on the season, 9.80-0.20): every other game

Yet again, no 90+% game is worth discussing. There literally isn’t a single one of these teams with a model that projects them to win by less than 25 points. Not interesting at all! Conference play will even this out. Anyway, two key notes: the 50-69% grouping last week was expected to go 2.47-1.53; they went 4-0. A 70-79% team lost, but it was the last one I would have expected. The 50-69% teams will not go undefeated this week; I can promise this. There’s a 5.3% chance they go 6-0.

Alright, let’s pick some losers. The most surprising part of our work this week is the following: the models give the top four teams (#5 Oklahoma left out as they are playing #2 Ohio State) just a 38.1% chance of going 4-0 with 0.82 expected losses. I highly doubt #1 Alabama will drop to Fresno State, and while it did happen last year, Pittsburgh beating a top ten Penn State team two years in a row seems not right. So it’s between two 60-69% games: #2 Ohio State vs. #5 Oklahoma and #3 Clemson vs. #13 Auburn.

These are basically a coin flip, and I’m ready to lose on another toss-up, so I’m taking #13 Auburn over #3 Clemson. Why? Well, consider it two-fold: Auburn’s got a recruiting talent advantage over Clemson, and when removing the largest outlier model for both this game and OU-OSU, this is a slightly more likely event (66.9% vs. 69.9%). There’s a 53% chance that either #2 or #3 lose on Saturday night; good enough for me.

We still need two more upsets, and both are likely from the 50-59% range. We need one more from the Top 25 vs. Top 25 grouping. How about #14 Stanford over #6 USC? This knocks out our necessity of finding an upset in the Top 15. Again, after removing the outlier model, this one was a slightly more likely event than Georgia defeating Notre Dame. I also like this one because it hits on some concerns with USC: the significant schematic advantage Stanford’s offensive staff likely has over USC’s defensive staff, plus USC’s significant struggles with a Group of Five team in the first game. Perhaps USC’s defense ends up being pretty good, but I’m not yet sold.

For our final upset, we need one from the low end of the Top 25. It needs to be an unranked team. We’ve got two contenders: #17 Louisville losing at a mediocre North Carolina team or #23 TCU losing at a probably good-ish Arkansas team. You can probably guess which way I’m swinging here: Arkansas over #23 TCU. Arkansas, based on stats from CFB Matrix, has a large coaching advantage on offense versus defense over TCU. Plus, it’s a home game, the first CBS game of the year, and Arkansas has both a small recruiting talent advantage and doesn’t have to play the reigning Heisman Trophy winner.

To recap, our picks this week are #13 Auburn over #3 Clemson, #14 Stanford over #6 USC, and Arkansas over #23 TCU. Other games considered: #15 Georgia over #24 Notre Dame, North Carolina over #17 Louisville, #5 Oklahoma over #2 Ohio State, and Pittsburgh over #3 Penn State. Three upsets should come from this group of eight games. If there is a fourth upset, look for Boise State over #20 Washington State.