Texas High School Playoffs Preview

Any chance that Ira wil be one of the six-man champions?

Whenever I think I’m a football geek, I just read a Huck or Longhornscott post and realize I am a dimwitted dilettante.

Would love to see a round table between Huck, LS and Scipio. Or maybe, more along the lines of Mystery Science Theater where we’re watching you guys watch the game.

Brackets: http://www.uiltexas.org/football/playoff-brackets
Enjoy and Go Chaps!

Great stuff Huck. Your probable champions reflect the difficulties a tough bracket can present. The highest rated team is not always the most likely to win the state championship. Even though they would be favored in every game.

The Lake Travis probability is astounding. 71% probability of winning 6 straight vs some really stout teams. LT has a phenomenal program.

Cedar Hill v. SL Carroll looks like a good match up in the second round in Region 1 as well. Should be a fantastic Saturday at Jerry World Thanksgiving weekend.

Cibolo Steele could beat Texas. Better quarterback and better scheme. Those young offensive linemen last year that MB had to deal with are grown.

They are a lock for the semis.

I haven’t been able to keep up with my old high school, what the hell happened to Midland Lee? Have they fallen off that much in the last 9 years?

torre, step away from the crack pipe. I’ve seen Steele a few times this year. They are very good and are my choice to win the region. I think they be competitive with Katy. But seriously, they are not a lock for region. Reagan, and to a lesser extent, Brandeis will present serious challenges along the way.

What’s in that black cool-aid you’ve been drinking?

Just curious, but don’t we hear each year about how this year will finally be the year that either De Soto or Skyline advanced into the deeper rounds of the play-offs only to lose in the first 2-3 rounds?

Lufkin Panthers baby!

@JB – I will stand by my statement. Brandeis and Reagan have not seen a physical team (both sides of the ball) like Steele

Austin High will set new records during these playoffs.

Joe Mack -

As part of Barking Carnival’s endless quest to deliver the best customer service in Longhorn Netdom, I have now posted Six-Man EWP Ratings as well as all the other pages associated with that competition. The good news for Ira is that they’re #1 in the EWP ratings. The bad news is that their region is filthy good (66% chance the state champion comes from it) so their title probability right now is estimated at a hair under 10%.

UIL 6-Man Division I Probability Forecast
UIL 6-Man Division II Probability Forecast
TAPPS 6-Man Probability Forecast
TCAF 6-Man Probability Forecast
TCAL 6-Man Probability Forecast

Davey -

Skyline is a tough one to predict even just based on this year, let alone previous playoff failures.

They didn’t have a very tough district but they did what a good team should do. They outscored their district opponents 348-14, shutting out 5 of them. Their best in-state competition was Arlington Bowie, a decent team, and they crushed them 47-14. Using data for all teams (connections between states being pretty weak, of course), Massey has them as #16 in the country with the #8 defense.

Once again, I wouldn’t bet on them but it wouldn’t surprise me when they finally play up to their capability in the playoffs. You figure it has to happen by accident at some point. The problem for them is that losing to DeSoto in the second round wouldn’t actually be an underachievement.

torre, you really stand by your statement that Steele could beat UT? That undermines your assessment of Steele, and that’s a shame because Steele is very good. They have a shot to repeat, but the road is not easy.

Back off the hyperbole and you will be fine.

Secret Suirrel, I hear ya! It seems the game has passed us by.

I too miss seeing your Rebs up there. I cannot remember the last time my MOJO was killin it.

‘95? ’96 was it? Yeesh I’m old….

This reminds me of the high school football gambling episode of Quantum Leap.

Since I did not grow up in Texas, the Texas division system has always mystified me. (Granted I just never really bothered to figure it out).

Could someone out there please explain why there are two Divisions 5-A, two divisions 4-A etc?. Does that mean that there are essentially (2) 5-A state champions really more of a half state champion? Or, is one Division representative of larger schools?

