There’s no mistaking who the computers say is the No. 1 team in the Big Central Conference at the midway point of the season: the Phillipsburg Stateliners.
Their Strength Index rating of 90.44 is by far the highest in the league, 10.75 points higher than the next closest team, Hillside, which has a 79.69 SI value. It’s also the largest gap between teams in the league.
Statewide, Phillipsburg is the only team in the Big Central in the top 25 for SI, sitting in sixth, behind only Red Bank Catholic (97.7), Ramapo (94.06), Don Bosco Prep (92.94), Toms River North (92.77) and Donovan Catholic (91.28), making it the third-highest ranked public school in the state.
Since Strength Index doesn’t take into account group size, or any “large school bias” that can sometimes occur in human polling, the math says Hillside is the second strongest team in the Big Central, with a rating of 79.69, just ahead of North Brunswick at 79.29 and St. Thomas Aquinas at 78.79, and Hillsborough with a 78.28 Strength Index value. Ridge is right behind the Raiders with a 77.16 SI.
Essentially, all these teams are considered “even,” essentially within a field goal of each other for calculation purposes.
Interestingly, Union – with just one win, having just beaten Somerville to improve to 1-3 – is in the top ten, mainly based on their strong rating at the start of the year, which is where they ended 2021. Union was a favorite to win its playoff section until COVID cost the team its season.
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