It’s that time of the season!!!   Yes Jim . . . not kidding . . .   There were certainly a few surprises in this quadrant . . .   To review the predictions:   Gulf Breeze vs Maclay Oak Hall vs Bolles Fletcher vs Ponte Vedra St. Augustine vs Lake Mary   Well, place Pensacola Catholic in Gulf Breeze’s slot and Buchholz with the big upset in the final over Top 10 Oak Hall. Pensacola is hardly a huge upset but still a heck of a turnaround from the two regular season losses. Buchholz was doubled up in the regular season and turned that around.   Pensacola Catholic Travels to Maclay   Pensacola Catholic makes their first appearance in the FHSAA brackets in their third year of varsity status.  In 2015 they were a part of Maclay’s district and were defeated twice soundly.  The teams have not met since then, so many of their players will have experience with this matchup.  What will hurt them is that their schedule did not have a lot of heft to it, while Maclay always plays a tough schedule in this quadrant. The key common opponent is likely Leon of District 2.  PC did gain a road win over Leon while Maclay swept the home and home, winning the second game comfortably.  This is not the same Maclay team of the recent past years, as their best wins this year were a one-goal road win over a 9-7 Creekside squad and another one-goal road win over Riverside-Sarasota.  Goals against slipped noticeably this year as many teams reached double digits. Pensacola Catholic’s best chance for the upset will be to make it a high scoring game but winning your first FHSAA playoff game against a traditional Top 10 program is no easy task.  The Maclay pedigree will give them the impetus to get past PC in a game that I see being close until the fourth, when the tradition pulls out the win. Prediction:  Maclay 11 – Pensacola Catholic 7   Buchholz Travels to Bolles   9-7 Buchholz completely surprised this writer in the District since there was little in their regular season results that indicated this was a possible result.  Losers of four straight to end the season, albeit with an excellent effort against Hagerty in the loss, most of their losses were of the ugly variety, including a 16-3 HOME loss after the Hagerty game to Boone.  The regular season game was a comfortable Oak Hall win.  This truly was an example of what the British broadcaster might term ‘against the play of the game’.  But here we are.  Revenge for last year’s District heartbreak by their rival. 12-7 Bolles lost 5 of those 7 by 3 goals or less as their defense struggled in the second half of the year.  The only two blow outs were road games at #2 PV and #3 Bishop Moore, and they did gain a road win over Oak Hall and a road win over Martin County.  This was almost a Top 15 team if they had won 3 or 4 of the close losses. Bolles did make it to the Sweet 16 last season before falling by 2 at Maclay.  That experience should make the difference for them.  Buchholz’s chances for the upset would hinge on whether their district momentum can carry over to this week but I can’t really see that happening. Prediction:  Bolles 13 – Buchholz 8   Fletcher Travels to Ponte Vedra   I believe this is Fletcher’s first foray into the FHSAA bracket and they couldn’t possibly have picked a worse time to do it, as they are looking across the bracket at my preseason favorite to win the title in Ponte Vedra.  Fletcher’s 10-6 record was based on an 8-game winning streak in the middle of the schedule against 7 teams with losing records.  When they hit the end of the schedule they came back down to earth with four losses against better squads.  I can’t really see any reason to think this will competitive. Ponte Vedra is 18-1, has big game wins over top opponents and comes into this game after frankly annihilating a Top 20 Nease 21-3.  They are on a mission to win their first state title after falling 12 minutes and 2 goals short last year.  This will be an easy first round for them. Prediction:  Ponte Vedra 19 – Fletcher 4   St. Augustine Travels to Lake Mary   On paper this is the best matchup in the first round of this quadrant. 13-5 Lake Mary has played a very tough schedule and has a Top 10 road win over Stoneman Douglas, a 3-goal loss to STA and one goal losses to Oxbridge and St. Edward’s.  It is a team that finished strong. 13-4 St. Augustine does not have a Top 20 win this season and did not take their better opponents down to the wire in their losses.  They were offensively potent but gave up 57 goals in their four losses so they can’t let Lake Mary score at a high pace.  It looks like their best shot is to get into a shootout but I don’t see that happening. Prediction:  Lake Mary 12 – St. Augustine 7   That would make the second round:   Ponte Vedra vs Lake Mary Maclay vs Bolles   Which is the same matchups we had last season. Funny, it doesn’t feel the same though . . . Good luck to all and get out to a game!