Oh how a season can come and go so quickly. It's a bit hard to believe but in just about a month teams from the PAC-6 will either be preparing for a first round playoff game or lining up to hand in equipment and thinking about getting ready for 2011.
Drew Pasteur, mathematician, statistician and football guru, started posting his Playoff Bubble updates last week and after looking over his most recent post I thought it would be interesting to start thinking about the teams in the PAC-6 and what their outlook is for the playoffs.
At the moment, Drew is indicating that there will be teams with 4 wins overall that do not make the playoffs this year. Some may be thinking, that makes sense, but the reality is that since the NCHSAA sub-divided the playoffs a number of years ago there have been a number of teams with 4 wins in AAAA ball that have made the playoffs. Currently, Drew is posting that teams with 4 overall wins and 4 conference wins only have a 41% chance of earning a berth. Teams with 5 wins and 0 conference wins have a 58% chance. To get into the boundary where you can feel a bit more secure is at the 5 win and 2 conference win plateau where he is posting that a team has a 91% chance of earning a berth. Better yet, have 6 overall wins or more and you are good to go. You can check all of this information out for yourself at his website at http://www.fantastic50.net
Below, I'll go into a bit more about how I've always observed that the playoffs are handled based on my experience. Near the end of the discussion I'll note a few areas that I've always thought were confusing. Prior to that, I'll give my take on the PAC-6 and the playoffs.
Hillside - 7-0 and 2-0 - 4 games remaining (Jordan, ECH, Riverside and Northern) - They'll be favored in all and you would think worst case scenario they finish 3rd in conference. Even with three losses in four, they would make the playoffs as an at-large.
Northern Durham - 4-4 and 3-0 - 3 games remaining (ECH, Southern and Hillside) - Good chance to get at least one win and possibly more. With one win they have a good shot at finishing as the 3rd place finisher and even if they lost all of their remaining games they would be borderline with only 4 wins but they would have a .500 conference record which would place them in a good position in the at-large battle.
Southern Durham - 2-6 and 2-1 - 3 games remaining (ECH, Riverside and Northern) - They need to win at least 2 more games to simply get to the 4 win plateau needed if they are to be an at-large qualifier. But the reality is that if they win two more they'll have 4 conference wins and be in a good position to grab either the 2nd or 3rd place conference finish.
Jordan - 5-3 and 1-2 - 3 games remaining (Riverside, Person and Hillside) - With five wins it appears that they should be in good shape, but Drew is posting that at the moment a 5 win team with only 1 conference win has only a 70% chance of making the playoffs. If they capture 1 more win, moving them to 6 overall wins, Drew is posting they would be in as an at-large (he is reporting all 6 wins teams will make the playoffs). To be in the conference race, Jordan will have to win out and get to 4-2 to be in the running for a 2nd or 3rd place finish. This is assuming that strange things don't happen.
Riverside - 1-6 and 1-1 - 4 games remaining (Person, Hillside, Southern, Jordan) - The Pirates will need to most likely go 3-1 over their final games to reach a 4-7 overall record and 4-2 conference record to make it. This would put them in a position to grab an automatic bid. If they were to go 2-2 they would end up 3-8 and 3-3 in conference and most likely not receive an automatic bid and also not have the 4 wins needed to be eligible as an at-large team.
Person - 1-6 and 0-3 - 3 conference games remaining (Jordan, ECH and Riverside) - The Rockets have to win out to have a chance. Getting an auto bid seems tough even if they did win out so they need to reach the 4 win plateau to be considered. If they were able to do that a 3-3 mark in conference would help them out in the at-large discussion. [correction - Person has 4 games remaining, this week they will be taking on Bartlett Yancey. With this additional game, Person can go 3-1 in their final games and 2-1 in their conference games and reach the 4 win plateau. This would still put them out of the top three in conference and they would be in a borderline position for a playoff spot. Winning their final 4 would be a different story as they would be 5-6 and 3-3 in conference. Again, most likely out of conference top three contention but in a strong position due to the 5 wins overall and the 0.500 winning percentage in conference play.]
ECH - 1-6 and 0-2 - 4 games remaining (Riverside, Person, Hillside, Southern) - Going 3-1 would put them at 4 wins and 3-3 in conference, similar situation to Person. Anything less and it'll be tough.
Before going any further, I should clarify a number of items here so folks don't go crazy with concern. First, if you win your conference, if you earn second place or third place in your conference, no matter what I just wrote in the above paragraph, you earn an automatic berth to the playoffs. Put simply, the top three teams in the PAC-6 regardless of record will earn a spot in the 4A or 4AA playoffs. The information provided above plays more into those teams that are outside of that top three group - the at-large teams. Those teams are the ones that probably need to get to that 5 overall win and 2 conference win plateau or better yet 6 win level to make the playoffs or have a good shot at it.
