Final Standings – Mythical MatchUp Challenge

The challenge winner is …… Quince Orchard.

If you have been following this blog – you know by now that I have been running a fantasy high school football league – called Mythical Match-UP Challenge (MMU) since early September.

The MMU uses offensive and defensive statistics – readily found – as published on WaPo’s – AllMetSports web page – which covers all the metro area sports. The Post does a marvelous job covering all sports with the cooperation of the area’s Athletic Directors (AD’s).

Rather than depend on individual performances my MMU challenge matched 7 teams statistics in two separate leagues – MoCo and Metro – and had them face off against one another (in their respective league) during their regular football season. Only two teams, Quince Orchard and Our Lady of Good Counsel competed in both leagues. Otherwise the leagues were comprised of local Montgomery County teams and selected teams from across a variety of counties and private schools in the greater Metro Area.

All teams at one time or another during their 2012 season were ranked within the Post’s Top 20 teams or the Gazette’s Top 10.

So now after 8 match-up challenge games we have a winner of the inaugural Montgomery Community Media – Mythical Match-Up Challenge.

In the MoCo League it is Quince Orchard.

In the Metro League it is – again, Quince Orchard.

Ok, you may call me a homer but the stats don’t lie – they are by far the most offensively productive and stingy defensive team in Montgomery County – no one comes close to competing with them in these categories.

Does Quince Orchard have their faults? Certainly – but they come up very rarely – and if they want to finish what was started last year at Raven’s Stadium – they must play without the mental lapses that come their way (as in the Seneca Valley loss – this past October)

Runner-Up in the MoCo league was Good Counsel.

The difference between finishing second to QO was by 22 Mythical Points (look it up if you don’t know what that is – go to my website www.photoloaf.com and look up Mythical Match-Up Challenge for the rules). Two tough defensive games against DeMatha and St. Johns were the difference for GC in the mythical point (MP) rankings. QO only had the defensive loss to Seneca Valley to contend with during the season. For GC and QO the effects of the DeMatha and Seneca Valley games cancelled out any advantage over one another during the challenge season. But if GC could have prevented those 17 points allowed to St. John’s in week 6 of the MMU challenge – GC could have improved their mythical point calculation and would have been the winner in the MoCo League.

Now looking at the contests over in the Metro League.

Presently, the Post ranks the three best teams in all of the Metro area in this order … Good Counsel, Stone Bridge and Wise. Those 3 teams were among the 7 that were in the Metro MMU Challenge. However once we match their stats in head to head play as I did in this challenge a different outcome occurs. That is what the challenge is about – playing heads up in – improbable match ups.

Wise ended up on the bottom of the standings. Good Counsel finished third. Stone Bridge (IMHO is the best of all area teams) finished second to Quince Orchard.

Stone Bridge ran into tough regular season competition in their VA Triple A Liberty division – Broad Run scored 14 against them, Fairfax, just last week scored 28 against Stone Bridge, because Stone Bridge gave up the ball on 5 turnovers. In the MMU Challenge Team Break downs (turnovers, fumbles, interceptions etc.) all count against team performance. And that along with giving up points defensively is what hurt Stone Bridge in the Metro League challenge at the end.

Wise on the other hand – beat up on everyone in the 4A South in Prince Georges County. They may still prove to be the best 4A team out there by the time Maryland’s regional playoffs end. However in the MMU Challenge – they fell victim to the match-up scheduling and got consistently beat by the better teams across the Metro region. It did not help their cause when the AD did not report their stats to WaPo’s AllMetSports – and thus they picked up a big goose egg in stats and a loss in the column during match-up season. You got to play the cards when they are dealt – you can’t look back.

Thus by virtue of a continuing great season Quince Orchard wins the Metro League too.

Regrets. I have a few.

Prior to the beginning of the season I chose Winston Churchill over Damascus to compete in the MMU Challenge. Churchill has some rising stars; little did I know that Damascus has proven to have even more.

Friendship Collegiate. I drank the Kool-Aid. I fell victim to the reading the Washington Post preseason write-ups. This will be the only time I choose a charter school to compete in the MMU Challenge. Playing games out of the area – week after week – not reporting stats – forfeiting games – all of the above made them a bad choice to compete in the Challenge. Their inclusion (read that as lack of competitive stats) only padded the Mythical Point totals for opposing teams they faced in the Challenge. I should have included a team from Calvert, Frederick or Arlington counties. Huntington, Urbana, and Yorktown come to mind.

PS: Note to Washington Post Sports – be careful the next time you take on a team like Friendship and rank them in the top 5 for nearly half the season based on individual team make up – it never works out. Your mantra for next year should be team performance – as well as strength of schedule. By the way where are they ranked now – somewhere way below Huntington (#20)?

So, now I will be calling on my good friends at MCM who are ready to produce the first MMU Challenge Plaque. Hey, we can also do the video thing if you want to. We of course agreed ahead of the challenge only to award one challenge plaque. It would go to the MoCo League winner. MCM tells me that their web readership across the region will need to move up a notch – before “we” can award a Metro MMU Challenge Plaque.

So with the magic of MCM’s nimble webmasters I have included below the final MMU season standings with Mythical Points

Zero (0) points are a result of BYE Weeks
“X” – team did not compete in Playoffs

Zero (0) points are a result of BYE Weeks
“X” – team did not compete in Playoffs

Phil Fabrizio
November 8, 2012

About Phil Fabrizio

Phil Fabrizio is an event, news and sports photographer in the Washington D.C. Metro area. He lives in North Potomac and has operated Sugarloaf Photography since 1985. He is a member of the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce and serves on the board of the Glen Echo Partnership for Arts and Culture, Inc in Glen Echo. Stop by Phil's PhotoLoaf site or follow him on Twitter @Photoloaf. Find Phil's blog on MyMCMedia here.

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