Playoff picture to clear up Friday

Published 11:39 pm Tuesday, November 7, 2006

The invitations have been sent to Region 7-4A’s guests for the Class 4A playoffs, but who will sit where has yet to be decided.

That’s a matter that will be settled on football fields in Dalton and No. 5 Rome on Friday night.

The Ridgeland at Dalton and Northwest Whitfield at Rome games feature the region’s four state qualifiers playing for their final position in the standings, which will also determine who stays home and who goes on the road when the first round of the playoffs begin on Nov. 17.

And with three of those teams — Dalton, Northwest and Rome — still holding on to region title hopes, there’s a lot at stake.

“We’re in Week 10 and have an opportunity to be region champs,” Falleur said. “To be able to still have that goal in Week 10, how many teams have that? To still have that chance in the last week, we’re very happy with that.”

A victory for Northwest would give the Bruins at least a share of the region title, although it might not give them the No. 1 seed. They might not even get a host’s spot — the top two teams from each region host first-round games — since one possible scenario is that Dalton, Rome and Northwest could all finish with 6-1 marks in region play. They’d all be region champs, of course, but there’s no way to share a seed.

The region’s tiebreaker procedures are, in order, head-to-head competition, winning percentage against Class 4A competition and a coin toss, according to Falleur.

Three of the possible four scenarios would require some form of tiebreaker, with two of them involving a three-way tie. Here are those scenarios, with what would be each team’s region record in parentheses:

A) If Northwest beats Rome and Ridgeland beats Dalton: Northwest (6-1) is first, Rome is second (6-1), Ridgeland (5-2) is third and Dalton (5-2) is fourth. Northwest and Ridgeland would break the ties and earn the higher seeds by virtue of head-to-head competition.

B) If Rome beats Northwest and Dalton beats Ridgeland: Rome (7-0) is first, Dalton (6-1) is second, Northwest (5-2) is third and Ridgeland (4-3) is fourth.

C) If Rome beats Northwest and Ridgeland beats Dalton: Rome (7-0) is first, while Dalton (5-2), Northwest (5-2) and Ridgeland (5-2) are tied for second. Since Dalton beat Northwest, Northwest beat Dalton and Dalton beat Ridgeland, head-to-head will not break the tie and the seeds will be determined by coin toss.

D) If Northwest beats Rome and Dalton beats Ridgeland: Dalton (6-1), Northwest (6-1) and Rome (6-1) are tied for first, while Ridgeland (4-3) is fourth. Since Northwest beat Rome, Rome beat Dalton and Dalton beat Northwest, head-to-head will not break the tie and the seeds will be determined by coin toss.

Dalton coach Ronnie McClurg’s take on the Catamounts’ postseason fate is to worry about what he can — which is only getting his team ready to play.

“First of all, it’s all speculation,” Mcclurg said. “We’ve got to win. Everything else will take care of itself. We’re in. That’s all we know.”

While Dalton, Northwest and Rome have all been to the postseason within the last two years, it’s been much longer for Ridgeland, which is in the playoffs for the first time since 1998, when the Panther lost 31-0 to North Springs in the first round.

That doesn’t mean the Panthers and coach Mark Mariakis are just happy to be in, though — even if, after losing to Rome 34-3 last week, they do need help and luck to finish better than third and host a playoff game.

“We’ve been in for two weeks,” Mariakis said. “When we beat Gordon Central, it locked us in, which was huge for us. We didn’t want to have to go to Rome or Dalton trying to get in. Now we’re fighting for position like everyone else.”