LCM can win division title but still miss playoffs

Posted: October 19th 2023

By BRIAN CUNNIFF

CapeAtlanticLive.com

The Lower Cape May Regional High School football program is on the cusp of accomplishing something it hasn’t done in 41 years – it can claim an outright division title.

The Caper Tigers, now 6-1 after last Friday’s 60-0 drubbing of rebuilding Buena, have already clinched a share of the West Jersey Football League’s Royal Division championship. They can win it outright by beating a one-win Gateway team in a game scheduled for this Saturday at noon. The contest will air live on CapeAtlanticLive.com and the Cape Atlantic Live social media outlets.

The outright championship would represent the program’s first since Lower won the Cape-Atlantic League championship in 1982.

But while Lower has posted a tremendous winning percentage through seven games, a victory against Gateway and a 7-1 record at the playoff cutoff date may still not be enough for the Tigers to qualify for the Group II playoffs.

Wins over numerous Group I teams and others with poor records have limited Lower’s ability to amass the criteria needed to cement playoff status as things stand entering this weekend. The Tigers currently sit 18th. The top 16 teams qualify.

Lower missed the playoffs in similar fashion last year, losing out in what was basically a tiebreaker situation after taking a record of 6-2 into the cutoff.

Understandably, Lower Cape May coach Lance Bailey is frustrated with the playoff qualification system.

“The system is flawed and I think it needs to be evaluated,” he said. “The old system (that simply used power points to calculate playoff qualification standings) had its flaws as well, but if you look at it from the old system, our power points compared to some of the teams ahead of us in the current system would easily put us in the playoffs.”

Playoff qualification standings are based on what’s now known as the United Power Rank (UPR), a complex rating system that combines power points with teams’ opponents’ strength index (OSI), with OSI weighted slightly more. Currently, Lower’s power-point rating would place them in 11th place in the standings. But Lower’s OSI is such that it has bumped the team down to a position currently two places out of playoff qualification.

There is a possibility that a pair of two-win teams could make the Group II playoffs, with a potentially 7-1 Lower team possibly left out.

“You win 90 percent of the games on your schedule, there’s no reason a team like that should be left out of the playoffs,” Bailey said.

The OSI rating can be affected by margin of victory. Bailey said coaches can determine with reasonable certainty how many points by which their teams need to win a game in order to garner a maximum OSI rating for that particular contest.

“We preach sportsmanship and then this system is set up so that we have to score as many points as possible against certain teams just to not lose points,” Bailey said. “That in itself is flawed and it goes against my DNA as a coach. I don’t think teams should be worrying about winning games by a certain number of points. There are games this year where we’ve chosen not to (run up scores) because it’s just not the right thing to do. But the system we have encourages that.”

At this point, Lower Cape May can only control its performance in Saturday’s game against Gateway. Should some teams above them in the playoff standings lose this weekend, there’s still a chance the Tigers could slip into the field with a victory. Otherwise, they’d play a consolation game on Oct 27 or 28.

“We want the kids to keep focus on what happens on the field and trying to win the division title and then trying to win every game on our schedule after that, whether it’s in the tournament or in the consolation round,” Bailey said. “We’ve been stressing all year that it’s one game at a time. That has gotten us to the point where we could win an outright division title for the first time since 1982. That’s a big deal for us and we’re treating it as a big deal.”

In last weekend’s win over Buena, Hunter Ray ran for three touchdowns and Isiah Carr-Wing, Dennis Serra and Ryan Mallon also each ran for scores. Jon Fernandez caught a touchdown pass and Oguer Nunez recovered a fumble for another score.

Mallon, a freshman, rushed for 100 yards on just seven carries.