Central Ohio Top Teams (Post Scrimmages)

T

The Insider

Member
Scrimmages are complete. Some teams have scrimmaged each other giving a preview of what is in store for this season.

The Top Team
Pickerington Central. No one else is close

The next group
Olentangy Orange, Hartley, Reynoldsburg, Gahanna, New Albany, Liberty, Scioto, Upper Arlington, Marysville

The 3rd level
Westerville South, Bradley, Westerville North, Pickerington North, Canal Winchester, Berlin, Watterson, Desales, Jerome

Going to be a long year
Olentangy, Westerville Central, Coffman, Davidson, Darby, St Charles, Grove City
 
 
The Insider said:
Scrimmages are complete. Some teams have scrimmaged each other giving a preview of what is in store for this season.

The Top Team
Pickerington Central. No one else is close

The next group
Olentangy Orange, Hartley, Reynoldsburg, Gahanna, New Albany, Liberty, Scioto, Upper Arlington, Marysville

The 3rd level
Westerville South, Bradley, Westerville North, Pickerington North, Canal Winchester, Berlin, Watterson, Desales, Jerome

Going to be a long year
Olentangy, Westerville Central, Coffman, Davidson, Darby, St Charles, Grove City
Click to expand...
May be switch a team or two in the 2nd and third groups , but a pretty good list
 
Absolutely laughable list.

Orange was DESTROYED by New Albany on Thursday. They are the Long Season category.

Westerville South and DeSales are definitely top 5-7 teams
 
KramericaIndustries said:
Absolutely laughable list.

Orange was DESTROYED by New Albany on Thursday. They are the Long Season category.

Westerville South and DeSales are definitely top 5-7 teams
Click to expand...
Not sure about DeSales [Lost a lot but they are more re-load at this point ?} but agree Orange was over ranked no question . Liberty NA scrimmage I heard was a back and forth affair. Some heard it as a NA blowout . Gahanna may be the real deal ? We will see, they were pretty good with Lowery , good skill kids around, but the question is line play with them They had Karter Johnson before he transferred to the East side sports factory . Is this team better? I was thinking they were overrated by a few but may be they are top 5 ?
 
The Insider said:
Scrimmages are complete. Some teams have scrimmaged each other giving a preview of what is in store for this season.

The Top Team
Pickerington Central. No one else is close

The next group
Olentangy Orange, Hartley, Reynoldsburg, Gahanna, New Albany, Liberty, Scioto, Upper Arlington, Marysville

The 3rd level
Westerville South, Bradley, Westerville North, Pickerington North, Canal Winchester, Berlin, Watterson, Desales, Jerome

Going to be a long year
Olentangy, Westerville Central, Coffman, Davidson, Darby, St Charles, Grove City
Click to expand...
Where is groveport?
 
The Insider said:
Scrimmages are complete. Some teams have scrimmaged each other giving a preview of what is in store for this season.

The Top Team
Pickerington Central. No one else is close

The next group
Olentangy Orange, Hartley, Reynoldsburg, Gahanna, New Albany, Liberty, Scioto, Upper Arlington, Marysville

The 3rd level
Westerville South, Bradley, Westerville North, Pickerington North, Canal Winchester, Berlin, Watterson, Desales, Jerome

Going to be a long year
Olentangy, Westerville Central, Coffman, Davidson, Darby, St Charles, Grove City
Click to expand...
St Charles doesn’t deserve to be listed with any of these teams LOL.
 
How did Desales do against Hilliard Bradley in it's most recent scrimmage?

How did Watterson do against Sheridan in it's most recent scrimmage?

Thanks
 
Olentangy Liberty has had a rough time in it's two scrimmages. But they both were against two good teams(NA and Pick Cent), so not sure what to expect.
 
PN is hard to gauge- everyone not named pick central gets blasted by Ed’s. However they did respond nice against a decent canal team before the lightning
 
Dell 112 said:
Olentangy Liberty has had a rough time in it's two scrimmages. But they both were against two good teams(NA and Pick Cent), so not sure what to expect.
Click to expand...
My observation after watching the PC scrimmage is Liberty will be fine. They appear to be coached very well and are fundamentally sound. Their Oline and Dline are really strong. Once they scheme/prepare for their opponents and play their starters, they will be hard to beat.
 
