Playoffs can be random — that's makes it so crazy

Sometimes sports can be so random.

The Three Rivers softball team opened the NJCAA National Tournament with an upset win over Yavapai (Ariz.), but the Raiders ended up being knocked out of the tournament before Yavapai.

A double-elimination tournament can be quirky like that, but so can sports in general.

Baseball and softball seem to be even more random than other sports. When it comes to one-game playoffs at the high school level it’s more pronounced.

“That’s the beautiful thing about baseball, you can be hitting the ball or you can be rolling as much as you want and then you run into a kid like that and he’s just got your number that day,” said Ellington High School baseball coach Jake Hime after his team lost to Holcomb in the MSHSAA Class 2 playoffs.

The Whippets were rolling through the postseason with 48 runs in three games and had beaten Holcomb 5-0 just three weeks earlier.

Neither of those teams were the top seeds of their district. Overall among all classes in Missouri, the No. 1 seed won the district title just 57% of the time this spring.

In girls soccer this spring, the top seed advanced to the state playoffs 70% of the time.

When the first round of the state soccer playoffs featured a few lopsided results, social media featured more calls of a better seeding process.

It should be noted that seeding is currently by coach’s vote and that teams in each district are not required to play during the regular season, making the seeding process pretty arbitrary. Seeding the state playoffs may not help.

Postseason play for MSHSAA sports has never been about the best teams meeting at the end. The state is divided up into regions and districts based on geography to limit travel. If the top two teams meet in the district final, the state final or not at all, there will be one team at the end.

At the college level, there are very few winner-take-all playoff games. There are best-of-3 series and double-elimination brackets.

Three Rivers was the No. 2 seed in its region, a double-elimination tournament, before a best-of-3 district playoff series against Indian Hills (Iowa) to reach the national tournament.

The Raiders were the No. 10 seed and pulled off the lone upset of the opening round by beating No. 7 Yavapai. They lost to the No. 2 seed Butler (Kan.) but bounced back to beat the No. 9 seed Chattanooga State (Tenn.) before losing to No. 6 Seminole State (Okla.).

The Raiders finished 2-2, better than the program’s 2018 appearance when the Raiders were the 12th seed.

Meanwhile Yavapai, which won the 2009 and 2011 titles as the No. 1 seed, reached the quarterfinal by winning four straight against the top seed, Salt Lake, No. 5 and No. 2 seeds.

The final three teams remaining are third-seeded Florida SouthWestern State, which is unbeaten and was ranked No. 1 in the preseason poll, along with fourth-seeded Grayson and eighth-seeded San Jacinto-South (Texas), which met for the second time in two days Friday night.

So if Yavapai beat the team that beat the team that beat the Raiders to reach the final four, does that mean Three Rivers ended up fifth? Does it matter?

It can all be so random.