Soucie: Week 6 playoff projection

The playoff picture is starting to clear up a little bit, but the photo definitely has some fuzzy edges to it.

It is becoming more and more apparent that there won’t be enough teams with at least five wins to fill the entire 256-team field, which will open the door to four-win at-large teams for the first time.

Although there are just 40 teams in the state that have locked in playoff berths by winning their sixth games, there’s definitely some stability forming in the fields.

Nineteen teams were additions to the projection this week, either as newcomers or returners that had fallen off. The grand majority of those teams came from a couple of sources: the Chicago Public League, where stability is hard to find and harder to predict, and some conferences such as the Heart of Illinois, South Suburban and Little Illini. Those leagues are producing almost random results. In the end, the middle teams in those leagues could produce multiple playoff teams or possibly none at all.

The one thing that is consistently wavering is the bubble lines in the middle classifications (4A-6A). Class 5A saw six new teams in the bracket, while 6A added five, which led to a significant shift in teams on the large side of each classification. Most notably, Rochester seems to be skewing heavily toward returning to the Class 4A bracket, Wilmington once again snuck into the Class 2A draw, and Chicago Simeon has slid to Class 6A.

The number of 4-5 teams projected to make the field jumped back up to 14 this week. And while there were several teams that flipped the script and moved from a team expected to finish at 4-5 to 5-4 this week, there were several more that didn’t claim a win they likely needed to get to the five-win plateau.

Of the 4-5 group currently projected to make the field, the lion’s share of those teams come from larger classifications (5A through 8A). That’s largely due to the fact that teams from larger classifications don’t tend to play in closed conferences, which put a cap on how many playoff points one can amass. They also tend to play stronger nonconference schedules. For the time being, it appears four-win hopefuls will need to rack up at least 45 points to be in the conversation.

And since the current list of 4-5 hopefuls in the projection tends to be in the larger classifications (7A has five 4-5 projected teams), the bubble lines are shifting downward. The primary way that the line would adjust back up would be if smaller classification teams not currently projected to reach five wins find a way to get there, forcing some of the 4-5′s back out of the draw.

Here’s a look at all eight classes with the final three weeks projected to make up the 256-team playoff field. Maps are provided for Class 1A through 6A to see where the north/south dividing line could break. Class 7A and Class 8A are not divided into geographic groups.

Class 8A

New Teams in Class 8A Field

Class 7A

New Teams in Class 7A Field

Class 6A

New Teams in Class 6A Field

Class 6A North/South Map

Class 5A

New Teams in Class 5A Field

Class 5A North/South Map

Class 4A

New Teams in Class 4A Field

Class 4A North/South Map

Class 3A

New Teams in Class 3A Field

Class 3A North/South Map

Class 2A

New Teams in Class 2A Field

Class 2A North/South Map

Class 1A

New Teams in Class 1A Field

Class 1A North/South Map