In a strange turn of events, Class 4A No. 12 Columbia Academy will have to take on a 9-1 ball club in Tri-County Academy in the first round of the playoffs Friday night.
The Cougars (3-8) entered the final week of the regular season 11th in the power-point rankings that determine the playoff seeding, and one would think they would only go up after beating Bowling Green 42-0. Instead, they dropped a spot to No. 12 and have to face the best team (on paper) taking the field in the first round — Tri-County is the No. 5 seed with the first four seeds receiving a first-round bye.
CA head coach TC Chambliss said how the Cougars dropped makes no sense to him, and he can’t find anyone who can explain it.
“That’s the biggest mess I’ve ever seen in my life. Everything we needed to happen (to move up), happened, and we still dropped with a 42-0 win,” he said.
Chambliss said watching the Rebels on film, they don’t do a whole lot schematically that jumps off the screen, but they are really good at executing the few things they do run.
“They’re not a real diverse group, but what they do, they do well. You can tell they’ve been doing it for a while,” he said. “They play a very similar defense to what we’ve based out of all season, and they play a lot of man coverage, which hopefully we’ll be able to manipulate some of their lineups and adjustments. Offensively, they want to run the ball. They’ll throw it when they catch you peaking and loading the box a little bit too much.”
It would be easy to compare CA and Tri-County’s records and believe the Rebels have the edge, but Chambliss said, at the end of the day, they put their pants on one leg at a time just like the Cougars do.
“It’s another test of our kids not worrying about the kids on the other side and realizing we got here for a reason, and we got here by a certain way and that’s worrying about us, not them,” he said.
If the Cougars beat Tri-County, they would play the No. 4 seed, Oak Hill Academy (5-5) in the second round.
Kickoff is at 7 p.m. Friday in Flora.
