The 100-victory club: Three more for 2011?

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According to the records that I have compiled, there are 21 coaches in state history who have broken the 100-victory barrier. It’s an incredibly exclusive club, one that coaches enter only with excellence and longevity.

Excellence comes with not only having talented teams, but doing something with them — none of the 21 coaches with at least 100 victories have a career record below the .500 mark. Longevity comes with a passion for coaching, a passion for football and a passion for teaching — making it to 100 victories has taken every one of the 21 coaches at least 15 years to accomplish.

That said, only two current coaches have sustained both the excellence and the years to join the club: Cokeville’s Todd Dayton (an all-time state best 253 victories) and Natrona’s Steve Harshman (125 victories, 14th all-time from 1930-2010).

However, this season, as many as three current coaches could join this club, an unprecedented feat that says more about the individuals than about the group.

The three coaches on the cusp of joining the “100 Club” are Southeast’s Mark Bullington (98 career victories), Sheridan’s Don Julian (96) and Buffalo’s Pat Lynch (91).

If championships are the measure of success, then Bullington has to be included in the discussion of the best all-time. With seven state championships in his 12 years with the Cyclones, Bullington has won in bunches. His career record of 98-23 is a testament to that, too. Although Southeast had a consistent program in place when Bullington took over in 1999, he has made the Cyclones more than just consistent; by now, the Cyclones are threats for a state championship in every year, no matter the makeup of the roster.

Julian, meanwhile, is one of the most respected coaches in the state, a reputation earned with four championships in Riverton and another last year in Sheridan. After a short break from the high school game to join the staff at UW, Julian has been restoring the Sheridan program into a consistent state title contender. He is one coach the others don’t want to see on that other sideline. His career record, while coaching against some of the state’s best teams? 96-32.

Lynch has the toughest task of joining the club in 2011, with nine victories standing between him and the honor. But if anyone can overcome the odds, it’s Lynch. Working with one of 3A’s smallest schools, enrollment-wise, Lynch has rolled up a record of 91-37, winning at least seven games every season from 2003 forward. Since taking the reins of the Buffalo program in 1998, he has won a pair of state titles and taken the Bison to the title game four other times.

Obviously, 100 is an arbitrary mark. It doesn’t truly measure the things that make a high school coach great. But earning 100 victories takes those qualities that make coaches not only good coaches, but good men and good mentors for the children they lead.

Here is a quick glance at the club, with totals compiled from 1930 to 2010 to the best of my abilities:

Coach Wins Losses Ties
Dayton, Todd 253 49 0
Deti, John E. 205 94 8
Deti, John R. 188 102 2
Fullmer, Jerry 174 82 0
McDougall, John 156 115 2
Eskelsen, Joel 148 81 0
Hoff, Dallas 144 95 6
Blanchard, Okie 141 48 5
Gray, Walter 140 87 0
Moon, Mike 136 79 1
Scherry, Rick 133 84 1
Hill, Art 132 92 3
Bailey, Harold 128 92 0
Harshman, Steve 125 65 0
Mirich, Carl 124 101 1
Keith, Bruce 117 82 0
Dinnel, Don 113 61 0
Petronovich, Pete 113 102 5
Fackrell, Kay 111 79 0
Bartlett, Doug 102 73 0
Smith, Ben 101 33 0

–patrick

Updates: Hulett, Big Piney, Pinedale, Cowley

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A few updates have found their way to some pages. Or something. Does that make sense? Whatever. You know how I do this by now. Here’s some updates:

Missing games

Found the score for Hulett’s 55-6 victory over Buffalo, S.D., on Sept. 15, 1961

Found the score for Big Piney’s 26-25 victory over the Lyman JV on Nov. 11, 1942

Found the score for Pinedale’s 21-13 loss to the Kemmerer JV on Oct. 2, 1940

Coaches Project: Update for Cowley.

All-state teams: Mad props to Wes Sibert from Mountain View for hooking me up with a complete list for the 1998 Class 2A all-state team. I’ve long suspected this list of being incomplete and this week Wes sent me the complete list. Several players were missing off my old list, including some from Buffalo and Lyman and all the selections from Glenrock and Mountain View. Thanks again, Wes!

All the updates have been made on all the relevant pages.

–patrick

Statistics and home-field advantage….

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For one of my courses at graduate school here at the University of Wyoming, I had to analyze a data set and make some statistical conclusions about it. The point of the paper was to demonstrate competency with the statistical computer programs we have and to execute the correct test given the data… and to demonstrate those ideals, I decided to do some statistical crunching of home-field advantage in Wyoming high school football.

In short, my statistical analyses revealed that home-field advantage exists in Wyoming — and it’s huge in playoff games.