A few other items on how the playoffs work and I'm going to tailor this a bit more to folks so it doesn't sound too robotic (in other words, generally this is how it works, it may not officially actually work in the exact way and order I describe, but the main points are solid).
First Step - The NCHSAA is going to take all of the schools in classification AAAA and look at their ADMs or Average Daily Membership numbers (essentially, attendance for early in the year) and order the schools from largest to smallest. This will be important when they begin to select who is 4A and 4AA.
Second Step - They will take all of the teams that are 1st, 2nd or 3rd place finishers in their conference (conferences that only have AAAA teams in it - different for teams that have a mixed conference, AAAA and AAA teams) and they will be designated an automatic berth in the playoffs.
Third Step - There are a total of 64 total slots for AAAA playoffs (4A and 4AA where each has 32 teams). They will count up the number of teams that received automatic bids and subtract that from the 64 and that will give you the number of teams that can receive an at-large bid to the playoffs.
Fourth Step - They begin to look for at-large teams. This is where it gets a bit complicated. First thing you need to do is get all those teams that didn't get an automatic bid and change their overall record so that you have a total of 10 games counted. A bit of clarification. There are a number of teams that played 11 games, the 11th game is an endowment game. This is a game that was allowed by the NCHSAA for teams to play instead of a scrimmage in order to assist in growing the Endowment fund that the NCHSAA created many years ago. I'm not going to go into that now, but suffice it to say that in my book there are many pros to this idea and from a playoff perspective if you've played an endowment and have 11 total games on the season then you have to drop one of your wins or losses to get to the 10 game level.
How does this work you ask? Well, the first thing to understand is that you CAN NOT drop a conference win or loss. Ideally, you drop a non-conference loss. For example, a team that goes 10-1 on the season, with a 4-1 non conference tally and a 6-0 conference tally would drop the loss in non-conference play and be considered a 10-0 team. Another example, a teams goes 11-0 on the season, with a 5-0 non-conference record and a 6-0 conference record. In this case they don't have any non-conference losses, so they must drop a non-conference win, resulting in them having a 10-0 reportable record, the same as the 10-1 teams - humm, I know some folks aren't liking that, but like I said earlier, I think the endowment game is a good thing and part of the good of it is directly in what I just described, but that is a tangent for another day. Another example, let's say you go 10-1 on the season, you are 5-0 in non conference play and 5-1 in conference play. This is important, recall you can't drop conference games, so again, you would have to drop one of those non-conference wins as opposed to the conference loss (I know, you really want to drop that loss, no can-do), so that team would have a reportable record of 9-1 on the season. Like I said, this gets a bit complicated, but hopefully those are some examples that help to make sense of it all.
Okay, we are still on step four here - finding those at-large teams. We've now taken all of those teams that did not qualify as automatic qualifiers (recall the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place teams) and we've adjusted all of their records to 10 total games on the season as opposed to 11 (I will add, if a team played an endowment game or not and only played 10 total games, then those 10 games however they are situated is the 10 game record). At this point the NCHSAA is going to bin or group the teams remaining by total number of wins*. In other words, let's say there are no teams that finished with 10 reportable wins and didn't finish in the top three. Same for 9, 8 and 7 reportable wins. In other words, every team in AAAA that had 7 wins or more ended up finishing 1st, 2nd or 3rd in conference and thus earned an automatic qualifying spot. For that reason, the NCHSAA would start their first group of teams as those with 6 overall reportable wins. They would then make another group with all the 5 overall reportable wins and so forth. Hopefully everyone is still on board here.
For the sake of clarity I'm going to make an assumption that out of 64 total berths, 30 of them are from automatic bids (this number is probably different). That would mean there are 34 at-large berths remaining. At this point let's also say that there are a total of 10 teams with 6 wins, 15 teams with 5 wins and 15 teams with 4 wins. We add that up and we have 40 total teams with either 6, 5 or 4 wins. We only have 34 at-large berths, so that means out of that 40 teams there will be 6 that don't make the playoffs. So who makes it and who doesn't? Start with the teams with the most wins and work down. So since you can take all 10 of those 6 wins teams and put them in as at-large berths and you still have at-large berths remaining, they all make it. Same can be said for the 5 wins teams. At this point you've added 25 at-large teams to the 30 that made it as automatic qualifiers so we have a total of 55 teams in the playoffs. Leaving 9 slots open. Since there are 15 teams with 4 wins, they can't all make it and it is at this point that conference wins come into play. According to the most recent rules I've read, at this point they take all of the 4 win teams and they look at conference winning percentage. The 9 teams with the highest conference winning percentage in that 4 win group make the playoffs and the 6 with the lower conference winning percentage are left out.
