Normal Matchmaking-Is it balanced?

I know I'm not the first to complain about matchmaking, but me and my 2 buddies that I regularly play normals with have been getting screwed by matchmaking it seems. We understand losing to players our own level, but when the other team fairly consistently has a much higher average ranking than ours the game becomes painful to play. Every now and then we'll play a game where our team actually has the higher average ranking, but either way, it seems like games are always a landslide.