I’m not going to bog you down with the statistical number-crunching that I went through to do this (but if you’re interested, I can share some of my t scores, degrees of freedom, standard deviations, etc.). In a nutshell, here’s some of the fun stuff I discussed in my paper:

Home team record, 1930-2010: 10,965 victories, 8,482 losses, 447 ties, .562 winning percentage
Home team record, regular season, 1930-2010: 10,354-8,243-444, .555 winning percentage
Home team record, playoffs, 1931-2010: 611-239-3, .718 winning percentage (yes, there have been some ties in the playoffs… they were broken in various ways, but the points were not added to the official final score)

So while home teams win about 55 or 56 percent of the time, home teams in the playoffs win almost 72 percent of the time. Makes sense, as the better teams in the regular season get higher seeds and home games in the playoffs. Moving on…

Average score for home teams, all games, 1930-2010: 19.36 points
Average score for road teams, all games, 1930-2010: 16.05 points
Average difference in score between home teams and road teams, all games, 1930-2010: 3.31 points per game
Average difference in score between home teams and road teams, regular-season games, 1930-2010: 2.91 points per game
Average difference in score between home teams and road teams, playoff games, 1931-2010: 12.16 points per game

So there’s about a three-point difference between home teams and road teams for all games (that’s about a three-point bump the home team gets every game, just for playing at home). In the playoffs, that difference is more than 12 points per game. Probably skewed by an inordinate number of first-round playoff blowouts. Still, interesting…

This count doesn’t include games where the final score or location couldn’t be determined. The final total of counted games was little more than 19,000.

My final conclusion was that, without home-field advantage, you would expect the home team to win 50 percent of the time. The odd six percent can be explained in part by the location of the game. This affects about two games a week, or about 18 games a season, meaning that roughly every three years, every school will win at least one game — and lose at least one game — purely because of where the game was played.

This is the stripped-down, simplified version of my analysis. My paper was a lot more nerdy than this. Even so, I think even the casual fan will get a kick out of these numbers. So here they are. 🙂

–patrick

Newsbreak: Kelly Walsh

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Jim Horne steps down as KW coach (Casper Star-Tribune).

It’s this time of year again…. Has anyone else heard of any other coaches in the state stepping down? Let me know; leave a comment here or e-mail me at pschmiedt@yahoo.com. Thanks.

–patrick

Five Minute Introduction: Newcastle

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School: Newcastle
Nickname: Dogies
Colors: orange and black
Stadium: Schoonmaker Field
State championships: None
Times worth remembering: The Dogies underwent a renaissance of sorts when Erv Wentling took over as coach before the 1977 season. His first two seasons, the Dogies went a combined 14-2, and in his first five years Newcastle compiled an overall record of 32-8 and made the school’s only state championship game appearance (1981).
Times worth forgetting: Few teams have had a rougher five-year stretch than the Dogies died from 2001-05. In those five years, the Dogies won just two games, going 2-39 — at one point losing 29 consecutive games. Back-to-back winless seasons in 2002 and 2003, in which Newcastle was shut out nine times and lost 14 of 17 games by at least 25 points, were the low point of the streak.
Best team: Newcastle played some of its best football in the late 1940s, including what was probably the program’s best season in 1949. That year, the Dogies went 8-2, losing its season opener to Hot Springs, S.D., and its season finale to Cody in the Class A semifinals. In between, the Dogies won eight consecutive games and gave up only 40 points in those eight games, winning all but one game by at least 14 points.
Biggest win: After a 1-6 regular season, the 1996 Dogies were expected to be nothing more than first-round cannon fodder for 2A West champion Kemmerer in the first round of the playoffs. But no one told the Dogies. Jason Logan scored two fourth-quarter touchdowns – and, maybe more importantly, kicked two extra points – as the Dogies rallied from a 26-13 fourth-quarter deficit to come away with a 27-26 victory. The victory is the school’s only playoff win to date and inspiration for every Newcastle team to follow.
Heartbreaker: After 22 consecutive losing seasons, the 2006 Newcastle team finally made up for all the struggles of its predecessors. Until the playoffs. After losing its first two games, Newcastle won six games in a row and came into the playoffs with the No. 2 seed from the East and a home playoff game — the school’s first home postseason game in almost five decades. However, Big Piney, a playoff-savvy team that wasn’t fazed by the long trip east, gave the Dogies all they could handle. And then, with 2.4 seconds remaining in regulation, Seth Linn’s 15-yard touchdown catch — still disputed up in Newcastle as to whether or not it was caught inbounds — gave the Punchers a 12-6 victory and left the Dogies again on the outside of the championship hunt.

Newcastle team page.

Scoring records updates at a glance

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If you take a look at the scoring records page, you’ll see quite an influence from my last update. Although it makes sense to think that in this era of high-powered offense (and of six-man football), most of the updates to that page would have come from the 2010 season, it’s also interesting to note that the top two scoring games in state history now belong to games played in 1930 and 1932.

The new listing for most points scored by one team in a single game is the 113 points Cheyenne Central (then Cheyenne) put up against University Prep of Laramie on Halloween 1930. University Prep never had a chance, and for two reasons: one, the Buckaroos were not a good team, going winless in 1930 before dropping the sport for almost a decade; two, this game was never supposed to happen this way.

According to newspaper accounts of the game, University Prep made the trek over the summit to play what they thought was going to be Cheyenne’s junior varsity team. But the Indians, who otherwise had an open week, suited and played their varsity.

