First MaxPreps Xcellent 25 National Girls Basketball Rankings of 2012

This week's MaxPreps Xcellent 25 National Girls Basketball Rankings presented by the Army National Guard comes out in the shadow of the death of Robert "Apache" Paschall, the coach of No. 9 Nazareth, who passed away Tuesday. Paschall had been battling skin cancer, but also had had other health problems in recent months.

Paschall was also the coach of the Exodus summer team, and had previously coached at St. Michael's of New York, a nationally ranked team until the school closed.

As for the rankings, the Top 5 fall neatly in order: St. Mary's of Phoenix beat Riverdale Baptist of Maryland; Riverdale Baptist beat Windward of Los Angeles; Windward beat Cicero-North of New York; Cicero-North beat Bolingbrook of Illinois.

After that, McEachern of Georgia has a very good record and three quality wins, but never really got to play any of the heavy hitters – and won't. The toughest game the Indians have left before the playoffs is against five-loss Buford, and then some relatively difficult games in postseason, so they will only move up if one of the Top 5 loses.

Whitney Young of Chicago won the Naples Holiday Classic and MacArthur of Texas has lost only to Windward and Bolingbrook, so those two fit right in at seven and eight – but then it gets tricky.

Mater Dei of California got knocked off by St. John's of D.C., which went 1-3 at the Nike TOC – but since the Monarchs have a bunch of very good wins, they hang in at No. 10. A strong case can be made for Maryland's Our Lady of Good Counsel, but three losses is a lot for a No. 11 team this early in the season.

Still, both of those teams seem more solid than what follows. Marion County of Kentucky doesn't have a signature win; Riverdale of Tennessee (not to be confused with Riverdale Baptist) has split with Memphis Central, which has a loss to unranked Incarnate Word of Missouri; and Long Beach Poly jumps into the rankings thanks to a two-point win over La Jolla Country Day, another California team, to avenge its only loss.

Two unbeaten teams also move into the Xcellent 25, but neither of them has played the kind of schedule the top teams have, and Hopkins won't play a non-Minnesota team all year.

So expect a lot of movement from 11 to 25 in the coming weeks, especially when the Martin Luther King Day shootouts eliminate some pretenders, as it's far from clear who the best teams in that group really are.

MAXPREPS XCELLENT 25 NATIONAL GIRLS BASKETBALL RANKINGS PRESENTED BY THE ARMY NATIONAL GUARD

1. (1) St. Mary's (Phoenix) (11-0)

2. (2) Riverdale Baptist (Upper Marlboro, Md.) (10-1)

3. (3) Windward (Los Angeles) (12-1)

4. (4) Cicero-North Syracuse (Cicero, N.Y.) (4-2)

5. (5) Bolingbrook (Ill.) (9-1)

6. (6) McEachern (Powder Springs, Ga.) (12-0)

7. (7) Whitney Young (Chicago) (13-0)

8. (11) MacArthur (Irving, Texas) (21-2)

9. (9) Nazareth (Brooklyn, N.Y.) (3-0)

10. (10) Mater Dei (Santa Ana, Calif.) (11-2)

11. (13) Our Lady of Good Counsel (Olney, Md.) (10-3)

12. (15) Marion County (Lebanon, Ky.) (12-2)

13. (18) Riverdale (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) (11-3)

14. (nr) Long Beach Poly (Calif.) (14-1)

15. (8) La Jolla Country Day (Calif.) (11-1)

16. (14) Academy of the Holy Cross (Kensington, Md.) (8-2)

17. (nr) DuPont Manual (Louisville, Ky.) (14-0)

18. (19) Hoover (Ala.) (12-3)

19. (20) Norcross (Ga.) (8-2)

20. (24) Twinsburg (Ohio) (7-2)

21. (22) Dr. Phillips (Orlando, Fla.) (13-3)

22. (23) Memphis Central (Tenn.) (6-3)

23. (12) Shabazz (Newark, N.J.) (4-1)

24. (25) Detroit Country Day (Beverly Hills, Mich.) (6-1)

25. (nr) Hopkins (Minnetonka, Minn.) (12-0)

Dropped out: No. 16 St. Joseph's Academy, No. 17 Central Catholic, No. 21 Spring Valley