MitSulHer said:
Let's see your list?
Click to expand...

I feel absolutely zero need to create a pre-season list before I've seen real varsity action from any of these teams. But there are a couple points that anyone who actually has seen the teams play would be able to make.

Is Gahanna actually going to be better than Wville South during the playoffs? Don't know. Didnt see the scrimmage and we wont know until we see late-season varsity action. Both teams have a lot of talent. So does a team like DeSales, I've been watching tape on them for the players who are left despite their graduation. And Liberty.

But one thing you can tell right now is a team that doesn't have the skill position and physicality mix needed to go somewhere in the playoffs. Orange is one of these teams.

Pre-season lists are of little use. Let's see what happens after some games are played.
 
KramericaIndustries said:
Pre-season lists are of little use. Let's see what happens after some games are played.
Click to expand...

Yep. I've seen too many times where a team will "win" their scrimmages, only to have mediocre regular seasons, and also the reverse of that. Not to mention, teams progress at a different arc *during* the season. Probably by about week 3 is when things start to shape up minus injuries, of course.
 
I believe the week 3 winner between Jonathan Alder (Div III) - Bloom Carroll (Div IV) will have earned a spot in the Top 10 of Central Ohio teams. Yea they are small schools but if you can play, you can play.

Pickerington Central is by far the class of Central Ohio with Hartley probably the next best. Hopefully Central Ohio can bring home a State Championship or two this fall.
 
WJ-OSU-STEELERS said:
I believe the week 3 winner between Jonathan Alder (Div III) - Bloom Carroll (Div IV) will have earned a spot in the Top 10 of Central Ohio teams. Yea they are small schools but if you can play, you can play.
Click to expand...

Comon man, for reals?

Great tag line, but unfortunately there is absolutely zero evidence that either of these teams can play with even average D2 or D1 schools, and the only real data point we have from last year is Alder getting absolutely blown off the field by DeSales in the playoffs. So I'm going to go ahead and say they can't "play" in the context we are talking about here.

Smaller programs with big records, hey that's great. Lots of tradition built in and I'm sure it feels good winning all the time. But stop deluding yourself that they could play a D1 schedule and have anything remotely like that success. The schedules and playoffs these teams have until they face a team like DeSales would be doing a disservice to tomato cans by calling them tomato cans.
 
Kramer - Get over the OCC/Central Ohio DI schedule. Central Ohio DI has improved immensely over the last 20 years but it is not the week to week meat grinder of Cincinnati or Cleveland DI schools. A Bloom Carroll who has 2 DI commits & another 2 getting looks and is a State Final 4 team from a year ago could definitely beat/be a better team than many of the 6-10 teams mention….
* A Marysville team with one stud DI commit and what else?
* A UA team on the rebuild with a stud rb but whose Sr class was beat by 4 td’s as freshmen by DIV Clinton Massie. Still a lot of work to do at UA but moving in the right direction
* A Canal Winchester who has a good rb - but without him, no one would consider them a possible top 10 team and I doubt they are with him.
* Gahanna & Reynoldsburg - when’s the last time they won a big game?
* Olentangy Liberty is legit but Berlin - let’s let them go out & prove something. They just open a few years ago.
* Bradley show promise a few years ago but seems to have skip back

So yea, “for reals”.
 
WJ-OSU-STEELERS said:
Kramer - Get over the OCC/Central Ohio DI schedule. Central Ohio DI has improved immensely over the last 20 years but it is not the week to week meat grinder of Cincinnati or Cleveland DI schools. A Bloom Carroll who has 2 DI commits & another 2 getting looks and is a State Final 4 team from a year ago could definitely beat/be a better team than many of the 6-10 teams mention….
* A Marysville team with one stud DI commit and what else?
* A UA team on the rebuild with a stud rb but whose Sr class was beat by 4 td’s as freshmen by DIV Clinton Massie. Still a lot of work to do at UA but moving in the right direction
* A Canal Winchester who has a good rb - but without him, no one would consider them a possible top 10 team and I doubt they are with him.
* Gahanna & Reynoldsburg - when’s the last time they won a big game?
* Olentangy Liberty is legit but Berlin - let’s let them go out & prove something. They just open a few years ago.
* Bradley show promise a few years ago but seems to have skip back

