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Columbus District Update

By Scott Harrington, 02/24/20, 3:15PM EST

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17 teams eliminated in first two days of action

I love the way the Columbus District bracket is set up.  In almost every instance there was a Friday or Saturday first-round game with the winner advancing to a Saturday or Sunday second round game against a higher-seeded team that had a bye.

Since there were 25 teams participating instead of 24, that meant there was one exception where both second-round opponents had played the day before and that was the SWOHSHL champion Talawanda Brave advancing past Springboro and Thomas Worthington.

So now, after the first weekend of action, we are down to a nice, clean, eight team bracket with four quarterfinal games on the docket for Saturday, February 29 followed by the two semifinal games Sunday March 1.

Here is a listing of the substantial upsets that came out of the first 17 games of district play:  Dublin Coffman over Dublin Jerome (5-1)…that’s it.

No, I’m not counting #17 Bishop Watterson’s 6-4 win over #15 Olentangy as an “upset”.  It is interesting to note, however, that it was the only other game where the lower seed advanced – even in the first-round games that pitted close seeds against each other. 

Things have gone largely to form up to this point.  So, while there was some reinforcement as to why we play the games, we could have just seeded an eight-team quarterfinal field and have been 87.5% right…

Here’s the lineup for Friday’s quarterfinals at Ice Haus:

2:00 p.m. #1 Upper Arlington vs. #9 Talawanda

4:00 p.m. #4 New Albany vs. #14 Dublin Coffman

6:00 p.m. #2 St. Charles vs. #6 Olentangy Orange

8:00 p.m. #3 Olentangy Liberty vs. #7 Olentangy Berlin

The UA-Talawanda winner will play the New Albany-Coffman winner in first semifinal Saturday at 4:00 p.m.

The UA Golden Bears have yet to lose a game this year (34-0-2) so it’s pretty easy to project them into the semifinal, likely against New Albany, unless Coffman is able to catch lightning in a bottle twice.

The road will be a little harder for St. Charles and Liberty on the other side of the bracket but, while they may meet more resistance on Friday night, they are likely to face off in the other semifinal.

St. Charles is the only team to go up against Upper Arlington and not lose (a 3-3 tie on January 31).  It would be fun to see the Cardinals get another shot at UA in a district final, but the three Olentangy schools on their side of the bracket – Liberty, Orange and Berlin will have something to say about it.

As a matter of fact, Liberty shut out St. Charles in both of their league meetings this season (4-0 and 1-0) but the Cardinals eliminated the Patriots from the CBJ Cup (3-2 in OT) so a St. Charles/Liberty district semifinal would be a good one.

 

--- Scott Harrington for Ohio Hockey Digest