Heading into the Week 7 slate of games it appeared that the schedule was going to provide a defining week for a lot of programs in the middle of the pack.

There’s a larger group than normal floating around the .500 mark and it seemed pertinent to the sculpting of the playoff field to get some definition there with so little of the regular season now left.

That happened as there were numerous clarifying results in that group that did show themselves.

But what also happened alongside that was the group of teams at the top of the win pyramid showed a shocking level of upheaval.

We entered the weekend with 45 undefeated teams. We left the weekend with 35.

It was a shocking deflation of the undefeated teams list, especially considering there was not a single matchup in the state that paired 6-0 teams in Week 7.

It already felt like there was going to be a dearth of undefeated teams on the top of the brackets, especially in the higher classifications.

Nearly half of the remaining undefeated teams in the state are currently earmarked to be in the Class 1A and Class 2A fields. There are almost none in larger classifications. There are 97 playoff-eligible programs in the state with an enrollment larger than 1,950. Just four (Mount Carmel, Lincoln-Way East, Glenbard West and Lincoln-Way West) remain undefeated.

And even those schools might not still be safe. All four play at least one playoff-bound bound potentially imposing foe amongst their last two games.

It is going to make for some odd-looking brackets in the long run. 8-1 teams with very high playoff points are going to see a very, very high seed by their name while 6-3 teams have a much larger chance of earning a home playoff game than possibly ever before, at least in the larger classifications.

The exact opposite situation will be occurring in the smaller classifications. Dependent on where the bubble line breaks between 1A/2A/3A, there still could be as many as 10 undefeated teams landing in the Class 2A bracket, with a fairly high concentration of many of those teams landing in the northern portion of the bracket.

In those brackets, there’s virtually no chance a 6-3 team can hope for a home game and a large chunk of the 7-2 squads may get locked out too.

Conference chaos

13 conferences around the state have already crowned a league champion with two weeks to go in the regular season.

But there are several leagues where that is far from decided.

One extreme case of that is being undertaken by the Southwest Prairie Conference.

Both sides of the 12-team, two-division league currently see four teams tied at the top of their division standings at 2-1 in league play with two divisional games left.

The Southwest Prairie West Division already has five teams that have reached at least five victories with Oswego East, Yorkville, Bolingbrook, Minooka and Oswego. The first four of those teams are embroiled in the tie.

There’s even a weird quirk that could develop involving the only team not at the five-win plateau in the league, Plainfield North, who sits at 2-5, could still make the playoff field as well by sweeping its last two games. If 4-5 teams are needed and Plainfield North gets there, only one team in the state has more playoff points than the Tigers, Palatine.

The East Division has almost the exact opposite issue going on. Two of the four teams involved in the four-way tie, Joliet West and Plainfield South, already have five losses. Right now, their only path to the playoffs would be winning their final two games and hoping whatever tiebreak scenario plays out falls in their favor to win the conference. Teams involved with conferences with six or more teams, the conference champion gets into the playoffs regardless of their overall record or playoff point status.

Teams that play in conferences with less than six teams don’t qualify for that exemption for their conference champion. As such, four team leagues such as in the CCL/ESCC face the possibility of sending no teams from a division. Both the CCL Red and CCL Purple could potentially have that happen this year.

CPL parity

There’s often a fair amount of consternation about Chicago Public League teams getting high seeds based on the fact that they have run through lesser schedules without a loss.

And there are many examples of those same CPL teams getting bounced right away from those top seed lines in the opening round of the playoffs with losses to teams with very low seeds.

That won’t happen this year as the last of the CPL’s remaining undefeated teams were defeated in Week 7.

There are 10 CPL schools with just one loss on the season and they will still likely be seeded fairly high, but it is virtually guaranteed that none will earn a top three seeding in any class.

No scoring slowdown

Just because the weather cooled a little bit in Week 7 that did not ease the heat coming from scoreboards around the state.

138 teams scored at least 40 points in victories around the state and 39 teams have already posted at least 300 points on the year.