Power Points Analysis: Bernards, Spotswood, EB Magnet all gain, while South River edges down

We’re exactly two weeks from the NJSIAA cutoff for the state playoffs – May 17th – and teams across the area continue to jockey for position in the standings. Here’s a closer look beyond the numbers at where teams stand and what their chances are, based on NJ.com’s official standings as of games played on May 2nd. For a full explanation of the new power point formula, click here.

Central Jersey Group 2: We’ve got three Central Jersey Sports Radio area teams in this section, and two moved up while one went down in the past week. Governor Livingston (14-0, 33.467 power points) is going to be the No. 1 seed, no doubt about that. The No. 2 ranked team in the state – behind only Gloucester Catholic – has a more than 11-point lead over No. 2 Delran. Neither they, nor anyone else, will get even close to the Highlanders.

The highest area team is South River, which went since our last update and dropped one place to No. 7. At 9-5, they have 19.67 power points, and we think could finish as high as No. 3 if they can finish strong; just 1.186 points behind third-place Robbinsville. Then again, four teams behind them all are are at 19 power points or higher, so a few slip-ups and they could easily fall out of the top eight, and lose even one first round home game. But right behind them is East Brunswick Magnet (15-2, 19.631). The Tigers – who have won five straight – went from tenth place to No. 8. But like the Rams, they could just as easily pull into the top four as they could slip out of the top eight.

Spotswood (10-6, 17.787) also rose, edging up from 15 to 14 on the strength of a 3-1 week, and boosted by a win over Colonia Thursday. As long as the Chargers maintain, they should make the playoffs. We think there are no more than 17 teams with a shot in this section, and it’s highly unlikely all three teams behind Spotswood would catch them.

North Jersey, Section 2, Group 2: Passaic Valley (11-5, 22.511) remains in first, but has an even smaller lead now over second-place West Essex (9-4, 21.984). The only area team we have here is Bernards (7-8, 16.159), and the Mountaineers did themselves a big favor by going 3-1 since our last update, improving from 4-7 to 7-8. That moves them up two spots to tenth place this week, 2.62 points out of the top eight. That may be a stretch, but a couple more weeks like they had this past week could do it.