Note: Updated Tuesday evening to reflect the section’s announcement that Cosumnes Oaks has forfeited its victory over Liberty Ranch due to an ineligible player, a change that shuffled teams throughout the top four divisions. Compare the original Week 9 projection here.
In the third week of The Sacramento Bee’s high school football playoff projections, Folsom has moved more solidly into the Division I bracket. The top-ranked Bulldogs are no longer right on the bubble – Tracy is now the smallest DI school – and the possibility of Folsom moving down to D-II seems more remote.
The D-I bracket is loaded with other teams from the Delta River League, which holds four of the top seven seeds. In Division II, Elk Grove moves up the the No. 1 seed, as Tracy has jumped up to Division I. In D-III, Rio Linda slips down to the No. 3 seed. The projection is based on games played to date.
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On the divisional edge: The smallest enrollment school in D-I this week is Tracy. In D-II, the largest school is Beyer and the smallest is Antelope. Yuba City is the largest school in D-III; Casa Roble is the smallest. In D-IV, Vista del Lago is the largest. These are the schools most likely to switch divisions if the mix of qualifying teams changes.
Outside looking in: The last team in is Monterey Trail (47 OWs). Just outside the playoff bubble is Napa, with 45 OW.
How our projection is done: We have attempted to apply the section’s playoff rules for this year as much as possible, with some slight adjustments to compensate for the weeks yet to be played. The section’s playoff plan for 2013 is attached to this story, along with some sample brackets.
We change the rules in two ways to make our projection. First, we often ignore the requirement that a team have two league wins, since many teams have just started league play. But this week all the qualifying teams happen to have two league wins. Second, we add CalPreps rankings as a second tiebreaker for determining each league’s two automatic qualifiers. The official tiebreaker is head-to-head competition, but in some cases the league championships comes down to the final game. Head-to-head results are used whenever the teams have played.
These charts show preliminary seeding. The section has broad authority to adjust the seeds to compose the final brackets. For example, seeding is generally be adjusted to prevent teams from the same league from meeting in the first round. Travel distance is another potential reason for a seeding adjustment. For these charts, we haven’t tried to make those final tweaks.
Questions? Send me an email at nlevine@sacbee.com, and it might be included in a short QA in the near future.
Click here for The Bee’s notebook rundown on league championship showdowns and area players who set school marks for single game or career in Week 9.
See The Bee’s latest Top 20 football rankings. Each of these teams will make the playoffs.
In this week’s Preps Plus insiders video commentary, Joe Davidson of The Bee and Mike Finnerty of SureWest Sports break down area record-breakers and preview Week 10.
Check the ESPN1320.net radio podcast with Joe Davidson and Mike Finnerty as they break down Week 9 and preview Week 10.