Just giving you a hard time? No, I'm making a point.
Ok, so we are taking performance into consideration after all. Seems contradictory to some of your "it's a nice story" talk. Could any of these teams theoretically beat the others? Sure. Do we also have data to go off of, yes. Maybe consider that data a bit more.
By the way, I was not just singling out Oak Lawn, back to your high ranking of Wheaton North. WN beat Lake Park 24-15. Batavia beat Lake Park 55-7. This begs the question why are you enamored with WN?
I would not say I am more enamored with Wheaton North than any other team. I do, after all, have 13 other teams ranked ahead of them. Here is what I know to be true.
* When looking at the larger schools (5A through 8A) there are three distinct categories. They are: 1) The Chicago Catholic League (CCL), 2) East St. Louis, and 3) the other public schools. The CCL has won 70% of the state championships over the past five seasons, and that is why six of my top nine ranked teams are from the CCL. East St. Louis is an anomaly in both the manner in which they dominate the Southwestern Conference and the degree to which they schedule difficult out-of-state opponents. East St. Louis is 25-0 against Southwestern Conference opponents over the last five years and ought to be evaluated as if they are an independent school. However, your question was related to Wheaton North and therefore my focus will shift to the other public schools.
* Of the last 20 state champions in the 5A through 8A classes, 18 of them had previously appeared in at least one semifinal playoff game during the previous five years. That is a powerful 90% correlation rate that should not be overlooked in any analysis.
* Of the 15 public high schools (other than East St. Louis) that won a state championship in the 5A through 8A classes during the last ten playoffs, 13 of them had lost either zero games (8) or had lost only one game (5) during the season. That is another powerful correlation rate (87%) that should not be overlooked.
* 45 public high schools (other than East St. Louis) have made at least one semifinal appearance in the 5A through 8A levels over the previous five years. Six conferences have had teams make at least three such appearances (in the aggregate), and those conferences are listed here:
1) Southwest Suburban-6
2) DuKane-6
3) West Suburban (Silver)-6
4) Fox Valley-4
5) Interstate Eight-4
6) North Suburban-3
[Ties have been broken by the number of state championships won by a conference team, and then by the class level at which the championship was won.]
* Based upon the above list, one can make a reasonable case that the DuKane Conference is one of the better large-school public conferences.
* There are currently three teams in the DuKane Conference that have not lost a conference game, have at most one total loss for the season, and have appeared in at least one semifinal playoff game during the past five years. Those teams are Wheaton North, Geneva, and Batavia. It is my contention that one of those three teams is likely to be the conference champion (or perhaps co-champion) and should be ranked somewhere in the top 20. I have Geneva ranked 13th and Wheaton North ranked 14th. It may very well be that Batavia ends up the conference champion and they would certainly be moved up if that is the case, but for now their terrible loss to Rochester is preventing that.
* Please note that Lincoln-Way East is ranked 4th and Downers Grove North is ranked 8th from the other two top public-school conferences.
I know you will retain your right to disagree with all that I have written, but hopefully my reasoning has been adequately explained. I look for strong correlations to guide my conclusions. It may be that Wheaton North falters as the season progresses and falls out of the top 25, and as a more defensively oriented team I do not expect them to run up many wide victory margins, but for now they seem reasonably ranked to me.
