Not sure what Devine's thinking was, but here is mine.

To make my list of the top 10 teams of the past "decade"...although it seems we ought to go back to the 2000 season rather than 2002...a team must have made it to a CCS Finals game. Agree that is arbitrary and means that a local team could have gotten knocked out by a WCAL team in an early play-off round, but I'm just saying that to be on a list of top 10 a team should have been in the championship finals.  (The 2002 Salinas team got knocked out in the semifinals and therefore does not make my list.)

Then go to calpreps "project a matchup" model. A model that admits it is dificult to predict over various years because the model is not sophisticated enough to judge whether teams nationwide were tougher in one year versus another. But what the heck, the same can certainly be said for any opinion any one of us has...seems to me that the teams we played when I was in high school were tougher than the teams playing now. And I thought area teams playing in the mid-2000's were better than those today. (Which seems to be the case since you can see from the dates of the teams on the list below, only two are of recent vintage.)

Top team of the last "10" years according to the computer...the 2001 Palma Chieftains.

2001 Palma
2005 Palma
2003 Palma
2007 Gilroy
2002 San Lorenzo Valley
2011 Palma
2009 Carmel
2006 Seaside
2004 Hollister
2005 Seaside

And just to give you an idea of how close these teams are, the model predicts that the 2001 Chieftains would beat the 2005 Spartans 22 to 14.

Edited 2 times by carmelkyd Oct 11 12 9:46 AM.