Steve Soucie’s Week 4 playoff projection: A few surprise results lead to classification shifts

If time allows, I often like to sketch out what I think will happen before each week’s games begin.

It’s a valuable exercise when trying to project the IHSA playoff field, because it causes one to dig through every available piece of information you can find before making the assessment.

This involves projecting about 250 games.

I’m a bit of a perfectionist when I try to do this exercise, but even I’ll allow myself the luxury of accepting that I’m not going to be as good at projecting Week 4 results as I’m going to be in Week 8 with twice as much data at my fingertips.

Still, the 37 games I got wrong this week bug me. That puts me at about an 85 percent clip for the week, good, but not great.

But one thing to realize is that sometimes those missed games don’t really have that much of an effect on how the playoff projection looks in the long run. A missed game between two teams that were not projected to make the playoffs is still important but only to where playoff points are assigned. It’s mainly a seeding issue.

There are, however, games that I project wrong that have a visible and huge impact on how the whole project looks.

Week 4 delivered three of those outcomes, two from the same conference.

• Sandburg’s win over Lockport: Lockport’s early-season results indicated it was positioned well to topple Sandburg. But the Eagles victory had a two-fold effect. A spot had to be created in the Class 8A field to add Sandburg, which was previously not projected to make the field.

That, coupled with adding Chicago Taft out of the Chicago Public League into the 8A draw, shifted the two smallest 8A teams from last week’s projection into the Class 7A field, which started a chain reaction throughout the whole projection.

• Adding to that large school shift was Lincoln-Way West’s win over Lincoln-Way Central. The win meant Lincoln-Way West was projected back into the field and a new spot needed to be created for the Warriors while the Knights still kept there. And another shift of teams pushed into smaller classifications. In all, five teams that were in the 7A projection last week were pushed down to 6A.

• Beardstown’s narrow victory over Jacksonville Routt went against what I had projected and it showed what can happen when schools of disparate enrollments change spots in the projection. Routt was projected into the Class 1A field, while Beardstown was inserted into its spot in Class 3A.

In all, 20 new or returning teams were placed into the Week 4 projection. Nearly half of those teams are from the Chicago Public League an area that continues to be extremely volatile in projecting likely qualifiers.

Once again, a small handful of teams from the four-win group were needed to fill the field of 256 teams. Three teams were required this week, up one from a week ago. Yorkville, Plainfield North and Homewood-Flossmoor were those three teams.

Here is the Week 4 playoff projection for all eight classes (below each bracket is more context on what happened in Week 4 that changed the make-up of the brackets):

Class 1A

Class 1A Enrollment Range: Up to 296.5

Largest 1A teams by enrollment: Oakwood, Cumberland, Althoff, Morrison, Fulton

Smallest 2A teams by enrollment: Arthur, Bloomington Central Catholic, Momence, Orion, Tri-Valley

New teams in field:

Class 2A

Class 2A Enrollment Range: 303 to 412

Largest 1A teams by enrollment: Oakwood, Cumberland, Althoff, Morrison, Fulton

Smallest 2A teams by enrollment: Arthur, Bloomington Central Catholic, Momence, Orion, Tri-Valley

Largest 2A teams by enrollment: Carlinville, Wilmington, Nashville, Dwight, Piasa Southwestern

New teams in field:

Class 3A

Class 3A Enrollment Range: 417 to 553

Largest 2A teams by enrollment: Carlinville, Wilmington, Nashville, Dwight, Piasa Southwestern

Smallest 3A teams by enrollment: Crane/Oregon (same enrollment), Fairfield, Beardstown, St. Joseph Ogden

Largest 3A teams by enrollment: Harrisburg, Phillips, King, Greenville, Prairie Central

New teams in field:

Class 4A

Class 4A Enrollment Range: 554.5 to 868.5

Largest 3A teams by enrollment: Harrisburg, Phillips, King, Greenville, Prairie Central

Smallest 4A teams by enrollment: Dyett, Phoenix, Peoria Notre Dame, Kewanee, Richmond-Burton

Largest 4A teams by enrollment: Rochelle, Morris, St. Laurence, Noble/Comer, Geneseo

New teams in field:

Class 5A

Class 5A Enrollment Range: 882 to 1363

Largest 4A teams by enrollment: Rochelle, Morris, St. Laurence, Noble/Comer, Geneseo

Smallest 5A teams by enrollment: Jacksonville, Evergreen Park, Highland, Corliss, Metamora

Largest 5A teams by enrollment: Centennial, Dunlap, Kaneland, Providence, Antioch

New teams in field:

Class 6A

Class 6A Enrollment Range: 1374.5 to 1868

Largest 5A teams by enrollment: Centennial, Dunlap, Kaneland, Providence, Antioch

Smallest 6A teams by enrollment: Simeon, Lemont, Wauconda, Bremen, Lake View

Largest 6A teams by enrollment: Willowbrook, Rockford Auburn, Libertyville, Grant, Lake Zurich

New teams in field:

Class 7A

Class 7A Enrollment Range: 1876 to 2322

Largest 6A teams by enrollment: Willowbrook, Rockford Auburn, Libertyville, Grant, Lake Zurich

Smallest 7A teams by enrollment: Quincy, Bradley-Bourbonnais, Batavia, Collinsville, Addison Trail

Largest 7A teams by enrollment: Glenbard West, Edwardsville, Glenbard East, Downers Grove North, Prospect

New teams in field:

Class 8A

Class 8A Enrollment Range: 2351.5 and up

Largest 7A teams by enrollment: Glenbard West, Edwardsville, Glenbard East, Downers Grove North, Prospect

Smallest 8A teams by enrollment: Plainfield North, Maine South, St. Ignatius, Belleville East, Niles West

New teams in field: