Sherwood in the 2026 6A boys playoffs
The two rankings
Left: the OSAA rank. Right: Model B, a rating that counts goal margin and strength of schedule.
Every Model B rank, bracket and probability on this page uses the head-start version, the one the protocol scores first; the head start is last season's OSAA standing. Without it, Sherwood is 25th and Tualatin 19th. So far this season the head start has made no measurable difference to accuracy.
The two methods agree on the top eight teams, in a different order. They differ in the middle, where hosting and qualification are decided. Model B moves Sunset up 11 places, Westview 6 and Central Catholic 4, and moves South Medford down 11 and Century 9. Tigard, 3–8–3, moves up 8; Tualatin, 8–1–5, moves down 5. Model B's top 32 takes Tigard and North Salem in place of Newberg and Southridge.
Without last season's head start, Sherwood is 25th and Tualatin 19th.
Sherwood's schedule
Sherwood finished 4–8–2, 2–2–1 in league. Eight of the nine non-league games were against 6A teams; six of those eight are in the OSAA's 6A top 25, four of them in the top five, and the ninth was 5A West Albany, ranked 11th in 5A. Three of the losses were by one goal, to Lincoln, West Linn and Sunset. Two were not: 0–8 at Cleveland, which the OSAA formula counts as one loss and Model B counts in full, and 0–3 at Tigard, a team Model B ranks 25th. The OSAA formula counts each result and weights it by the opponent's record. Model B also counts the margin.
| Date | Type | Opponent | Opponent's OSAA rank | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09/01 | Non-league | Sheldon | #37 | 1–0 W |
| 09/03 | Non-league | Lincoln (away) | #3 | 0–1 L |
| 09/08 | Non-league | Cleveland | #2 | 0–8 L |
| 09/14 | Non-league | Beaverton (away) | #5 | 1–3 L |
| 09/17 | Non-league | West Albany (away) | #11 in 5A | 3–3 D |
| 09/22 | Non-league | Lakeridge | #4 | 3–2 W |
| 09/24 | Non-league | Tigard (away) | #33 | 0–3 L |
| 09/29 | Non-league | West Linn | #21 | 1–2 L |
| 10/01 | Non-league | Sunset (away) | #25 | 0–1 L |
| 10/07 | League | Glencoe (away) | #28 | 3–0 W |
| 10/12 | League | Century | #23 | 3–1 W |
| 10/15 | League | Forest Grove (away) | #22 | 1–2 L |
| 10/20 | League | Newberg (away) | #27 | 2–2 D |
| 10/22 | League | McMinnville | #8 | 1–3 L |
The bracket as posted
The 6A bracket has 24 teams. Seven league champions qualify automatically. Nine more qualify at-large by OSAA rank. The next sixteen play a qualification round on October 27, and the eight winners take seeds 17 to 24. Seeds 1 to 8 sit out until November 3; seeds 9 to 16 host the winners on October 31.
| Qualification round, Oct. 27 | Home | Draw | Away | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #16 Roosevelt at #1 Westview | 79% | 11% | 10% | |
| #15 Southridge at #2 Franklin | 74% | 13% | 13% | |
| #14 Sherwood at #3 Tualatin | 41% | 22% | 37% | |
| #13 Glencoe at #4 Mountainside | 51% | 21% | 28% | |
| #12 Newberg at #5 West Linn | 69% | 16% | 16% | |
| #11 Reynolds at #6 Forest Grove | 58% | 19% | 23% | |
| #10 Grants Pass at #7 Century | 30% | 21% | 49% | |
| #9 Sunset at #8 West Salem | 40% | 22% | 38% |
Probabilities are Model B's, head-start version, calibrated on its own predictions this season, rounded to the nearest point. Seeds are as the OSAA posted them after its same-league switches. Under the registered version of Model B, which carries last season's standing as a head start, Sunset at West Salem and Sherwood at Tualatin are the two closest games on the card. On this season's games alone, Tualatin is a clear favorite over Sherwood; the next section gives both figures.
