With all the hoopla surrounding the WPIAL's pairings meet Monday night and the talk about who is playing whom in the first round of the league's playoffs, there's an important game that has been overlooked.

Perry Traditional Academy takes on rival Oliver at 7 tonight at Cupples Stadium in a City League semifinal. The winner advances to play Schenley or Brashear in the championship game at 7 p.m. Nov. 13 at Cupples Stadium.

Oliver (7-1) and Perry (7-2) squared off the fifth week of the season with the Bears managing a 12-6 victory. Twice in the fourth quarter of that game, Perry pushed to the Oliver 20 only to be turned back by penalties and quarterback sacks.

"The big thing we've got to do this time against them is eliminate our mistakes," Perry coach Bill Gallagher said. "We can't afford to have any turnovers."

He could have also added the Commodores have to keep the Bears from scoring on big plays. In the first meeting, Oliver got a touchdown on a 60-yard fumble return by Ed Mattis. Perry's defense limited the Bears to 47 yards rushing and just 58 yards of total offense.

Oliver will have to try and contain Perry running back Richard Lowry for a second time. Lowry has 902 yards rushing on 170 attempts and gained 117 on 27 carries against Oliver.

"Oliver has an outstanding defense," Gallagher said. "We've just got to go out and run the ball the way we can."

When talented teams meet for a second time during a season the cliche "It's tough to beat a good team twice," is always thrown around. Gallagher isn't buying any of that stuff.

"It's a whole new game and what happened before doesn't matter," he said. "We've got to go out and play hard for 48 minutes."

WPIAL executive director Tim O'Malley admitted Monday night the league's football steering committee had the toughest time putting the Class AA bracket together. Part of that is because there are more Class AA teams than in any other classification, and part of it is because there are a lot of good teams.

"You look at Beaver. It is the only Class AA team [in the playoffs] with four losses but look at who it lost to ... the co-champions in the Midwestern Athletic Conference [Aliquippa, Beaver Falls and Center] and to Triple-A Ambridge," he said. "Look at Washington, it's a fourth-place team but a pretty good one. There's a lot of parity in Double-A.

"The good thing is we have 16 teams [in the classification] in the playoffs. If we had just eight, that would have been tough. At least with 16 we have some flexibility."

At times the WPIAL has been criticized for having too many teams qualify for the postseason. For example, Baldwin qualified for the Class AAAA playoffs with a 2-7 record. But this year in Class AA there are 16 teams worthy of the postseason.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Class AAA in the first round tomorrow night. There is a very real possibility there might not be any teams from the Greater Allegheny or the Keystone conferences left standings by the time folks sit down to watch the 11 o'clock news on TV.

The Keystone Conference has not had a team win a playoff game since 2000 when Belle Vernon advanced to the semifinals. Teams in the Greater Allegheny Conference were 7-17 in non-conference games this season with Franklin Regional the only one with a winning mark against schools from other conferences. But none of the non-conference teams Franklin Regional played has a winning record and just one -- Plum -- qualified for the postseason and its has a 3-6 mark.

Look for only teams from the Parkway and the Big Seven conferences to be remaining Saturday morning in Class AAA.

There are usually a couple teams that are not highly touted that make some noise in the playoffs. With that in mind here are our sleeper picks in each classification.

To qualify as a sleeper, a team has to be the No. 3 or No. 4 team from its conference.

In Class AAAA, our sleeper is Mt. Lebanon, in Class AAA it's New Castle, in Class AA it's Aliquippa and in Class A it's Springdale.

While first-round playoff games can be dogs, there are some interesting matchup tomorrow night.

In Class AAAA, Mt. Lebanon (5-4) at Shaler (8-1) should be a dandy. In Class AAA, Montour (5-4) at Franklin Regional (7-2) and New Castle (7-2) at Greensburg Salem (8-1) are both worth the price of admission. Sto-Rox (7-2) at Shady Side Academy (8-1) should be a close one and in Class AA, and Springdale (7-2) at Monessen (7-2) in Class A should be a fun.

Mike White's "High School Sports Edition" videos are featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.