I came across some writing today, and it got me thinking about the Heal points. As you know, whether you lose by 68 points or by one in triple overtime, the Heal points system gives you the same number of points for that game (zero). So I've wondered whether this is the best way.

The piece I read was by Bill James, a noted baseball writer who has his own site (http://www.billjamesonline.net -- the site requires a subscription of $3 a month). James is known as a stat guy by some people because he's very good at understanding numbers, but he's also a brilliant writer -- about 100 times better than I am, and I do this professionally. Anyway, here's what he wrote:

"I know I've mentioned this before, but a few years ago my son Isaac and I did a study, designed to compare various methods of ranking football teams or basketball teams by head to head performance. We created a universe of mythical teams with "known" abilities, created a schedule, and generated simulated results by a combination of a known abilities and random numbers, then ranked the teams by the outputs, and compared the rankings (or output values) to the "known" or "true" levels of ability (or input values.)

"What we found is that all of the ranking systems work about as well as one another, except for the RPI system, and the RPI method doesn't really work. Why doesn't it work? As I remember, it doesn't work because the RPI method bases its results on wins and losses. If you win a basketball game 71-70, most of the other ranking systems will figure the two teams are about even. The RPI system figures you won the game, that's what counts.

"So when the NCAA adopts one system to rely on as a key element in their tournament selection system, what do they choose? The RPI, of course. They like the idea that Winning Counts.

"Well, OK; I like the idea that winning counts, also, but the main point is to have accurate rankings."

In Heal points, of course, winning is the only thing that counts. My first thought when reading this is that we should have a system which considers game scores. If Gardiner plays Winslow and loses by five points, is that the same thing as Camden Hills playing Winslow and losing by 35? Of course not.

Moreover, the Heal points system doesn't work at all when the teams don't play each other. Look at Western D girls basketball. Every single year there's a team that is ranked higher than it should be because it played a soft schedule. The best teams are ALWAYS from the East/West Conference. But the Heal points system doesn't do a good job of accounting for that, so the teams all hope they can draw a school from outside the conference.

Naturally, there are problems with using scores to evaluate teams. A 15-point win can be a close game until the final two minutes, or it can be a blowout the entire way that got close when the subs entered the game.

The other major problem is that it will encourage teams to play slowdown basketball, because it keeps the scores down. I can appreciate good defense, but when a Class A basketball team scores 12 points in a game, there's more going on than good defense. That just shouldn't happen. Athletes today are too talented to score fewer than 20 points in a 32-minute game.

Unfortunately, we have a lot of those games. Teams work the ball around for 30 seconds, then take a bad shot. Or they throw the ball away. Or they get fouled and miss free throws. I've been to these games where the scores are 35-22 or whatever, and they're just not very exciting. If we makes scores part of the ranking process, teams will have incentive to slow the game down to keep the scores close, especially when the game is a mismatch.

OK, OK, the coach is trying to win games, not please me as a basketball fan. And sometimes it works. Besides, I'm getting off topic.

Getting back to the original topic, I do think there should be some way to incorporate both wins and winning margin when ranking teams. I don't think it's going to happen, but I think it would be a much fairer way then the current "win or you get nothing."

Now, an even better way would be to fix the scheduling so we don't have so many 75-20 and 68-13 games. But I don't want to get started on that.......