‘Goofy year’ complicates playoffs

As the Poplar Bluff football team was wrapping up its home and conference schedule Friday night, up in St. Louis County two of the teams in the same district as the Mules were opening their season.

Mehlville and Oakville were set to play each other to start a three-game sprint before the start of the MSHSAA Class 5 District 1 playoffs.

“It’s just such a goofy year,” Mules coach David Sievers said.

Over the summer, MSHSAA waved a bylaw that required teams to meet a minimum number of games during the regular season to qualify for the postseason. With the unknowns of playing a season during a pandemic, MSHSAA gave schools a chance to play during the regular fall season or wait until March to play the “alternate fall season,” as well as being able to miss contests due to an outbreak of COVID-19. Only a handful of schools in the St. Louis area chose the alternate fall while the rest waited, hoping to be given the clearance to start playing after MSHSAA’s deadline.

St. Mary’s was hoping to open the season at Poplar Bluff two weeks ago, but the Dragons were also set to start Friday. The Mules ended up having a game canceled that week when Rolla lost a bunch of players to contact tracing.

Schools have had to cancel practices and games, withhold some student-athletes from others and restrict the number of fans in attendance due to the pandemic.

The SCAA volleyball tournament has already seen two varsity teams and a junior varsity team drop out. Imagine what happens if a team has a positive test for COVID-19 just before the start of the playoffs.

It’s already happened as one school had to pull out of the softball championships due to the virus, according to published reports, and this week MSHSAA announced that there will be no third-place games for softball and boys soccer as the final four for those sports will have a different look.

A season like no other now turns into a postseason like no other as fall sports in Missouri look to crown state champions.

The football playoffs are set to start Oct. 30

Looking at the Class 5 District 1 standings prior to Friday’s games has Jackson and Farmington playing for the top seed with Poplar Bluff third, 2.88 points ahead of Seckman. The winner of the Oakville-Mehlville game will end up with more points than Poplar Bluff.

With a six-team district, the top two seeds will have first-round byes while the third and fourth seeds will host. So the question is can Oakville or Mehlville, or any team starting its season now, benefit from the shorter season?

The short answer is it’s possible, but not probable.

At very best-case scenario for one team, they would go 3-0 and win by 13 points in each game while their opponents would win their remaining games. Since one of the teams, Oakville, also earns bonus points for playing two Class 6 schools, let’s use the Tigers as our example.

Oakville’s perfect run would produce 56.59 points.

Prior to Friday’s games, Jackson was leading the district with 51.69 points.

Jackson’s perfect run to close out the regular season would produce only 53.71 points, meaning Oakville could, in theory, be the top seed.

Poplar Bluff’s perfect scenario gets the Mules to 42.25 points, so even if everything does not work out for Oakville, the Tigers could be hosting Poplar Bluff in the first round.

Having a shorter schedule, however, might not be much of a benefit.

Each time Oakville’s opponents lose, the Tigers also lose 1.43 points. With nine opponents, a team loses 0.17 each time an opponent is beat. Fewer opponents make a greater impact on a team’s strength of schedule.

The point system was designed so that teams with differing number of games played can be ranked and seeded with the top two teams reaching the district final. Ultimately, teams win or lose on the field and not in a formula.

Given a choice, you can bet the players and coaches at Mehlville and Oakville would have wanted to play nine games instead of three. If they earn the right to host a district playoff through three games, they’ll end up with just as many home games as the Mules.

It’s been a goofy year.