So yea, “for reals”.
Click to expand...
I think what he meant was that while those two schools have solid teams, they don't have the depth of players to play a D1 OCC schedule. They don't probably have the athletes that the top schools have either. Bloom Carroll may have 2 to 4 D1 recruits but what D1 schools looking at them? FBS or FCS? Do those players ever leave the field during a game? They may hold their own in a game vs a good D1 school or playing a D1 schedule, but what about their teammates? Alder getting blown out by De Sales suggests that they would probably suffer the same fate vs the other top ten schools considering that DeSales was probably a middle of the road top ten team themselves.
 
It does frustrate me that “top teams in Central Ohio” discussions always center toward ranking the teams based on overall prowess (almost exclusively is D1-D3) and nary a discussion being ran on the small schools & how they compare among their peers in the area. And this isn’t specific to Yappi: the TV stations and ThisWeek papers carry the same blind spots.

“Top teams” in an area can mean ‘literally the best teams on the evaluation of how they stack up against other best teams’ (OCC and CCL, primarily) but it can also mean ‘taking into consideration smaller teams, their body of work against similar-size competition and crowning the best teams of their respective size-classification — even if it’s a small slice of the attention pie, they get to have a piece.’

Couple questions to ponder: 1) would 2007 Big Walnut or Licking Valley not have been considered a “top team in Central Ohio” under the criteria we (this thread) are using here on Yappi? 2) for funsies: what type of performance would Harvest Prep need to make vs Hartley to be in this discussion? Is it a simple “win or bust?”
 
I think it is fair to rank teams based on "big school" and "small school". D 1-3 can be lumped together a bit, but when you get from 4-7, they deserve to have their own "top 10". It has nothing to do with the school or it's success, and everything to do with school size.

I don't see Bloom Carroll or JA keeping up with anyone on your list besides Canal. But my point is that there is no shame in that because the schools listed are 3x to 4x larger in population.

I also don't doubt that a good small school could beat a big school on any given night. But their population doesn't give them the benefit of depth and playing an OCC schedule would be more than difficult on a small school. Still, this should not take away from the success or the perception of a successful small school. It is not fair for them to be measured against a large, suburban school. It's apples to oranges.

It's the same argument people make for public D1 v. private D1. The public D1 right tackle gets injured and it's a major downgrade for the team. But generally the top private D1 schools have back ups that are more 1B than 2's or 3's (I am not anti-private, to be the best you have to beat the best).
 
WJ-OSU-STEELERS said:
but it is not the week to week meat grinder of Cincinnati or Cleveland DI schools. A Bloom Carroll who has 2 DI commits & another 2 getting looks and is a State Final 4 team from a year ago could definitely beat/be a better team than many of the 6-10 teams mention….
Click to expand...
What Cincy and Cleveland public school leagues are vastly superior and much bigger 'Meat grinders" than some OCC leagues?
 
Harry - I do not believe I mention public schools. I was referring to the Catholic schools, I’d assume you know that. Yes, the newly formed OCC division with your beloved Coffman, the 2 Olentangy schools, Davidson & UA will not have a week off as in years past with a Westland, Grove City, Delaware or Central Crossings o. The schedule. The OCC has what 30+ schools with a good 10 of them very challenged in football to say the least. Still a very good public D1 conference but there have been at least a couple of get well games on the schedule in years past. Look at Pick Central schedule this year. After the first three games the varsity may only play in the 4th qrt in what, maybe 2 games? Part of that is obviously they are perceived/expected to be a top nationally ranked team but no one else in their OCC division is of state caliber ranking. Maybe one of them will prove differently.
 