Sherwood and Tualatin, home and away
Model B puts the two teams 0.08 goals apart, Sherwood ahead. Home field, fitted on every game in the state this season, is worth 0.24 goals, which moves Sherwood's chance of winning by 7 points between playing away and playing at home.
| Venue | Sherwood | Draw | Tualatin | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| At Tualatin, as drawn | 37% | 22% | 41% | |
| Neutral field | 40% | 22% | 38% | |
| At Sherwood | 44% | 22% | 34% |
Without last season's head start, Tualatin is ahead by 0.37 goals and Sherwood's chance of winning is 30% away and 37% at home. The head start is Sherwood's standing from last season, when it finished higher than Tualatin; this season's games alone put Tualatin ahead. Over the thirteen Oregon seasons tested, the head start improves predictions early in the season and adds nothing in the playoffs.
The Model B bracket
Same rule, same seven automatic qualifiers, Model B's order everywhere the OSAA's is used. Sherwood is the seventh seed of the qualification round and hosts Tigard, who beat Sherwood 3–0 on September 24; Model B makes Sherwood a 49 percent favorite at home. Tualatin plays at Mountainside. Westview and Central Catholic go straight into the bracket; Sunset and Lake Oswego drop into the qualification round as its top two seeds. The pairings use the OSAA's idea of avoiding same-league games, approximately: the OSAA's own card moved several lower seeds, and this page does not reproduce those moves exactly. The higher seed hosts.
| Qualification round | Home | Draw | Away | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #16 Century at #1 Sunset | 71% | 15% | 14% | |
| #15 North Salem at #2 Lake Oswego | 67% | 16% | 17% | |
| #14 Reynolds at #3 Franklin | 62% | 18% | 20% | |
| #13 Roosevelt at #4 West Salem | 62% | 18% | 20% | |
| #12 Glencoe at #5 West Linn | 55% | 20% | 25% | |
| #11 Grants Pass at #6 Forest Grove | 52% | 21% | 27% | |
| #10 Tigard at #7 Sherwood | 49% | 21% | 30% | |
| #9 Tualatin at #8 Mountainside | 44% | 22% | 35% |
How Model B works
The OSAA ranks teams by averaging two formulas, RPI and Colley. Both use wins, losses and draws, weighted by opponents' records, and neither looks at the score. The NCAA stopped ranking men's basketball this way in 2018, when it replaced the RPI with the NET, which counts scoring margin capped at 10 points. Two high-school associations already seed soccer with margin: the CIF Southern Section, the largest of California's ten sections with more than 550 schools, by Massey Ratings, built by Kenneth Massey, whose college football rankings were one of the BCS's six computer polls from 1999 to 2013; and the MIAA in Massachusetts, since fall 2021, by a rating on goal margin capped at three goals a game.
Model B is built the same way as Massey's rating. Each game's goal margin is treated as the difference between two team strengths plus a home-field term, and the strengths that best explain every game of the season are solved for together. Last season's standing seeds the rating in August and fades as games accumulate. Margin is not capped, because the OSAA already ends a match at an eight-goal difference from halftime on. The settings were chosen on past seasons and fixed on September 30, five weeks into this one, before any playoff game.
It matches the ratings Massachusetts and the Southern Section use. On the Southern Section's 261 boys' playoff games last season, Model B and the official Massey rating are equal to the third decimal on log-loss, 0.921 to 0.920, with an error bar of about plus or minus 0.05; on the girls' 225 games Model B is ahead of the official rating by about 0.05, with an error bar that just clears zero. Both use playoff games only, because the section posts Massey ratings only at its seeding lock. On four regular seasons of Massachusetts games, both sexes, Model B is ahead of the MIAA's rating by two to three hundredths of log-loss under the settings fixed on September 30, 2026; under the earlier settings it tied for boys and trailed for girls.
It calls more games right than results-only rankings. Rebuilt from the OSAA's own pages for the twelve boys' seasons since 2013, Model B calls 66 of 100 6A games right to the OSAA rank's 64, ahead in all twelve seasons; across 6A, 5A and 4A together, 72 to 69, with an error bar of 2.4 to 4.0 points. In regular-season games between teams that both made the playoffs it calls 56 to the rank's 52. In the playoff games themselves the two call the same number right, within one point either way; Model B's advantage there is on log-loss, and smaller than in the regular season. In 45 other associations and sections, it is ahead of the official ranking or standings on log-loss in 89 of 93 boys' and girls' seasons and behind in none; on games called right, two of the 93 are slightly behind, both too close to call.
In past seasons, Model B ordered the middle of the bracket better than the OSAA rank did, and that is where Oregon decides who hosts and who qualifies. Whether it does so this season is scored after the final on November 14, against predictions recorded before the bracket was posted. A rating is a prediction, not a verdict, and one game proves nothing.