Welcome to Czar Season 9

Its Labor Day weekend and that means its time to turn the page to the 2015-2016 season.  All of the 2014-15 pages can be found on the Previous Seasons archive page.  That has all the player signings, previews and pools from the previous seasons I've covered.

As to 2015-16, this is season number 9 online and I've passed the 1000 total games watched mark.  All of the pages you're used to seeing are back.  The notable leagues and camps of the 2015 fall season are on the Fall Ball page.  I'll be doing my usual 6 week long season preview series where I look at all of the metro area conferences and sections.  Team previews will be done in the 13 working days leading up to MEA.  After the MEA break, we'll take you right up until the start of practice with section previews and a wrap of games and events to see.  The full schedule for when those previews will be posted is on the Season Previews page.  With a handful of players from the class of 2016 already making their college choices, the Signings page has been flipped over to 2016 as well.  I also have a start on the local holiday tournament schedule on the Holiday Tourneys page.  I'll update that page as we approach the holidays with the actual schedules.

This year also marks a new set of section assignments and classifications.  As part of a 6 year cycle, not only were teams moved around based on class, the MSHSL did a full review of every team's section location across all sports.  That meant some rather major changes.  You can find all of those on the updated Section Maps and Section Assignment links.

The Rankings page has been updated with all of the latest national rankings from the end of the 2015 AAU season.  Players from the top 150 from the 4 major ranking services (Rivals, Scout, ESPN and 247Sports) are included.  For those of you who are Northstar Hoops Report subscribers, it also includes links for the Minnesota rankings in 2016-2018 as well as the 2019 watch list for incoming freshmen.  For you recruiting diehards, the fall recruiting period opens this week.  Links to the D1 and D2 recruiting calendars have been updated in the Recruiting Links menu.

While we're in the spirit of changes, here's a link to the NFHS rules changes for this season.  Biggest one is hand-checking which is going to be very interesting how consistently this is called over the course of the season.