The Westgate High School football coaching staff had a pretty good idea where they’d fall in the Class 4A playoff bracket seeding, so were able to get a head start on work for their bi-district game against John F. Kennedy High School out of New Orleans.

The Tigers (8-2), as expected, were No. 5 in the Louisiana High School Athletic Association power rankings. They will play host to the Cougars (3-5), who had their first two games canceled in the wake of Hurricane Ida.

“We expected to be pretty high, and five is a good spot,” WHS coach Ryan Antoine said. “Some of the coaches did the math and looked at it, so that’s where we’re at and we’re going to try to do our best in that spot.”

The LHSAA delayed releasing the brackets on Sunday because of some emergency appeals in Class 3A, but the Tigers were proactive in exchanging game film with Kennedy on Saturday, and the bracket fell as anticipated.

“We’ve been working on the game film since Saturday,” Antoine said.

The Cougars are talented, he said.

“They play hard and they have some guys that can make plays,” Antoine said. “We’ve been 28, 29 seeds before, even a 32 seed, and been able to make runs (in the playoffs), so definitely at this point we know, having been around here long enough, you can’t count anybody out and you can’t have a bad day, because a bad day will take everything from you. You’ve just got to go out there and execute and not take anybody lightly and go play as well as you can because it might be your last time playing.”

The Tigers have a strong group of seniors who have been playing since they were freshmen, Antoine said.

“They’ve been to the playoffs every year and won in the playoffs, so we’re expecting our guys to keep that tradition going and continue trying to keep on trying to make runs,” he said. “This is a great group of kids. They’ve been playing hard all year and been playing for each other all year. It would be a disappointment for those guys not to do well in the postseason.”

Though the team would like to continue that winning playoff tradition for the seniors, they’re treating it like a regular game, Antoine said.

“We’re treating it like Week 11, and we expected to be here and want to keep on playing,” he said.

WHS closed out its regular season by finishing undefeated District 5-4A champions, beating Carencro 47-21 on Friday at the Cro Dome to finish 4-0 in league play. Four of the five teams in the district earned playoff bids with Carencro 18th in 4A and St. Thomas More fifth and Teurlings Catholic seventh in the select Division II bracket.

“We played well,” Antoine said. “We jumped out on them I think 14-nothing and then they scored 15 unanswered points on us and made it a 15-14 game late in the second quarter. And then Brennan (Landry) found Jordan (Doucet) on a big play so we went up at the half 20-15.”

Antoine said the Tigers knew the game would have a playoff atmosphere, and he was proud of the players for taking care of business against a formidable opponent.

Danny Lewis had a huge game with more than 160 yards receiving.

“He made a lot of plays,” Antoine said. “We had a matchup that we liked (with Lewis). Amaaz Eugene had over a hundred yards receiving and also broke a big run, so he also had a rushing touchdown.

“Keyon Joseph and Henry Binion on defense played real well. Keyon had over 10 tackles, Henry Binion had over five tackles for loss and also Cam Spencer played real well in the secondary for us. We’re just excited about those guys starting to step up and make plays.”