The Maxwell Ratings were used to simulate this year’s state basketball tournament 1 million times. These are the results of those computer simulations for the girls brackets in classes AA through AAAAAA, which begin Friday.
Simulations for Class A, which begins Monday, will be published next week. Simulations for the boys brackets will be published later Friday.
Below, each of 160 girls teams is shown with their power ratings, their ranking among all teams in their classification, strength of draw in the tournament, average depth advanced to and number of times winning the state championship out of the 1 million simulations.
The data is compiled from scores reported to MaxPreps and Georgia Prep Country as of 3 p.m. Thursday. Although attempts are made to reconcile differences in the data, there are inevitably some missing, duplicated and incorrect results. Readers are encouraged to verify and submit corrections to those websites to improve the accuracy.
Please feel free to post any questions that you have. Loren Maxwell, creator of the Maxwell Ratings, will be available to answer them.
A few observations --
Team most likely to win – Vidalia wins 438,787 of 1 million simulations in Class AA. That's surprising given that another AA team, Greater Atlanta Christian, is the highest-rated team in any classification. GAC had 432,470 wins in the simulation. Vidalia has the better draw, according to Maxwell. The chances that one or the other will win is 87 percent.
Team least likely to win – Screven County made the state playoffs with only four victories, two of them in the Region 3-AA tournament. The Gamecocks are a 27,754,972-to-1 longshot.
Hardest class to predict – AAAA. No team wins more than one in five times, according to Maxwell. In fact, the top three teams – Alexander, Columbia and Rutland – win less than half the time combined.
Worth noting – Maxwell projects Allatoona (27-1) as the most likely winner in AAAAA with 248,412 wins. That would mean an end to Miller Grove's streak of five state titles. Miller Grove wins 201,702 times, which is only third most. Jenkins, which has the best draw in the tournament, comes in at 235,163.
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