If you think the football playoff formula is confusing, take a look at basketball for 2025

“Back in the day,” as the older folks say, power points were simple.

Six points for a win, residuals from your opponents, plus group size. Total it up at the cutoff date, and your teams were seeded. Simple enough.

But there was little nuance to it, so the NJSIAA has tweaked the formula in various sports.

Power points are still around (somewhat, but for how long?) in high school football. Group points have been eliminated in all sports, as the NJSIAA no longer considers group size a good representative of quality. But in basketball, they’ve added a new wrinkle.

Quality and residual points remain, but a third part of power points will be a strength of schedule factor called OOWP, which stands for “Opponents’ Opponent Winning Percentage.” That number is weighted however; it’s the actual win percentage plus .500. So, a team that’s 3-1, with a .750 win percentage would add .500 to that, and their OOWP would be 1.250.

(Note: Out-of-state opponents are assigned a .500 winning percentage for the purposes of OOWP and residuals.)

Each game is be worth the following:

• 6 points for a win, 0 for a loss (there are no ties in basketball)
• 3 residuals for every win by an opponent you beat, and 1 for every win by an opponent you lost to

That total is then multiplied by the OOWP number, giving the power point value for that game.

The values are then averaged by the number of games played. All games count, but 16 is the minimum to be divided by. So, a team that plays 14 games would have their total still divided by 16. A team that plays 20 would be divided by 20.

So, how does this work in practicality?

Let’s take Colonia for example, which is 3-0, counting residuals as of December 24th. Each game is worth 6 quality points, since Colonia beat them all.

• St. Peter’s Prep: 3-2, OOWP 1.067, 9 residuals
• Piscataway: 2-1, OOWP 1.250, 6 residuals
• Woodbridge: 1-2, OOWP .944, 3 residuals

Now, since they beat all three teams, let’s add the quality points, and find the three factors for each game:

• St. Peter’s Prep: (6 quality points + 9 residuals) x .1.067 OOWP
• Piscataway: (6 quality points + 6 residuals) x .1.250 OOWP
• Woodbridge: (6 quality points + 3 residuals) x .944 OOWP

Adding the quality and residual points, we then multiply by the OOWP:

• St. Peter’s Prep: 15 x 1.067 = 16.005
• Piscataway: 12 x 1.250 = 15
• Woodbridge: 9 x .944 = 8.496

The total of all those points is: 16.005 + 15 + 8.496 = 39.501

Then we divide that total by the three games played and get: 13.167.

Now, if you look at the calculations on NJ.com, you’ll see they have 2.469 for Colonia. What gives?

It appears as though they are dividing all teams by 16 games, since none has played nearly that many so far. Just about everybody will play way more than that, meaning those that don’t will be very unlikely to be eligible for the state tournament.

Most teams should get to 16 by late January. The Patriots should be there (baring snow cancellations or reschedules) on January 23rd, when St. Thomas Aquinas visits, in a game you can hear on Central Jersey Sports Radio.

The NJSIAA Cutoff Date is February 15th, about three weeks later.

Unless NJ.com changes its “divide by 16” policy, we will start taking a closer look at playoff projections around the end of January, once the majority of teams have played 16 games. Look for it in late January.