#9 Franklin 7-8 qualifies for Metro Championship over #5 O'Dea 14-5

(Peyton Siva 6'0, #3 Franklin, attempting a layup in a regular season game against Garfield High School, November, 2007.)

The O'Dea "Lamenting Irish"

Some classic Metro League drama down the stretch of the regular season as we prepare for the playoffs. O'Dea after finishing 14-5 with a strong roster could potentially miss out on the chance to play for the Metro Title. The Irish finish 3rd in the insanely strong Metro Mountain division. They will play in the district qualifier with mainly inferior teams. Their first district playoff game will be against the winner of Ingraham vs Nathan Hale in the first 4. Both of those teams O'Dea blew out earlier this season. O'Dea also crushed the Franklin Quakers by 41 points in December, yet somehow the Irish are on the outside looking in.

The Happy Quakers

Franklin finds some insane luck in the standings, after finishing the season with a losing record the Quakers are still playing in the Metro Championship Tournament. This is mainly due to the very weak (excluding Garfield High School) Metro Valley Division. Their best wins this season are, home vs Roosevelt, and a 2 point victory over Bishop Blanchet at home. Franklin should be praying that they don't get embarrassed in their first playoff matchup against the surging #4 Seattle Prep Panthers, who the Quakers already lost badly to earlier this year. The game is tomorrow, Monday, February 7th.

Playoff Structure Change?

With all this being said, should the process for deciding playoff team seeding be different? Probably not. This is because to change something like this it would take changing the way the league has done things for the past 15 years. However, this can be said, if Franklin lays an egg against Seattle Prep, and doesn't compete well enough, perhaps a division realignment will be ushered in sooner than later.