Winless Watch (Boys): Final 2005-06

No miracles on hardwood here - the sectionals played out to form for our three remaining Winless Watch teams. Time to hand out the WW hardware:

Second runner-up for WW Boys Team of the Year honors is Cowan. The 0-20 Blackhawks posted an average margin of defeat of 17.2 ppg - only the third team in this decade to go winless and still post an average margin of defeat of under 20 points. Eight of their losses were by 10 points or less, so it's not like they were completely uncompetitive. The Blackhawks closed out their season with a 75-59 defeat at the hands of Union City.

Believe it or not, the decision as to who should be first runner-up and who should be WW Boys Team of the Year wasn't as easy as I had made it sound earlier. The other two WW teams, if matched up, would probably battle to a 12-12 tie.

Howe Military struggled to an 0-20 record and averaged 35.7 points less than their opponents. Sagarin's index says the Cadets ranked 393rd out of 393 teams; their strength of schedule was rated 387th. They lost to such luminaries as South Bend Trinity, LaPorte LaLumiere (twice) and Clinton Christian, in addition to their trifecta against powerhouse White's (rated 388th by Sagarin) and dual defeats to Lakeview Christian (331st), Lakewood Park (323rd) and FW Keystone (390th). The Cadets boast a strong resumé for TotY honors.

Conversely, Cannelton posted an 0-21 record against a similar strength of schedule (Sagarin says the 'Dogs SoS ranked 379th) - while Howe's nearly 36-point average margin of defeat is shockingly poor, it pales in comparison to Cannelton's 50.6. The Sagarin index places the Bulldogs at 391st out of the state's 393 teams. I've detailed in earlier WW posts the misery of Cannelton's outcomes this year, and won't rehash it here, but suffice to say that this was a historically bad season for the Bulldogs. Aside from their two defeats against 387th-ranked New Harmony (by 4 and 13 points), and their 6-point loss against Cloverport (Ky.), their closest margin of defeat was by 32 points. Egads.

The easy way out would be to award co-Team of the Year honors to Cannelton and Howe Military; both teams are equally deserving of the award. But in a hypothetical pitched battle on a neutral court between these two teams from opposite ends of the state, the Cadets would edge out the Bulldogs. (Barely.) Really, they were a little more "competitive" than the Bulldogs this year - throw out their Feb. 1 and 3 defeats against 2A schools Central Noble and Fairfield (by 71 and 97 points), and their average margin of defeat falls to just under 31 points per game. Take out Cannelton's two worst defeats - an 81-point loss to Hancock County (Ky.) and a 74-point loss to Lanesville, and their average margin of defeat is still near 49 points per game.

Therefore, the WW Boys Team of the Year for the 2005-06 season is the Cannelton Bulldogs. The Bulldogs join their colleagues on the girls' side, the Indianapolis Howe Hornets, as the inaugural winners of Team of the Year honors.

This feature will hopefully continue starting in January of next year - see you then!

(Special thanks, as always, to the inestimable John Harrell, whose Indiana High School Basketball site is priceless to me when putting together Winless Watch. The man should go into the Hall of Fame someday for his tireless work on compling current and recent Indiana HS hoops info.)

UPDATE: Calpreps.com says that on a neutral court, Cannelton would edge out Howe Military, 56-55. They have a game predictor program that has been fairly accurate over the course of the season, and I think it's really a neat program! You can plug in any two teams and see how a matchup between the two would fare. Geeks like me would love it.

This gives me an idea for a project ... it would take an entire day off to do it, but what if I took Sagarin's one-class sectional lineup, did a random sectional draw, and played out the entire state tournament (under the old single-class format) using calpreps.com's predictor?