(2-13-25) It is no secret that the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) is taking some heat by using MaxPreps rankings that helps to determine seeds in boys (and girls) basketball. A lot of questions and concerns about the format that is being used occurred this past week.

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This week a Dave Briggs story on the Toledo Blade highlighted one issue that still has not been corrected or updated.

Wellington (Ohio) was given a loss in a game that they did not play, the game listed on their MP results page was actually a a game that played by Eastlake (Washington) and Wellington Secondary School from British Columbia, Canada. It is not unusual for the MaxPreps pages assigned to each school in the US can have mistakes of reported opponents or scores.

Briggs story – According to Brayton Martin (MARTIN RPI) there were 81 schools with incomplete or incorrect schedules.

Briggs story goes in-depth on the situations faced….including a statement from an unnamed OHSAA source.

“You are correct that there are a few errors in there. We believe they are less than 1 percent of the approximately 30,000 varsity games played.”

Toledo Blade story by Dave Briggs

As of 2-13-25 (10:30am EST) from MaxPreps – the schedule below is for Wellington (Ohio), which includes Eastlake (Washington) picking up a win over Wellington Secondary School in British Columbia.

Updated after posting—

Sam Houseworth who has supplied rankings to the Stateline Sports Network over the years in football and basketball commented on the situation—

Latest rankings from Houseworth–

Along with missing results, another common error in MaxPreps is listing the wrong opponent. This is more common than one would think given the number of Shawnees, Notre Dames, Easterns, and Fairfields.

The fact that the OHSAA can’t use an internal rating like they do for football is mind boggling. They even had the opportunity when MartinRPI came to them his rating, but they went with MaxPreps instead, who has 49 other states to focus on.

While using an algorithm to seed teams is an improvement, the OHSAA has put only a fraction more care into its RPI over what the coaches put into seeding in years past.

Did you know….

Ohio is well-respected for having one of the best playoff ranking systems in high school football, recently Wisconsin updated their system by incorporating parts of the Ohio formula.

Indiana and Illinois are using 1800 technology in the selection process. Indiana uses ping-pong balls in a majority of championships, it is a random draw with no seeding.

In Illinois…The Rolling of the Peas is a tri-annual (fall, winter, spring) blind drawing that determines the state final pairings in IHSA bracketed team sports.