I have to keep it real here—it was not the most exciting regular season in terms of monitoring our scholastic ranking system this winter.
While we’ve seen some well-played games (last Friday’s Freedom/Liberty game by far the best contest I’ve called this winter) and I’m anticipating a very entertaining post-season, there wasn’t a whole lot of movement among our “SportsTalk” poll results over the course of the regular season.
Before we get to our last rankings of the year, here’s a quick recap if you are not familiar with our program.
Our pollsters are comprised of a combination of local media members (Morning Call’s Keith Groller, RCN Sports Director Gary Laubach and RCN basketball Announcers Tom Stoudt and Dennis Laub and Lehigh Valley Basketball Rankings’s Toomey Anderson). We also have three distinguished head basketball coaches giving their insights on the top teams in the Lehigh Valley area.
All District XI schools were eligible for the poll and were divided into either our “big schools” (5A & 6A classifications) or “small schools” (4A & below) rankings.
The “small schools” consist of Wilson, Saucon Valley, Bethlehem Catholic, Northwestern, Palisades, Palmerton, Salisbury, Notre Dame-GP, Moravian Academy, Lincoln Leadership, Pen Argyl, Northern Lehigh and Catasauqua.
The “big schools” are Bangor, Central Catholic, Southern Lehigh, Whitehall, Allen, Dieruff, Easton, Emmaus, Freedom, Liberty, Nazareth, E. Stroudsburg North & South, Pocono Mountain East, Pocono Mountain West, Stroudsburg, Northampton, Parkland, and Pleasant Valley.
As far as our “final” results…which looked very similar to what our pre-season poll looked like:
Big School Basketball Poll—Class 5A & up (8 pollsters)
- Allen – 40 points (8 first place votes)
- Emmaus – 26 points
- Parkland – 22 points
- Pocono Mountain West – 14 points
- Bangor – 13 points
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Small School Basketball Poll—Class 4A & Below (7 pollsters)
- Becahi – 35 points (7 first place votes)
- Salisbury – 24 points
- Notre Dame-GP – 23 points
- Saucon Valley – 15 points
- Wilson – 5 points
Just to recap, Allen maintained its standings as the area’s (and the state’s) top “big school” team all winter by running the table (through this past weekend), and was only really challenged in a handful of games all year.
Among the “smaller schools,” Bethlehem Catholic lost just three league games to date—all by three points are less, and all of them to bigger-sized schools.
The only other teams that had any significant in-season movement in our polls were Parkland and Wilson. The Trojans got off to a slow start and fell off our poll completely before bouncing back and, now, looking about as good as any team in the region (except perhaps Allen, who they played Monday night on RCN-TV). The Warriors, under a new coach and armed with a very young squad, have made a late-season push and end the season as our “number five” team.
One other note, while Pocono Mountain West slid down from its “number two” position in our preseason poll, I had one local head coach whose opinion I really trust tell me last weekend that he is seriously concerned about “West” and does not want to face them in the post-season. The Panthers dropped a few regular season games that, on paper, they probably shouldn’t have lost—but with all the talent on that squad and the match-up problems they could create–they very likely could play deep into the league and/or district tournaments.
To help break down these results in further detail and to talk about the Colonial League and Eastern Pennsylvania Conference playoffs, RCN Sports Director Gary Laubach will join us on this week’s “SportsTalk.”
We’ll also talk about high school basketball in the DC region on this Thursday’s show as DMV Elite’s Marcus Helton will join us via Skype to talk about the area’s regular season, identify the top players and teams and look ahead to a busy final week of the regular season. Marcus will also give us some upcoming “match-ups to watch” along with his take on which teams will have the most success in the region’s post-season tournaments.
So tune in to the show this Thursday at 7pm or catch the podcast at rcn.com/atvn/sports-talk and let us know your basketball opinions and questions. If there’s a team, athlete or playoff match-up you’d like us to address on that show, be sure to email us at rcnsportstalk@rcn.com and tune-in for our panelists’ responses!
