Somerville celebrates its 2024 Central Jersey Group 3 title at Brooks Field on November 15, 2024. (Photo: Mike Pavlichko)
One can easily look at the Big Central Conference football standings and compare this year to last to see who was much improved, and who dropped off, but the Strength Index will give you a little more nuance.
Since the NJSIAA’s SI values – which are used to calculate OSI for playoff calculation – compare how teams do against their opponents based not on wins and losses but on the score compared to each team’s rating, the system is a good way to see how teams fared.
After all, a team that might have won just two games one year and three the next might have made more of a jump overall if they got blown out in games the first year, but lost by a touchdown or less the next season.
The biggest jump this year in the Big Central was made by Somerville, both in wins and losses and Strength Index. The Pioneers were 5-5 last year, but finished 12-1 this season, winning the Central Jersey Group 3 title, their first sectional crown since 2017.
That’s a plus-7 in the win column. They also jumped a whopping 28.59 points in Strength Index from 67.01 in the preseason to 95.60 at the end of the year.
Rounding out the top five, the next four teams were Manville, Old Bridge, Rahway and Belvidere. Let’s look at them in order.
Manville was a plus-4 this year, going from 3-7 in Dave Markowitch’s first season to 7-3 this year, with a playoff berth. They gained 16.85 SI points, going from a preseason mark of 43.30 to 60.15 in Strength Index.
Old Bridge flip-flopped their record as well, going from 4-6 to 6-4, and it showed in the Strength Index as well. They Knights climbed 15.33 points from a 56.43 to a 71.76 rating.
Rahway also jumped, going from a 56.65 to a 71.74 Strength Index value. They also flip-flopped their record, from 3-7 to 7-3 from last season to 2024.
And Belvidere improved greatly as well. Just 3-7 last year under head coach Jordan Schreffler, they finished 8-2 this season, although they missed the playoffs with a relatively weak schedule. Still, they didn’t beat those teams last year, but did this year. And they improved from 46.63 to 61.62 in Strength Index, an increase of 14.99 points from last year.
Five other teams saw double digit jumps in SI value: Hillsborough (14.18), Phillipsburg (12.35), St. Thomas Aquinas (12.23), New Providence (11.62), North Hunterdon (11.39) and Cranford (11.19).
Overall, 30 of the 59 teams in the league went up, the other 29 went down. The three biggest drops were all by more than 20 points, including Brearley (-26.92), Dunellen (-27.11) and Roselle Park (27.51).
Here’s a look at the entire Big Central Conference, plus or minus in Strength Index for 2024, from the preseason to the end of the year:
In a longer term view, St. Thomas Aquinas has seen the biggest increase in its SI value since the Strength Index was first used in 2019. After using power points for so many years, the NJSIAA switched to the UPR system in 2018 (60% Born Power Index, 40% power points). The next year, the state adjusted the numbers and called it the Strength Index, using a similar formula to Born’s, but using OSI – a reverse form of the Born Power Index – for playoff calculation.
The Trojans have jumped 53.34 points, by far and away more than any other team since the 2019 preseason. They were 4-6 in 2018 in the final season under Joe Vigilante, and just 2-8 the year before that. Brian Meeney went 4-6, 4-1, and 8-3 in his first three seasons.
Tarig Holman took over after Meeney died suddenly in the spring of 2022, and the Trojans have gone a combined 27-6 since, winning 31 straight Big Central Conference games, a league record.
The next biggest gainers are Metuchen (+26.31), Highland Park (+25.46), Manville (+25.35), Belvidere (+24.22), Plainfield (+23.27) and New Providence (+21.63).
Overall, 17 teams rose by more than 10 points, and 27 overall out of 59 league schools have increased their SI since the 2019 preseason.
Here’s a look at the entire Big Central Conference, plus or minus in Strength Index, from the 2019 preseason to the end of 2024:
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