Even so, the game did not begin as a beat down. Prep actually matched the Indians’ first score and it was 6-6 early. Then the Indians unleashed the floodgates, and there was little the Buckaroos could do to stop it. The rest is 113 points of record-setting mayhem.

Meanwhile, the No. 2 highest scoring game since 1930 also came in the early 1930s — Lander’s 96-0 victory over Basin on Oct. 13, 1932. This was simply a case of a conference mismatch. Lander was in the midst of a great season; the Tigers finished 5-1-1. Lander was also one of the era’s few high-scoring offensive teams, as the Tigers put up 58 points on Riverton the week after the Basin blowout, then scored 77 against Ten Sleep a week after that.

Of course, 2010 had its impact on the lists, too — most notably with Ten Sleep. The Pioneers scored 93 points twice this season. How rare is that? Well, Wyoming teams have broken the 90-point barrier just six times since 1930, and two of those were accomplished by Ten Sleep in 2010. In addition, the Pioneers’ 93-56 victory over Guernsey-Sunrise set a new record for combined points in a game with 149, breaking the old record by an amazing 11 points.

Ten Sleep combined with two other teams this season, Meeteetse and Kaycee, to make three of the seven highest combined scoring games since 1930. That’s amazing.

Anyway, click here to check out the lists.

–patrick

Updates: 2010, 1930-32, coaches and basketball

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Well, the big update is done. The 1930, 1931, 1932 and 2010 seasons have been uploaded to the site. All the updates should be on all the relevant pages. If you don’t know where to start, check out the updated scoring records page and also the streaks page. I’ll have blog posts talking about the specific updates that those pages saw soon.

This site’s official total of logged games is now up to 20,814.

In addition to that, I’ve also made the following updates:

Coaches Project: In addition to adding coaches for 1930-32 and 2010, I’ve had updates for Cowley, Byron, Manderson, Hanna, Burlington, Huntley and Goshen Hole. Thanks to a few helping hands, Jerry Patrick in Burlington, Mark Bullington in Yoder and Shane Schaffner in Basin, for their help on this! Click here to see what I’m still missing.

Basketball: Mad props to someone only identified as Bill, who e-mailed me with the one score I was missing to complete my basketball tournament research — Rawlins’ 66-58 victory over Reliance in the 1953 Class A consolation semifinals. I now have listed EVERY SINGLE SCORE from the state basketball tournament, all the way back to its inception in 1918!! Yay! Thanks, Bill! (Is four exclamation points enough? No!)

Bill also caught an error I had listed in the 2000 Class 4A boys state tournament. Sheridan beat Central for the consolation championship that year. I had listed Natrona beating Sheridan for the consolation title after beating Central in the consolation semis; Central actually beat Natrona in the consolation semis before losing to the Broncs. The listing has been corrected to reflect this change.

If you didn’t know that I also list the scores from every state basketball tournament game on this site, too, well, I do. Click here to check those scores out.

–patrick

Five Minute Introduction: Riverside

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School: Riverside
Nickname: Rebels
Colors: red and black
Stadium: Rebel Stadium
State championship: 2007
Times worth remembering: The Rebels’ only two championship-game appearances came in back-to-back seasons in 2006 and 2007. Combined, the Rebels went 19-3 those two seasons, losing the title game in 2006 but winning it in 2007 — the first state football championship for both the school and the community. Of Riverside’s 22 opponents, 17 were held to single-digit scoring.
Times worth forgetting: In its short history, Riverside has been a fairly consistent winner, but it took a few years to build the program. Riverside’s first five seasons were all losing campaigns, including a 1-7 season in 1988, the program’s second full-fledged season as the Rebels.
Best team: The 2006 and 2007 Rebels were near mirror-images of each other, and although the 2006 team had the better record, the 2007 team won the state title. The nod goes to the ’07 team in this case — that season, the Rebels won their three playoff games by a combined four points.
Biggest win: If you’re going to win a state championship, you might as well win it in style. That’s how the Rebels won their first and only state title in 2007. Down 20-13 late in the fourth quarter to Big Horn and with the ball on its own 1-yard line, Riverside drove 99 yards in six plays — capped with a scoring run by QB Matt Craft — to trim the lead to 20-19. Then, with the title at stake, the Rebels went for two, and Chanse Darling scooted across the line for the winning points.
Heartbreaker: The 2007 title-game victory was made a bit sweeter because of what happened in 2006. Carrying an unblemished 10-0 record into the championship game on its home field, the Rebels played almost a perfect game defensively against Southeast, allowing only 56 yards while forcing 11 punts. But the Rebels’ offense never got moving, and Riverside lost 8-6 — providing all the motivation needed for the 2007 title run.

Riverside team page.

All-state selections for 2010

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The folks over at wyopreps.com have posted this year’s all-state selections from the Wyoming Coaches Association. This year’s selections have also been added to my all-time all-state listings. I tried to catch all the misspellings, but if I missed one, let me know. Cool.

–patrick