THB: FSCC Softball Playoff Preview

Seeds and records: Fort Scott is the No. 8 seed in the tournament with an overall record of 17-22. Coffeyville is the No. 9 seed with a 18-25 record.

Earlier this season: Fort Scott and Coffeyville split a Jayhawk Conference-Eastern Division doubleheader at the Betty Ruth Willard Complex on April 14. Fort Scott won the first game 14-1 while Coffeyville won the second game 10-8.

Rankings: Neither team is ranked.

Schedule: This is a best-of-3 series. Game one will be played at 2 p.m. Saturday with game two to follow at approximately 4 p.m. If a third game is necessary, it will be held at 1 p.m. Sunday (Thus the asterisk).

Worth the wait: Almost two weeks ago, when Fort Scott finished up its district games, it looked as if the teams that had games remaining were in good position to pass the Greyhounds in the seeding and force Fort Scott to play the first round on the road. so while the Greyhounds played Cottey and North Central Missouri -- games which didn't count toward seeding -- teams like Coffeyville, Pratt, Hesston and Cloud County were be in control of their own destiny. Prior to April 19, all of those teams had a chance to at least join Fort Scott and Hutchinson -- which had also concluded district play in a tie for eighth place. Somehow, every single one of those teams failed to take advantage of the chances they were given. Take a look at the last 10 games of each team from seeds 7 through 13:

So what happened?: Coffeyville was the long shot. When Fort Scott finished district play, the Red Ravens had only two games remaining and those were against top seeded Johnson County. As one would expect, Johnson County swept those games. Had the Ravens managed just to split, Fort Scott would be playing at Hutchinson this weekend and Coffeyville would be hosting Pratt...Pratt was actually ahead of Fort Scott and Hutch at one point prior to its terrible finish. The Beavers -- who had swept the 'Hounds earlier in the season and would have won a three-way tie-breaker with FSCC and Hutch -- lost their last five games. Pratt hit a tough part of its schedule to end the season. In their last 10 games, the Beavers split with Cloud County, were swept by No. 3 seed Allen County, split with No. 5 Neosho County, were swept by No. 6 Highland and then got swept at Kansas City, which is the only team in the bottom half of the bracket entering the playoffs on a winning streak longer than two games. Pratt ran into the wrong teams at the wrong time....Hesston was 4-6 in its last 10 games, but that includes non-district games. In their last 10 district games, the Larks were just 2-8. They were swept by Allen, Highland and red-hot KCK and split with Cloud and Neosho County. They were 8-12 prior to their slide....Cloud County lost its last 7 district games, including two at home against Fort Scott....Brown Mackie was 3-7 in its last 10 games....Note also that every team that was in a tie split with the teams they were tied with (District seeds are at the end of this article). So every tie had to be broken by going to the second step in the tie-breaker....

Enough about them. What about us?: If there's a hot team going into this tournament, it's Fort Scott. The Greyhounds were not only 7-3 in their last 10 games (with two of those losses to North Central Missouri, which is a Division I team), they also won 12 of their last 16 district games. At one point. the Greyhounds were 2-12 in district and 3-15 overall. The roll began with a sweep at Kansas City on April 6. The next day, the 'Hounds split at Highland, which was nationally-ranked earlier in the season. Two days after that, they began a 10-game homestand -- five doubleheaders, four of which counted in district -- and won 5 of the 8 district games and 6 of the 10 overall. It started with a sweep of Hesston on April 9 -- pitcher Cassie Sharon hit two home runs in the first game to help her own cause -- then splits with Hutchinson, North Central, Labette and Coffeyville. They ended district play with road sweeps of Cloud County and Brown Mackie.

What's at stake: The winner of this series goes on to the District D bracket at Wichita May 7-8 against the winner of the Johnson County-Independence series....

Tie-breakers

* Labette is No. 4 seed on basis of better record vs. Cowley (1-1; Neosho County and Highland were 0-2).

* Neosho County is No. 5 seed due to sweep of Hutchinson (Highland split).

* Hutchinson is No. 7 seed due to sweep of Labette (Fort Scott split).

* Cloud County is No. 12 seed on basis of better record vs. Neosho County (1-1; Brown Mackie and Kansas City were 0-2).

* Brown Mackie is No. 13 seed due to split with Highland (Kansas City was swept).