Proposed FHSAA playoff change could alter postseason fates in area

Dave Marino stood on the sideline at Harllee Stadium in Palmetto after his team’s season officially ended with a lopsided loss to Punta Gorda Charlotte, trying to find perspective on an ultimately disappointing season.

Palmetto’s 6-4 record wouldn’t be enough to make the postseason in the 941 area code. Manatee, Braden River, Venice and Charlotte had beaten the Tigers, so a Palmetto team stocked with Division I talent and another winning record was done.

The Tigers’ season truly ended a week earlier with a loss to the Indians in Venice one week after a loss to the Pirates at Braden River High School. In those two weeks, PHS went from optimistically picturing itself as contenders for a deep run in Class 7A to a team watching district rivals make runs of their own.

“If you rank the 25 teams in the region, we’re probably fifth,” Marino said after the loss to the Tarpons. “That’s pretty damn good. Unfortunately, we have a brutal district and we played a brutal schedule.”

A few months later, Marino watched the FHSAA replay the scenario for coaches at a conference in Tallahassee. The governing body of high school athletics in Florida wanted to prevent seasons like the Tigers’ from happening too often and PHS’ season was used as one of several examples.

Palmetto was one of 35 teams last year to miss the playoffs with a winning record. Fifteen qualified with a losing record. Marino is the only Manatee County coach who wound up on the wrong side of that equation last year, so it is not surprising he has been the most outspoken locally in his support of the FHSAA’s proposed new playoff qualification system. However, it’s been greeted by near-unanimous support from coaches in the area and 70 percent of coaches 500 coaches and athletic directors agree a change needs to be made. Braden River head coach Curt Bradley and Lakewood Ranch head coach Mic Koczersut are glad to see the strength of their district recognized. Manatee head coach John Booth hopes it will give the Hurricanes more flexibility with their scheduling. Even those who aren’t as ardently supportive, such as Bayshore head coach John Biezuns, see the benefits.

“At the end of the day, you’re out to win the district and we know that if we’re one of those teams that wins the district we’ll be taken care of as far as the playoffs go,” Bradley said. “You do have a dominant group of teams in the same district, and one team is usually on the outside looking in.”

During the second week of the 7A playoffs, Venice came north to meet the Pirates in a postseason meeting between Class 7A-District 11 rivals. Braden River handled Naples Gulf Coast the week before. Venice rolled past South Fort Myers. The three-team Class 7A-District 12 flamed out one week after the regular season. Under the FHSAA’s current proposal, only the district-champion from Fort Myers would make the postseason.

The proposed format, which will be either confirmed, denied or tweaked by a group of athletic directors and the FHSAA Board of Directors during meetings in September and November only guarantees winners from each district a playoff spot. The final four postseason berths in each region are determined through a points system that rewards teams for playing and winning games on a tough schedule. A win, for example, against a team with an .800 winning percentage that season would be worth 50 points while a loss to such a team would net the loser 35 points—the same amount as a win against a team with a .399-or-worse win percentage. Teams also pick up bonus points for playing teams in larger classifications.

The full proposal on the FHSAA website. The point system is detailed on page 3.

Under the proposed point system, Palmetto would not have qualified for the postseason anyway. But the Tigers would have accrued more points than Gulf Coast.

“The reason the state’s looking at the playoff format and system was actually because of us, us and a few other teams throughout the state,” Marino said. “Those four losses we had, those teams had a combined record of 37-3.”

Booth also saw a familiar example in the presentation to coaches. During the second week of the season, his Hurricanes suffered a surprising setback against Tallahassee Lincoln for one of its two losses during the regular season. Two months later, Lincoln opened the postseason with a home game against Jacksonville Lee, but only after sneaking in on a tiebreaker.

"They've been in the playoffs, I think it was 21 straight years," Booth said. "To see a team that goes out and really wants to try to challenge themselves, and they're playing top opponents across the state and all the sudden it kind of backfires on them."

The Trojans, Tallahassee Leon and Tallahassee Chiles finished the regular season 5-5 overall and 1-1 in the three-team Class 7A-District 1. It didn't matter how good or bad those 5-5 records were, two teams were going to make the postseason no matter what and it would be determined by playing a one-quarter tiebreaker.

The FHSAA used Class 7A-Region 1 as an example in a PowerPoint for coaches comparing the actual results to the potential results under the proposed format. Lincoln would have gotten in as a district winner without a tiebreaker because of the points it accrued and Chiles, the runner-up, would be left out altogether.

Booth expects the proposal to benefit his Canes, too. The FHSAA plans to overhaul districts in December and January if the proposal passes in an attempt to restore balance in terms of number of teams.

The Hurricanes currently play in the seven-team Class 8A-District 6. Games that often require more than an hour of travel and have traditionally been lopsided in the Canes’ favor take up more than half of their schedule. In 2017, Booth hopes, Manatee will have the flexibility to keep local rivalries intact while adding new nearby opponents to trim travel costs.

“We would rather be in a four- or five-team (district)," Booth said.

The Bruins’ current schedule would benefit from a points system. In addition to its Class 5A-District 11 schedule, Bayshore also played county 7A rivals Braden River, Palmetto and the Mustangs. Losses to Palmetto and the Pirates — worth a total of 69 points with the bonus points awarded for each opponent from a larger classification — would’ve been worth nearly as much as Bayshore’s two wins against Sarasota Booker and Cardinal Mooney — worth 70.

For a team with a chance to win those tough games, it makes sense from a competitive and mathematical standpoint. But right now the Bruins are rebuilding and when a team just wants to try to win games and build excitements it becomes impossible not to see some flaws.

“If you schedule Palmetto, Lakewood Ranch, the teams that we’re playing non-district that’s fine and you get ‘X’ number of points to play them, so do you play Braden River and our schedule?” Biezuns said. “Or do you go and play some of these smaller schools and get a win? That’s the hard part.

“Obviously you want to play the best teams, so I don’t know what the best answer is. I want to win games, so I don’t think scheduling those teams does any service to us.”

This story was originally published August 5, 2016 at 12:28 AM with the headline "Proposed FHSAA playoff change could alter postseason fates in area."