Rather than give you another edition of Bob's favorite list, here is the answer to a question that I've been posed several times the last few weeks, some directly to my face and most with a chuckle behind my back:

Why don't you put your basketball standings in order?

Here's why, the long version:

We do all of our basketball standings on an Excel spreadsheet. It's the quickest, most efficient way to make sure we have accurate standings day in and day out. Part of the limit of the sheet, though, is that we can't sort teams by their records within the sheet; we have to do that all by hand.

Most Friday nights, we're extremely pinched for time. Our deadlines are tight because, well, we have to get the paper out, and we have to get it to your doorstep on time. Since we've been short-staffed since December, I have also taken over the duty of laying out the high school roundup page on Friday and Saturday nights, in addition to typing the roundup.

I'll make it blunt: I don't have the time to sort the standings by hand.

Of course, in previous years (like back when I was in high school), the Star-Tribune kept a simple text document, and wins and losses were added to the standings by hand. What happend, though, was that wins or losses were either given to the wrong team (boys instead of girls, loss given to the winner, etc.) or they weren't added to the standings at all. And with that method, there was no way to back-check your standings to see where you messed up.

In the past couple weeks, I've tried to take the added step of sorting standings for the online version you can see on Saturday and Sunday mornings at trib.com. I know as we get closer and closer to regionals, having the standings in the right order becomes more and more important.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd rather have the right standings in the wrong order than the wrong standings in an order that may or may not be right.

Still, I hope the records themselves have been without fault (if you ever see a fault with a record, please let me know). And the Star-Tribune is still the only place in the state you can get up-to-date standings for every conference and every classification on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

I hope that explains it. Now you can get off my back about it. :)

As always, feel free to call me at (307) 266-0615 or (800) 791-5002, or e-mail me at patrick.schmiedt@trib.com if you ever have questions or concerns. Thanks for letting me do this.

Posted by patrick.schmiedt@trib.com