Gonna Give This a Shot…..Playoffs.

[MalleusMaleficarum]

Soucie is great, but "all but a handful" of the matchups before week 9...no. Predict all of the playoff qualifiers, yes. You have ONE surprise entrant push a team from 8A to 7A and the entire deck gets reshuffled for every division below it. Because they don't define the classes until AFTER the 256 qualifiers are picked, there is zero ability to know anything for sure.

And somebody made this point before, but it's worth emphasizing. Being a higher seed stopped being a big advantage when the CCL constantly is sprinkling 5-4/6-3 teams (that lost to big power schools) into the mid-level divisions. Look at 5A last year when Naz rolled through as an 11 seed. I'm sure Glenbard South was stoked about their 6 seed and 7-2 record until they saw that matchup.

Going into week 9, you can most likely determine which teams will end up (enrollment-wise) in the "middle of the pack" in each of the 8 classes, but that doesn't mean you can pick matchups or determine the EXACT fate of "bubble" teams. Week 9 games will need to be played, and then the IHSA will need to do the voodoo that they do. Another thing has been discussed recently on this board which could also factor into the uncertainty, at least for Classes 1-6: where will the North-South Bracket Line be drawn for each of these classes? Will the IHSA STRICTLY adhere to this line, or will they put some North-South Bracket Line "border" teams where they want them? Heck, maybe they would not even need to be "border" teams for the IHSA to move them around. As FballDaddy says, the 256 qualifiers still need to determined!!