Girls lax playoffs up for grabs

Raiders net No. 2 seed; Braves, Hornets to play road warrio

Friday, May 9, 2008

Leonardtown earned the second seed in the 4A⁄3A East region, bested only by Severna Park. The Raiders will enjoy a first round bye, but will face a tough SMAC rival in the second round, the winner of a match between the No. 7 seed Huntingtown and No. 10 Great Mills, which was played Thursday, too late for inclusion in this edition.

Many may think the second round should be easy going for the Raiders – and it certainly may be – but Raiders head coach Mike Denny isn’t taking either team lightly.

‘‘To be honest, I’d probably rather play somebody up the road,” said Denny. ‘‘But you know what? – it doesn’t matter. We have to deal with that first round and we need to play well.”

While every head coach will say he or she isn’t sleeping on any team, Denny means it in this case, after the Raiders’ two most recent performances, perhaps the two worst of their season.

The first came against Huntingtown, a team the Raiders may see in the second round, when Leonardtown survived a 6-4 win against the Hurricanes. Until that game, Leonardtown had won by no fewer than four goals all season.

The second Raiders scare came during Leonardtown’s final game of the season against Patuxent on Tuesday. Like their match against Huntingtown, the Raiders were dominated by the Panthers in the first half and came storming back in the second to pull off the victory.

Those recent performances have Leonardtown in a peculiar position heading into the regional playoffs, with concerns even after an undefeated conference season that ended with a 10-game winning streak.

‘‘We controlled the second half against Huntingtown and we controlled the second half [against Patuxent],” said Denny. ‘‘And what we’re definitely going to discuss is what we do for warm-ups, because we cannot start slow like this in regions.”

For Patuxent, the 3A⁄2A East playoffs could shape up to be an interesting affair. The Panthers grabbed the third seed in the region and, after a first round bye, will face a three-win team in Northeast of Anne Arundel County. Also in the 3A⁄2A bracket, No. 5 seed Northern travels to fourth-seeded Annapolis for a quarterfinal game.

Panthers head coach Anthony Barone said he knows little of his quarterfinal opponent and is more focused on getting his team to play with consistency heading into the playoffs.

‘‘I don’t know anything about them besides the fact that they’re from Anne Arundel County and they play good ball up there,” said Barone, who hopes home field advantage will fire up his team. ‘‘There’s not a bad team in Anne Arundel County.”

Chopticon, who shared the SMAC title with Leonardtown last season, also enters the playoffs in an odd predicament.

A victim of playoff seeding rules, the Braves earned the 12th seed for the playoffs and will most likely be on the road for the majority of their run. Although they will face a two-win team in the first round in Glen Burnie, they could face a two-loss team in the second round in South River.

In the 2A⁄1A East region, sixth-seeded Calvert plays at third-seeded Kent County in the quarterfinals.