WJ-OSU-STEELERS said:
Harry - I do not believe I mention public schools. I was referring to the Catholic schools, I’d assume you know that. Yes, the newly formed OCC division with your beloved Coffman, the 2 Olentangy schools, Davidson & UA will not have a week off as in years past with a Westland, Grove City, Delaware or Central Crossings o. The schedule. The OCC has what 30+ schools with a good 10 of them very challenged in football to say the least. Still a very good public D1 conference but there have been at least a couple of get well games on the schedule in years past. Look at Pick Central schedule this year. After the first three games the varsity may only play in the 4th qrt in what, maybe 2 games? Part of that is obviously they are perceived/expected to be a top nationally ranked team but no one else in their OCC division is of state caliber ranking. Maybe one of them will prove differently.
Click to expand...
Of course , that is a given[ Catholics } they have a totally different dynamic in terms of drwaing areas , depth and being able to take on a meat grkinder schedule. So you weren't talking about the Publics in those areas ? Just catholics ? K. Pick Central is in the wrong league. It's a joke . But they have challenged themselves in the early portion of the schedule for years to their credit . They have usually had the talent and or depth to do so . The cross over games can be challenging for some schools as well . Of course I am talking this era and realignment. Coffman entering a down period in the second year of the tougher conference is unfortunate . Davidson also being down is another tough break [For them} . I think over the last say 15 years good CO programs and conferences are much more on par with those places. Not saying superior , all due respect to the Datyton area Cincy and Cleveland metro's which have been the top areas . Gap has closed as you said.
 
Look, I'm the last person in the world to argue transitive property on football HS football games because I know how ill informed that is, but if you want to argue that a really good D4 team is on the level with better D2 and avg D1 schools in COH then there needs to be SOME kind of piece of data to form this opinion with.

None exists. Several points exist to the contrary.

It's easy to get overconfident watching your team beat up on tomato cans. The problem with a team like Bloom Carroll is, they never play anyone even remotely good in D2, nor do any of the teams they play. The very few D2 games any of them play are not the D1 toughened D2 schools in the big COH leagues.

Bloom Carroll made the final 4, great, nice season. The team they lost to (Lake Catholic) got beat by D2 Walsh, who in turn lost their 2nd round playoff game to a 3-5 Benedictine team. Laughable to make any kind of argument that any of those teams could take the field against any of the "traditional media" top 10 lists that include teams from lower divisions like DeSales, Hartley, Wville South etc.

People can cry media bias all they want. The results are on the field and the media are doing the logical and correct thing by analyzing what data is out there. And it's never going to change until these perennial 9-1 small schools start scheduling bigger games.

BTW, in addition to Powers younger brothers at Marysville, who are of similar size, they also have 6'4 310 Gavin Rohrs who has signed to play at Miami. With 2 players in the top 60 in Ohio list, Marysville has tons more on paper than Bloom Carroll does. Marysville would 100% FLATTEN a smaller school (both physically and count wise) like BC.

No one is going out of their way to slight kids who play at these small school programs. Again, nice program, very successful, and I'm sure a great friday night community tradition. But stop acting like they belong with bigger schools, because they dont.

Here's Olentangy's schedule this year. Other than this weird game against NDCL and perennial doormat YOTW (with apologies to Harry), there is very little chance Bloom Carroll could win more games on it and a 100% chance they could not finish above .500.

1629140276860.png
 
KramericaIndustries said:
People can cry media bias all they want. The results are on the field and the media are doing the logical and correct thing by analyzing what data is out there. And it's never going to change until these perennial 9-1 small schools start scheduling bigger games.
Click to expand...

I’m not crying “media bias” — I’m criticizing the media preference of only highlighting the best of the high-enrollment schools.

The media’s not analyzing “the data out there” anymore than just looking at the best of the big schools and choosing to highlight them as such, for the purpose of viewer interest. 15-20 years ago, it wasn’t like this. But massive suburban growth and the corresponding ascent of those suburban programs froze out the small schools over time to where the non-OCC/non-CCL gets a pittance of coverage/acknowledgement. (I would also argue the dramatic change of competition level Hartley climbed in the 2010’s compared to what they were before then, e.g. 2000’s, also encouraged outlets like NBC4 & ThisWeek to just cut bait on the smaller schools.)
 
I think we are having a different discussion if we are talking about media coverage of rural teams vs whether or not they belong in consolidated top 10s. Just because media are correctly not putting them in top 10s doesn't mean they are avoiding coverage of them. I see plenty of small school coverage in Dispatch, FFN TV shows and the like, so not sure what you are arguing there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top