TNG 2023 Class 6A Week 11 Recap
See how the model did, review the top results of the week, and see the new Top 50
The regular season has come to a close and the playoffs begin in just a few days. In this newsletter, we’ll take a look back at the final week of the regular season to set the stage for the playoffs. 121 teams played their last game of the season in Week 11 and we wish all of them well as they begin their offseason work heading into the realignment year.
Model Performance
The model picked 88% of the correct winners this week, falling just short of a Week 11 record. The average Week 11 model performance has been 83%.
The model went 8-2 in Top 10 games of the week and went 14-6 in the final Pick ‘Em Contest week. Shout out to North Shore Mike, our newly-crowned TNG Pick ‘Em champion!
Looking at the model’s performance for the entire season, it has picked 80.9% of the correct winners. When we made all of the changes we made in the offseason, we were hoping to push the model past the 80% mark, and we’re in good shape to finish the year above that target. If we use the CalPreps standard of not counting results prior to mid-September, the model is correctly picking 84.9% of the games.
Looking back at the Top 10 Games of Week 11
Biggest Upsets of the Week
We know there are going to be significant upsets every week, but it’s always interesting to see where they occur. The table below shows the biggest model surprises of the week. Take note that six of the biggest “upsets” of the week involved single-digit favorites!
Week in Review - Notable Results Around the State
Region 1:
Odessa Permian 21-14 over Midland, was -5, 37% to win - Permian had to win to make the playoffs and they got the job done with a hard-fought win over Midland. In a crazy district season which saw tons of points scored, it was refreshing and surprising to see a low-scoring result in such a big game.
LD Bell 24-21 over Trinity, was -21, 10% to win - LD Bell came through with their first win over Euless Trinity since 1997! What an outstanding win for the Blue Raiders, getting one over on their long-time rivals. Bell unfortunately lost out on making the playoffs due to a tiebreaker, but they’ll definitely savor this win all throughout the offseason.
Region 2:
Prosper 24-12 over McKinney was +1, 53% to win - The win made Prosper the undefeated district champions in 5-6A, which is no small feat. District wins over Allen, Guyer, and McKinney have the Eagles in a great place headed into the postseason.
Conroe 49-28 over College Park, was +3, 58% to win - Conroe had been trending in a good direction and they certainly carried that momentum through this game as they won going away to grab the final playoff spot in 13-6A. College Park just narrowly misses out in Coach Coats’ inaugural campaign, but it will be interesting to see what he can do with a full offseason with the squad.
Bridgeland 48-17 over Cy Springs, was +8, 69% to win - Bridgeland capped an impressive 16-6A run with a dominating performance over Cy Springs to capture the outright district title. Coach Lonnie Madison’s Bears could make some noise in the D1 Region 2 playoffs.
Region 3:
Houston Math Science and Tech 13-7 over Westside, was -12, 22% to win - This was a HUGE result, which unfortunately sent Westside out of the playoffs, but also sent Lamar to the D1 bracket, altering the balance of power in both Region 3 brackets.
Cinco Ranch 40-36 over Seven Lakes and Jordan 52-49 over Morton Ranch - An absolutely wild Thursday night in 19-6A saw two games occurring a few hundred feet from each other, both featuring multiple fourth quarter lead changes and both seeing the winning team score 10 points in the final minutes of the game to win by 4 and 3, respectively. As it was happening, multiple teams’ playoff fates were in the balance, but ultimately Jordan’s last-second FG put them into the playoffs and knocked Cinco Ranch out. These two results also put Katy into the D1 bracket.
Summer Creek 45-28 over Atascocita, was -7, 32% to win - Summer Creek got their first ever win over Atascocita in style as Lloyd Avant rushed for over 300 yards. The two teams are heading into different brackets with entirely different momentum. Atascocita will need to turn things around quickly given the incredible strength on their side of the D1 bracket. Summer Creek, on the other hand, looks like a heavy favorite to play into mid-December in the D2 bracket. More on that in our next newsletter…
Region 4:
25-6A - It was only going to end this way. Vista Ridge and McNeil won, earning playoff berths for themselves and ultimately sending Vandegrift to D1 via a 4-way tiebreaker that knocked 7-3 Westwood out of the playoffs. We thought it couldn’t get crazier than last year, but we were wrong.
Weslaco 27-21 over San Benito, was -9, 29% to win - Weslaco hit our radar a few weeks ago and they closed out the season with a win over San Benito to finish as 10-0 undefeated district champions…awesome stuff from the Panthers!
With all of the above playing out, how did it affect the new Top 50?
Week 12 Top 50
With the model getting 88% of the games right this week, there wasn’t much movement in the Top 50.
Summer Creek did jump up to #5 with their win over Atascocita, while Atascocita dropped to #7.
Willis moved up to #11, following up their win over The Woodlands with a good performance against Oak Ridge.
Prosper moved up 4 spots to #14 after beating a tough McKinney squad.
And at the back end of the rankings, Klein Cain moved up 12 spots to #40 with their impressive win over Tomball. Cy Falls moved up to #41 with their win over Cy Ranch.
We always like to look at the rankings in terms of tiers. The Top 3 are in their own tier, as they have been all year. North Shore, Desoto, and Duncanville have remained well ahead of anyone chasing them.
Westlake, Summer Creek, and Vandegrift are fairly interchangeable in the second tier, with their Elos suggesting that they’re all within a FG of each other.
Below those top two tiers, things start to stack up where you have a whole bunch of teams that are pretty close to each other. From Byron Nelson at #10 to Lewisville at #26, those teams are separated by less than a TD and 2pt conversion. That same eight point spread covers teams #26 through #40. In other words, the order of the teams in each of those tiers is certainly debatable.
As a little teaser to our playoff preview coming up later this week, it’s interesting to note that the D1 bracket has 6 of the Top 10 and 9 of the Top 16 in this week’s rankings. Among the top contenders, the two brackets are pretty close in strength. Where they separate, however, is in the depth of the quality teams in each bracket; the D1 bracket will feature 20 of the Top 30 teams in the state.
As we often say, think of these as more or less approximations and less as being discrete definitive rankings of each team. Pay close attention to the Elo ratings out to the right and note how close or how far apart those are from teams nearby to get a sense of the tiering of the teams. And yes, some teams that lost are still above teams that beat them…we will see that throughout the year. It’s a feature of the Elo system that can be a little off-putting, even to us, but the system doesn’t try to overreact by design, which can sometimes lead to obvious underreactions. On the whole, it works really well, but it can break down a bit on too much scrutiny of individual, specific cases in a specific point in time.
Full Scoreboard
And, with all of that covered, check below for every result in the state this weekend!