Post-Week 4 4A Playoff Pairings

[screwloose]

Okay, folks. Here's what I did. I took the team who had the best record in each district and gave them all automatic bids. For those districts who have multiple teams with the best record, I took the higher rated team in RPI. Then, I took the next nine teams in the RPI rankings and gave them all wild cards.

All seven district automatic bids and the highest wild card will get first round home games. The state has made it clear, if I remember correctly, that reseeding/second round pairing will be made after round one results. So there's no real reason to get excited about how the teams are listed. Pairings were determined using a general sense of geography. No consideration was given to rematches, district or otherwise.

That being said, here's what we have so far, four weeks in...

AUTOMATICS
D-1: West Des Moines Dowling(#18)
D-2: Ankeny Centennial(#1)
D-3: Cedar Falls(#2)
D-4: Iowa City West(#6)
D-5: Bettendorf(#8)
D-6: Indianola(#3)
D-7: West Des Moines Valley(#4)

WILD CARDS
Fort Dodge(#5)
Johnston(#7)
Cedar Rapids Prairie(#9)
Marshalltown(10)
Muscatine(#11)
Davenport North(#12)
Waterloo West(#13)
Sioux City West(#14)
Waukee(#15)

FIRST ROUND PAIRINGS
Waukee @ Ankeny Centennial
Waterloo West @ Cedar Falls
Cedar Rapids Prairie @ Indianola
Marshalltown @ West Des Moines Valley
Sioux City West @ Fort Dodge
Davenport North @ Iowa City West
Muscatine @ Bettendorf
Johnston @ West Des Moines Dowling

 

[franky1967]

I like what you have done. I am not a big fan of the RPI system right now as they are not using it as intended. Otherwise like college football the seeding would determine who you would play next and where no matter what the travel is.

If I am thinking correct, I don’t think there will be any ties for district champion. If that is correct then the RPI system is working to that respect.

Great Work!

 

[SimpsonStorm]

My prediction for the end of the year:

Cedar Falls vs CR Kennedy
CR Prairie vs Johnston
Bettendorf vs IC High
Urbandale vs IC West

Centennial vs Fort Dodge
Indianola vs Dowling
Waukee vs SE Polk
Ankeny vs Valley

 

[CF_93]

I like what you have done. I am not a big fan of the RPI system right now as they are not using it as intended. Otherwise like college football the seeding would determine who you would play next and where no matter what the travel is.

If I am thinking correct, I don’t think there will be any ties for district champion. If that is correct then the RPI system is working to that respect.

Great Work!

I think the beauty of the RPI system will actually be revealed after the regular season is over, and the playoff teams are selected. It certainly beats the old system of the last 4 years (for Eastern Iowa, and 6 years for Central & Western Iowa), where the first four games didn’t count for anything except for injuries, and teams got in the playoffs with one lone win (in the old 32-team field at least). And I think this has the potential to be even superior to the old points system used prior to the inception of district play. Give it time. 4 weeks is still an insufficient sample size to get a good idea for how the RPI system will work. I think you will see that teams will be rewarded for scheduling a tough non-district schedule.

 

[ISUChip]

What will be interesting to me is how many teams leapfrog a team that has a better record.

To make up 1 game difference, you basically need your opponents to have at least 9 more wins (out of 81) than the opponents of the team you're chasing.

 

[oldtimefootball]

Hopefully that is exactly what needs to happen. Teams may be 7-2 just because they scheduled easy or lower classes in non-district games. Give me a 6-3 team that played 4 tough non-district games in a year every time.

Don’t disagree with your point about it will be interesting to see final rpi’s, schedules all shake out.

 

[franky1967]

What will be interesting to me is how many teams leapfrog a team that has a better record.

To make up 1 game difference, you basically need your opponents to have at least 9 more wins (out of 81) than the opponents of the team you're chasing.

If you go by the RPI system this week and the playoffs started tomorrow. Just taking the top 16 teams for example.

IC High would be the 16th team. Ames would be left out even though they beat IC High 35-0 earlier in the seaso.

 

[oldtimefootball]

Like CF_93 pointed out, rpi doesn’t mean much now (week 4), there will be some larger moves when we get a look in week 7 or 8.

 

[oldtimefootball]

So a little too much time on my hands this afternoon. Interesting to update rpi with final records (just a guess but using BCMoore’s data as a guide.). I did not update opponents records or opponents of opponents records. These two data points will obviously move as well, but I think to a much lesser degree.

It appears a good chance for a crossover (east - west) game in first round.

District champs (and my projection of final rpi)

1) Dowling (9)
2) Centennial (1)
3) Cedar Falls (2)
4) Iowa City West (3)
5) Bettendorf (5)
6) Waukee (6)
7) Valley (4)

At large

Indianola (7)
Fort Dodge (8)
Prairie (10)
Ames (11)
Pleasant Valley (12)
Johnston (13)
CR Kennedy (14)
IC City (15)
SEP (16)

SEP could be a 4-5 team projected to beat out a few 5-4 teams like Ankeny, Urbandale, SC East, Dav. North and Waterloo West based on strength of schedule (again, I did not up those last two criteria so much up in air.)

Going to be fun to watch, especially district 6 with Johnston, Waukee and Indianola.