Official brackets from CHSAA won’t be released until Sunday but with updated RPI as of this morning, we can continue our look at how we feel the 2A football pairings may end up. We don’t have the benefit of fresh composite rankings with these projections so we simply use RPI standings and head to head results to determine our pairings.
Again these are projections only and involve the opinion of Colorado Preps. They have no bearing on official pairings for tomorrow. League champions earn automatic bids with the rest of the field determined by RPI. Those qualifiers will then be seeded by the football committee at CHSAA using many other data points including rankings from MaxPreps, Packard and CHSAA coaches.
#1 Sterling vs #16 Englewood
#8 Faith Christian vs #9 Platte Valley
#4 Classical Academy vs #13 Moffat County
#5 Delta vs #12 Elizabeth
#3 Resurrection Christian vs #14 La Junta
#6 Lamar vs #11 Bennett
#2 Rifle vs #15 Pagosa Springs
#7 Basalt vs #10 Eaton
We made one change as Elizabeth is higher in RPI when compared to Bennett but we flipped those teams in the bracket to avoid a conference rematch in round one between Elizabeth and Classical Academy. Moffat County faces a long road trip to Classical Academy but we can’t exchange the Bulldogs with #14 La Junta as that would create a league rematch. Moving Moffat County to 12th would cause a Western Slope league pairing with Delta so we feel the committee will leave the Bulldogs as is.
University and Weld Central are #15 and #16 in RPI but would be left out of the bracket because the Colorado champion (Englewood) and Intermountan winner (Pagosa Springs) get into the tournament ahead of them since they won league crowns.
We could also see the committee place Rifle ahead of Sterling into the number one spot since they have a better overall record. The Tigers lone loss is against a highly ranked Scottsbluff team from Nebraska and if that move happens, look for the Colorado and IML champs to be flipped as well for travel purposes.
The 1-2 seed is not as important as past years as the state finals are now at a neutral site and the higher seed will not come into play for hosting the championship battle.