A high school team beating a top-20 Div 1 college team?

That’s so stupid I don’t even know where to begin. Even the thought of it would break Huck’s patented match up analyzer.

Go Sandcrabs! (Calhoun Port Lavaca) class of 1992.

Roach,

The classification system in its simplest form is passed up the average enrollment of the UIL member schools.

Class A is 199 students and below
Class AA is 200 to 429 students
Class AAA is 430 students to 989 students
Class AAAA is 990 students to 2,064 students
Class AAAAA is 2,065 students and up.

The problem is in the Class AAAAA ranges from some schools below the cut-off to schools like Plano over 5,200, Allen over 5,000, Skyline over 4,700, Plano West and Alief Hastings over 4,100, and Alief Elsik over 4,000. I am sure that I have missed multiple schools, but the point is that in the 5A bracket you have some schools more than double the enrollment of the schools that compete against. In 3A that means one school having 450+ more students than a competing school and in 5A that means one school having 2,500+ more students.

One proposed solution was creating a 6A classification. The problem is that the “jumbo” sized schools are predominantly found in only a few areas in the state so it was decided that instead of creating a new division that the UIL would split the 5A play-offs into two brackets and now 4 schools per district instead of 2 would be headed into the play-off (Interestingly this did not happen for all sports. In track for example only 3 runners per event move out of district regardless of classification.) . More teams in the play-offs meant more “successful programs” and that trickled down to 4A where those coaches believed that there teams were not getting a fair chance to compete and decided they needed a second play-off bracket.

Two problems exist from the current set-up. First, you will sometimes find schools playing in the “small school” 5A bracket that are bigger than a school in the “big school” 5A bracket. Consider that in 13 5A all of the Klein and Spring schools are over 3,000 in their enrollment.

Second, you don’t always get the two best teams in the same brackets. Best example is Katy and SLC. They played a few times, but there were a few years that they were in different brackets. This year Aledo, Brenham, and Manvel are in one 4A bracket and Denton Ryan and Lake Travis are in the other. I think we would all like to seem them in the same bracket, but that won’t happen because of the division made to split 4A.

Huck,

I agree and wasn’t trying to be ass. Really appreciate the amount of work put into numbers. Skyline and De Soto remind me a little to North Shore. GPNS on a regular basis has some serious talent, but aside for one year seemed to always lose a game they shouldn’t in the play-offs. Now the past few years much like DeSoto and Skyline, GPNS has had the pleasure or drawing Katy early in the play-offs and that resulted in an early exit.

Maybe Skyline being an inner city school lacks some of the resources available to the suburban schools. I remember an article in the Houston Chronicle Vince’s senior season when Madison and Austin Westlake met in the play-offs. The article compared the situations of the schools. The head coach and both co-ordinators at Westlake taught no classes at that time so they had plenty of time to watch video and work on their game plans. That was not the case at Madison where the defensive co-ordinator also was the girls’ varsity basketball coach and sold doughnuts in the cafeteria in the morning as a fund raiser. Very few if any of the Westlake players held jobs and most had cars so that getting up to the school early or staying late to watch video was no problem. At Madison many of the problems rode Metro to and from school and a good number held jobs.

I don’t make that point to try to diminish in any way the results of those Westlake teams. Did they benefit from the weaker competition in their region in some years? Yes, but resources and a weak region don’t guarantee state titles. It can however be a significant difference and might explain why a school like Skyline that is loaded with physical talent has never advanced deep into the play-offs.

IA Division 1 champs — GANADO INDIANS

Given what I pay for this site, is there any chance someone here could do the work of listing all our commits/likely commits who play on these teams? Because I just don’t have the time. K thx!

HbM -

The Highwayman did that over at Recruitocosm:

Class of 2012
Class of 2013

I get pleasure from, result in I found exactly what I was looking for. You have ended my four day lengthy hunt! God Bless you man. Have a nice day. Bye

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