By Staff
With the start of the 2008 AHSAA football season right around the corner, (18 more days to be exact) the 2008 preseason polls have been posted.
For our teams' classifications, 4A for W.S. Neal and 3A for T.R. Miller, Deshler ranks No. 1 in 4A and Cordova ranks No.1 in 3A.
Locally, T.R. Miller ranked No. 4 in 3A with 156 votes. W.S. Neal was not ranked in the preseason polls.
Four class 4A region one opponents for W.S. Neal are ranked in the class 4A poll. Thomasville is ranked No. 2 while UMS-Wright is ranked No. 4.
Clarke County is ranked No. 7, Andalusia is ranked No. 9 and Hillcrest-Evergreen is ranked No. 20 with one vote in the others receiving votes category.
In 3A, no region one opponents for T.R. Miller are ranked. No opponents on T.R. Miller's schedule are ranked other than Clarke County who is No. 7 in 4A.
I came across some region predictions the other day on a popular prep site (I will not reveal its name) and they have T.R. Miller finishing first in their region with a 7-0 region record and an 8-2 overall record.
Followed behind the Tigers are Straughn at 6-1, Luverne at 5-2, Cottage Hill at 4-3, Bayside Academy at 3-4, Calhoun at 2-5, Central Hayneville at 1-6 and Choctaw County at 0-7.
These predictions were followed by the other region predictions to set up the possible first round playoff opponents.
This year, as set up by the AHSAA, region one is set up with region two and region three is set up with region four and five is with six and seven is with eight.
If you take the top four people in region one, T.R. Miller, Straughn, Luverne and Cottage Hill, and place them with the top four predicted winners in region two your first round playoff matches would be:
Slocomb at T.R. Miller, Wicksburg at Straughn, Luverne at Geneva and Cottage Hill at Pike County.
With the current playoff format the way it is now, you will either have a region one or two representative play a region three or four in the semi-finals for the right to play a five or six against the seven and eight.
For the region predictions in class 4A region one, Andalusia was picked to finish at 7-0 followed by UMS at 6-1, Thomasville at 5-2, Clarke County at 4-3, W.S. Neal at 4-3 and 6-4 overall, Jackson at 2-5, B.C. Rain at 1-6 and Hillcrest Evergreen at 0-7.
With those predictions, W.S. Neal will be the odd man out in fifth place and miss the playoffs.
As for possible 4A region one playoff predictions, Andalusia will host Ashford and UMS will host St. James. Thomasville will travel to Opp and Clarke County will travel to Elmore County.
While I know that all this is just prediction stuff and a lot can change once the season starts, it is always fun to look and guess how a team's season may go.
Someone might get it right and predict someone's season correctly and some may even predict someone to do better than they might and then worse than they might do.
Back to the playoff brackets, I know last year I said that the traveling distances for T.R. Miller and W.S. Neal in round one were ridiculous and they should change the regions in the first round to regions one versus two and so on.
Well, I have learned the regions rotate each year and after seeing this year's bracket format, I don't think I like the way its set up.
In the semi-finals this year, it is not possible to have two teams from the same region meeting against each other.
You are either going to have a region one against a region three or four or a region two against a three or four.
Anyways, enough of all of that. I hope all had a great first week of school and until Wednesday when we meet again, God bless.