What we learned in Week 10: Power conferences largely thrive in first round

It is a frequent battle cry that is heard whenever the playoffs roll around.

Look out for those teams that played loaded schedules.

It was definitely a mantra worth listening to after the first round of the playoffs where some of the state’s best conferences demonstrated how prepared they are to attack the postseason.

The CCL/ESCC placed 13 teams in the playoffs, 11 of them won in the opening round. Most won in dominating fashion.

Of the two losses, one of them, Brother Rice, lost to another CCL/ESCC squad in Fenwick. The lone loss to a non CCL/ESCC team was by Marmion who was upended by Rochelle in the Class 5A draw.

Another league that showed up strong in the opening round was the North Suburban. The league met questions about its caliber because of the chaotic nature of its results this season. But Stevenson, Libertyville, Lake Forest and Warren all collected wins in the first round and Libertyville and Lake Forest will get reacquainted in Round 2 in a second round matchup.

The Big 12 Conference sent all five of its entrants into the next round with one of its teams pulling off what was widely considered to be one of the biggest shocks of the first round. Peoria Notre Dame upended defending Class 4A state champion Rochester 59-58.

The West Suburban Silver also moved all three of its teams along and the conference as a whole did well as the Gold Division also sent two of its three teams along with its lone loss coming from Addison Trail.

Perhaps the most surprising conference included on this list is the Chicagoland Prairie Conference, a collection of just five teams that didn’t even qualify for an automatic bid. Three teams from the group made the playoffs and all three of them – Seneca, Ottawa Marquette and Dwight – collected victories in round 1. In Dwight’s case it was the school’s first playoff victory since 1983.

The weekend’s news wasn’t as good for some other conferences, though, as the Lincoln Trail/Prairie South was 0-4, the Central Suburban Conference (North/South) was 1-4, Kishwaukee River went 1-3 and the Vermilion Valley was 1-5.

Good weekend for lower seeds

A total of 34 lower-seeded teams won opening round games in the first weekend.

While Class 4A was particularly effected by this phenomenon as half of the first round games were won by lower seeded teams.

Conversely, Class 6A and Class 2A were almost completely unaffected by upstart teams. Just one lower seeded team won a game in each of those classifications opening round.

CPL scuffles mightily

Five Chicago Public League teams won opening round games in the IHSA playoffs this weekend.

That might be the largest number of teams to advance past Round 1 in quite some time, but there is a caveat to that success rate.

Four of those victories (Westinghouse, King, Agricultural Science and Whitney Young) were achieved over another CPL school. The wins for Westinghouse and Agricultural Science were the first in playoff history for either school.

The CPL’s lone win over a non-CPL school came in the Class 5A draw where Morgan Park earned a relatively comfortable win over Tinley Park.

When you remove those CPS vs. CPS matchups and the Morgan Park win the other 17 Chicago Public League qualifiers, those 17 teams were all defeated and outscored 764 to 76.