Tie-breakers propel Jayhawks into playoffs; Uniontown to travel to Oswego

Uniontown High School's football team knew it had qualified for the Kansas Class 2-1A Playoffs even before it took the field Thursday at Pittsburg Colgan.

Jayhawk-Linn's squad, meanwhile, may have not had any idea they had qualified for the Kansas Class 3A Playoffs until Friday morning.

When Uniontown and Colgan faced off, both teams were 2-0 in their district. The outcome of the game was simple: The winner would be district champion and have a Bi-District game at home Tuesday. The loser would have to go on the road for Bi-Districts.

Pittsburg Colgan's 45-6 victory over Uniontown sends the Eagles (4-5) to face Three Rivers League rival Oswego (9-0) Tuesday night. The Indians have shut out their last four opponents, winning those games by a combined score of 197-0. They defeated Yates Center, 47-0, in a non-district game Thursday night. They defeated their district opponents, Howard-West Elk and Sedan, by a combined score of 107-0.

Colgan (8-1) will face Sedan (2-7) at Pittsburg Tuesday night.

Jayhawk-Linn had a chance to qualify for the playoffs but needed help. The Jayhawks (2-7) did their part by beating Eureka 12-7. This made Jayhawk-Linn 2-1 in district games with a minus-1 in Kansas 13-point tie-breaker system.

In the Kansas system, a team earns up to 13 points for each point in the margin of victory in a district game. Likewise, one point up to 13 is taken away for each points in the margin of defeat. But there is an exception to that rule: Overtime games only add or subtract 1 point, regardless of the final margin. And this little-known part of the tie-breaker worked to Jayhawk-Linn's benefit.

Burlington beat Central Heights in the other district game, 15-8. Normally, this game would be worth seven points in the tie-breaker system. So it originally appeared that Central Heights finished 2-1 plus-19 after having seven points subtracted form its tie-breaker points and Burlington finished at 2-1 plus-1 after having seven points added.

But it wasn't reported until later that the Central Heights-Burlington game went into double overtime. Instead of seven points coming out of this game, there was only one. And that meant Burlington's final point margin was minus-5 instead of plus-1.

This put Jayhawk-Linn over Burlington in the tie-breaker (minus-1 to minus-5) and put the Jayhawks into the playoffs as the district runner-up. The Jayhawks will travel to Silver Lake (9-0) for a Class 3A Bi-District Game Tuesday. Central Heights (4-5) will host Osage City (6-3).

Tuesday Class 4A games involving Southeast Kansas League teams will have Coffeyville (5-4) going to visit Columbus (7-2), Labette County (5-4) going to Independence (7-2) and Chanute (8-1) hosting Paola (6-3) of the Frontier League.

The only other Pioneer League team in the playoffs is Anderson County (7-2) which will travel to Louisburg (8-1) Tuesday night.

No other Three Rivers League teams qualified for the playoffs.

Winners of Tuesday's games will play in Sectional round games Saturday.