Now the real fun begins.
The playoff fields are ready and the postseason action in District 9 begins this weekend.
In Class A, Smethport hosts Union/A-C Valley Friday night at 7 p.m. while Coudersport travels to Redbank Valley on Saturday for a 4 p.m. game. The Class A championship will be held at Varischetti Field in Brockway on Halloween at 1 p.m.
In Class AA, No. 4 Ridgway travels to top-seeded Brookville while No. 3 Karns City faces second-seeded Central Clarion at Clarion University. Both games are Friday night at 7 p.m. The AA championship will be Oct. 30 at 7 p.m. and will be held at Varischetti Field.
St. Marys will face Clearfield in the D9 AAA championship game on Saturday at 1 p.m. in Brockway. The winner faces D5’s Bedford in a sub-regional game the following week for the right to advance to the PIAA state playoffs.
Of those matchups, the Class A field has a lot of intrigue, and St. Marys-Clearfield should be an exciting one.
COUDY AND Redbank, you might remember, played for last year’s D9 championship.
In fact, the teams met twice in 2019, and the Falcons won both. Coudersport took the regular season matchup in Potter County, 56-0, and then overcame a slow start to thump the Bulldogs again in the title game, 42-13.
But that was then, and this is now, of course. The Bulldogs are the D9 South’s top team with a 4-0 record (games against Sheffield and Curwensville were nixed this year) and feature plenty of firepower from the runner-up squad a season ago.
Where the dogs really show their bite is on defense. Redbank is giving up an average of just 3.5 points per game in its four matchups this season.
For its part, though, Coudy’s offense has done well this season aside from last week’s hiccup against Smethport, whose defense has played at an elite level all season, too. The Falcons were scoring 46.75 points per game going into last week’s matchup, and even with the shutout loss, are still logging 37.4 per contest now.
What Coudy coach Tom Storey is hoping for, as he noted after the loss, is that Friday serves as a wake-up call for the Falcons and that things shake out like they did in 2018, when Coudy fell to Smethport 21-20 in the regular season finale before going on to win the D9 title that year.
Speaking of those 5-0 Hubbers, Smethport is hosting the Union/A-C Valley Falcon-Knights on Friday, and that should be a wild one, too. The Falcon-Knights are a high-octane team, averaging 31.4 points per game, and their only loss is a 10-7 decision to RV.
That said, the Hubbers feature the North’s top defense (they’re allowing just 3.6 points per game and have pitched back-to-back shutouts), which sets up what should be a great battle at Smethport Stadium.
The big question, of course, is the status of quarterback Noah Lent, who exited Friday night’s win over Coudersport during the second half. Braedon Johnson proved to be a viable wildcat option for the Hubs afterward and filled in as the “quarterback”, but certainly having Lent adds another dynamic to Smethport’s offense.
Meanwhile, in 3A, St. Marys and Clearfield will make an unusual meeting, as the two haven’t battled since 2011. The Bison are 3-1 on the year and have had two games canceled this season due to COVID-19. They feature wins over Penns Valley, Philipsburg-Osceola and Huntingdon.
St. Marys, meanwhile, was the king of the IU9 Large School bubble, having run the table to a 5-0 record. The Dutch have beaten Ridgway and Kane twice and Bradford once, and are a high-powered team with plenty of experience.
SCHEDULE SHUFFLE
As noted in last week’s edition of this notebook, schedules around the IU9 bubble are shifting to accommodate for the teams in the postseason.
Bradford, who was supposed to face St. Marys this week and Smethport next, will instead travel to Port Allegany Friday night and then visit Otto-Eldred next week.
O-E, meanwhile, visits Kane Friday night before hosting the Owls, and Port takes on Cameron County next week.
The Red Raiders may be the only team whose schedule has gone unaffected. They finish their season out with Elk Catholic, Port A and O-E.
Got all that?
Other changes are likely to come, but these are what are known for now.
(Joel Whetzel, a Bradford Era sportswriter, can be reached at jwhetzel@bradfordera.com.)
