The Impact of Troy's Loss to LaSalle on Sectionals

I know we're only in the third week of the season and there are some teams that haven't even played two games yet, but since the Sectional Forecast is one of the main components of the blog it is never too early to start dissecting how it will play out.

In a normal year Troy would be playing in the A bracket based on their enrollment and this loss probably wouldn't do much harm given how well they performed last year in AA and their expectations for this year.  But, we've learned Troy will be playing in AA this year, my thanks to Eric Medved.  Hearing this news, I figured Troy must have been pretty confident they could win sectionals in AA to take on that task since they would be heavy favorites in A.  Of course we really have no idea how the rest of the season is going to turn out yet, but given how the AA bracket is drawn this could have an impact and most certainly will on the Sectional Forecast. 

For the most part the AA bracket is based off the Big 10 and Suburban Council's final standings.  For the Big 10, since there aren't multiple divisions, you can basically just line them up by wins.  In order for Troy to hold the B1 position in the bracket they have to run the table to clinch and that would have to come with another LaSalle loss along the way.  Their destiny is no longer in their hands, they now need help.  Taking it one step (and loss) further, if they split with CBA, they would still need another loss by LaSalle and two more losses by CBA to clinch outright.

For the Sectional Forecast it is less clear.  Troy already has a 57 point win over Bishop Gibbons and that puts them in a good spot because CBA's win over Bishop Gibbons was 31 points less than that.  Playing out the different Margin Of Victories can get complicated and confusing so I'll spare you any further pain, but I will note that once you average over 28 points per game you are judged equally so no team picks up additional Sectional Forecast points.  There is a chance though that Troy can pull ahead based on MOV if they finish with comparable records.

At this early date there are a lot of ways it can go.  The one thing that is clear is that it just got a whole lot more interesting in the AA bracket.