Every team will play 7 regular season games. May 20th (game 7 for Open teams) is out of division week. These games are 'exhibition" and do not count in the final standings, or in playoff seeding - with the exception of the rare case in which head-to-head alone between 2 teams is a tie-break for a certain slot.
FOUR teams will travel to Maryland on May 20th for out of division week. The field is 7 minutes from the intersection of 495 and rt. 1 in Alexandria.
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OPEN PLAYOFFS:
There are 28 teams in Open, 4 teams in Maryland for a total of 32 teams. The 4 VA division winners, and the MD league champ will get a top 5 seed. The rest of the 27 teams (3 MD + 24 VA) will be ranked 6-32 according to: winning percentage, then pt differential, then adjustments made based on head-to-head:
[if team A beat team B, but team A is directly behind team B in the rankings, and team A and team B have the same winning percentage.]
The top 16 go to "A" playoffs, the bottom 16 go to "B" playoffs.
"A" playoffs is straight seeding: 1-16, 2-15, 3-14, etc...
"B" playoffs is not a straight seeding - its a staggered seeding. There are complaints about this every season, but the reasons for doing this are:
1) so a borderline team does not put in a sub-par effort to intentionally drop to B playoffs and face #30, #31 or #32 in the first round. If you finish #17, you won`t play #32 in the first round.
2) So an 0-7 team gets a more competitive game in the first round of the playoffs.
You are not "rewarded" for finishing #17 the same way you are for finishing #1.
For round 1 games only (5/20), if a MD team has a higher seed than its opponent, the game will be played in Maryland.
Round 1 A & B playoffs will be June 3rd (8 "A" games, 8 "B" games). Round 2 (4 "A" games, 6 "B" games) are all in Virginia and will be held June 10th. The Final Four + "B" championship will be June 17th.
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NOVICE PLAYOFFS:
Top 8 teams make the playoffs, straight seeding: 1-8, 2-7 etc...
Teams 9, 10, 11 will get an extra game. Playoffs for Novice start on May 20th (4 games), continue June 3rd (semifinals), and end June 10th (championship).
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AWARDS:
Division winners(5): Individual player medals.
A, B, C playoff semifinalists (6): Team trophy
A, B, C playoff runner-ups (3): Team trophy
A, B, C playoff champions (3): Team trophy + individual trophies
A semifinalists (4): IFFL Final Four t-shirts. |