With a month left in the soccer regular season, the Second Region appears to be as wide-open as it’s been in recent years after Madisonville knocked off preseason favorite Henderson County 1-0 Tuesday.
So in the grand scheme of things, Hopkinsville beat Madisonville who beat Henderson County who beat Warren Central who beat Hopkinsville. It makes this week’s YSE Super Seven the toughest we have done to date. In order to come up with the region’s top three, we decided to delve into to the numbers.
The Maher Rankings is the only system in the state that ranks the state’s soccer teams based on a computer formula. In the absence of any other system, that, along with their wins and losses, are what we are going to use to make our argument.
Coming into the week, Maher ranked Henderson 15th, Hopkinsville 26th, and Madisonville 43rd in the state.
If you take the mean Maher ranking of each team played, Henderson County has played the toughest schedule (43.6) followed by Hopkinsville (68.9) and Madisonville (85.4).
The mean Maher ranking of each team beaten shows that Henderson County (53.1) again has the better ranking over Hopkinsville (91.1) and Madisonville (111.1).
However, the mean Maher ranking of each team’s losses shows that Hopkinsville (9.6) has lost to tougher teams than Madisonville (21.0) and Henderson County (25.0).
In looking at their body of work, Henderson County’s best two wins according to Maher are over No. 13 Oldham County and No. 17 Warren Central. Madisonville lost to Oldham County, and Hopkinsville has a loss to Warren Central.
Hopkinsville’s best two wins are over No. 39 Apollo and No. 43 Madisonville. Both Hoptown and Henderson County have losses to No. 7 South Warren.
Other than Henderson County, the best win Madisonville owns is against No. 41 Male.
Madisonville lost to Hopkinsville but beat Henderson. Hopkinsville beat Madisonville and plays Henderson County Tuesday. Madisonville won’t see either unless they meet in the region tournament.
So where does that leave us? After crunching the numbers and looking at the full body of work, it leaves us where we were last week.
1) Henderson County (6-2-1, Maher No. 15) – The Colonels own a two-game losing streak ahead of their Thursday showdown with Christian County. Good showings against No. 8 Elizabethtown and Mater Dei, the 43rd ranked team in Indiana, will help solidify their position in the top spot.
2) Hopkinsville (8-3, Maher No. 26) – The three Tiger losses have come to teams in the top 20 with two of them in the top 10. Hoptown has a brutal schedule upcoming with No. 30 Marshall County (Sept. 13), No. 15 Henderson County (Sept. 18), No. 19 McCracken County (Sept. 20), and No. 24 Owensboro (Sept. 22).
3) Madisonville (8-3-1, Maher No. 43) – The Maroons make an argument for a higher ranking with their win over Henderson County. However, five of their eight wins have come against teams ranked 80 or higher in the Maher Rankings. The Maroons can strengthen their resume Tuesday when they play No. 5 Daviess County.
4) University Heights Academy (6-2-1, Maher No. 102) – The Blazers saw their 29-game streak of scoring at least one goal end with a scoreless tie against Paducah Tilghman and a 3-0 loss to Hopkinsville. The Blazers can make a claim to move into the top three with games upcoming with No. 50 Graves County, as well as Henderson County and Madisonville.
5) Webster County (5-4, Maher No. 101) – The Trojans have beaten the teams they should have and lost to teams ranked ahead of them. Their five wins have come against teams with a combined 11 wins with Trigg County owning seven of those. A Sept. 25 contest with Apollo is the only match Webster has remaining against a top 50 team.
6) Trigg County (7-1, Maher No. 127) – Strength of schedule is not helping the Wildcats in the Maher rankings, but like Webster County, they are beating the teams they should. The Wildcats will need to take care of business over the next two weeks heading into a stretch where they play UHA, Graves County, and Hopkinsville to end the season.
7) Christian County (5-7, Maher No. 147) – The Colonels are going through a stretch of dropping five of their last six games, but no one else in the region has made a strong case to move past them. That one win was an exciting one that saw them score twice late to force an overtime with Marion County and then beat the Knights in a shootout.