At this point, 64 total teams have been given berths.
Fifth Step - At this point we have 64 teams and we have those 64 teams lined up based on ADMs in order of largest to smallest sized schools. From here, the dividing line is created. Start from the top and work down counting. When you get to team 32, you have the big AAAA or 4AA class. The remaining 32 teams are then called the small AAAA or 4A class.
Sixth Step - Still a few more steps. First step take all those 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishers and change them from 11 game schedules to 10 game reportable schedules. Next, create your overall EAST and WEST teams. At this point the NCHSAA looks roughly at GPS coordinates and places 16 of the 32 teams in the 4AA sub-group into the EAST and 16 into the WEST. Same goes for the 32 teams in the 4A sub-group, put 16 into an EAST group and 16 into a WEST group.
Seventh Step - Seed the teams. For clarity I'm going to work with the 4AA-EAST (that will be a total of 16 of the 64 overall teams that made the playoffs). With those 16 teams the NCHSAA will take all of the teams that finished first in their conference and put them in a single group or tier as they call it. Do the same for the second place finishers and the same for the third place finishers. Finally you have an at-large group. Now, we'll look only at the first place finishers group. Assume we have 3 teams that are in this 16 team field that finished first in their conference. They are assured of being either the 1st, 2nd or 3rd seeded team in the 16 team 4AA-EAST. How is this decided? Go to that 10 game reportable record. Assume that TEAM A has a 10-0 record, TEAM B has a 9-1 record and TEAM C has a 9-1 record. TEAM A would be the #1 overall seed. More complicated for TEAM B and TEAM C since they are the same records (if they played one another head-to-head, then the winner of that game gets the higher seed). From what we've observed this is left to a coin flip as to who will be the #2 and #3 seed (although, travel considerations and other considerations may also play into these decisions - they are typically not made public). Now, do the same thing for your 2nd place finishers, again for the 3rd place finishers and again for the at-large teams. Once you are finished you will have 16 teams seeded from #1 to #16 with all of the 1st place conference finishers with the top seeds, followed by the 2nd place finishers, then the 3rd placed finishers and finally the at-large teams.
Eighth Step - And yes, there is one more step, something new for this year. Another small bit of sub-division to limit travel for teams. The creation of pods. The understanding is that they will take the 16 teams that are in the 4AA-EAST (already seeded) and they will divide them into two 8 team pods that are both EAST oriented but allow for the teams to be grouped close to one-another for travel. The important point is that the #1 and #2 seeded teams could be in the same 8 team pod and have to play one-another one game earlier than if there had only been a 16 team EAST bracket (in other words the winner of the two pods will face one another to play in the state title game, this may or may not be according to seed as the #1 and #2 team may have played each other a game earlier in their respective pod). Moving on, take the 8 teams in the one sub-divided group and rank them from highest seed to lowest seed. The highest seeded team plays the lowest seeded team and so forth. The result is that the traditional 1v16, 8v9, etc may or may not exist in this year's playoffs.
At this point, we are done!
A few additional notes, the NCHSAA handbook is a bit ambiguous on all of this to be perfectly honest. A few areas that I think can be clarified a bit more.
First point - Is it definitely conference winning percentage or is it # of conference wins when you get to the point of having to pick those final at-large teams? The handbook appears to say clearly conference winning percentage, but at one point in time I thought it was number of wins, perhaps not. Okay, maybe that was an easy one.
*Second point - And I think this is the big one. What I explained above is how I have always believed the system to work based on reading the rules, speaking with folks in the know and observing what actually happened. But, the question of conference winning percentage or number of overall wins getting those at-large teams into the playoffs seems to be a bit of a cloudy subject. What do I mean? Well, in my description I said that all of those 6 and 5 win at-large teams would make it because they are placed in their own little bunch and since they all fit into the number of available slots without any cut-off in their groups they are good to go. Moreover, that the 4 win teams that had the overlap are the ones where the conference winning percentage comes into play. In other words, put simply - My take has always been that they work down in groups and that winning games is the first variable important in making the playoffs, conference wins only become important if you are in a group where the cut-off exists. But the handbook is a bit confusing on this point. I could easily see folks reading what is written and thinking that at-large teams are not grouped, but rather their reportable win total is replaced by their conference winning percentage and they start from the top and work down that way. If that was the case, then it could conceivably mean that some 5 win teams or possibly even 6 win teams are left out of the playoffs while 4 win teams make it. First, this isn't what I've seen in practice occur and second that would not make sense with Drew's postings concerning the playoffs and he's been spot on for years. Like I said, a point of confusion.
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