On the heels of last week’s ISC World Tournament team rankings, the ISC II has released its own set of rankings, for the ISC II Tournament of Champions. Like the ISC World rankings, the ISC II rankings are used for seeding teams for the August tournament.
ISC-II capital of the world? It has to be Ontario, Canada, fastball hotbed, and home of Al Doran’s Fastball List. Ontario has 4 in the top 10, 8 in the top 20 and 11 in the top 30. Readers may recall the Ontario area’s dominance of the NAFA “AA” division for a number of years. A number of those teams, or their progeny have moved over to the ISC II Tournament of Champions.
Last year, the championship game was an all-Ontario affair, with two-time defending champion Harriston Mercurys topping Smullys Tavistock Merchants for the ISC II crown. As a result of the loss of a few key players, Harriston does not hold the top spot in the 2005 pre-season rankings, an honor that belongs to last year’s runnerup, Tavistock.
Six of the top 10 teams are from Canada, with the other four from the United States. Last year’s third place team, The Bar of Appleton is the highest ranked U.S. team at #3, with the ASA “A” runnerup, Keatings Fitness, PA at #6, KMV Rise of PA #9, and Chub’s Pub of Fargo N.D. #10.
The highest ranked teams from the Western U.S. are the Colorado Rage at #23, JRW & Associates at #25, Bodle Chiropractic at #26, Rob Penticoff’s River City Rockers #34, and the NorCal Mavericks at #51. JRW & Associates was the higest finisher at last year’s ISC II Tournament, at #10. My guess is that the Mavs belong higher than #51, and will likely rise in the rankings as the season progresses. The Rage, Rockers and Mavericks will all be at Red Rock, as will #46 ranked Vannelli’s from Minnesota this coming weekened. Watch the Morning Brief for the live, streaming audio broadcast schedule on Ballparkradio.com in the next few days.
Official list at ISC II site, with judge’s ranking cards.
As we did with the ISC World rankings, some observations:
-Defending champion, and #2 ranked Harriston Mercurys received the most votes for the top spot, with seven votes, to five votes for #1 ranked Tavistock;
-All #1 votes went to either Tavistock or Harriston;
-All #2 votes went to Tavistock or Harriston, except for three, which went, one each to #3 ranked The Bar of Appelton, WI, #4 Norwich Razorbacks, and #7 Gladstone Whips of Manitoba;
-The greatest agreement among the voters was for the top two spots, with all 12 voters giving Harriston and Tavistock a #1, 2 or 3 ranking — with one exception, one voter who pegged Harriston at #7. If that voter had given Harriston a third place vote, Harriston would have owned the #1 ranking;
-Non-top-10 teams getting highest ranked votes: #18 Anderson Jaybirds of IN received a #4 ranking from one judge; #11 Wilber Lime, WI received a 3rd place vote; #14 Palermo A’s, ON, received a 3rd place vote and the #20 ranked Glencoe Astros, ON received a 4th place vote.