It was a short season, it was a weird season…but at least it was a season, one that comes to an end this weekend.
In Class A, the finale features undefeated lowerstate champ Lake View against unbeaten upperstate champ Southside Christian. Honestly, once Lake View ripped two-time defending champ Green Sea Floyds in the opening week, the idea of them making it to the final game was a giant pile of DUH. Bamberg-Ehrhardt was certainly a worthy contender, Carver’s Bay proved to very formidable, but no one else came close to matching the number offensive weapons of the Wild Gators or the speed and general ability to hurt opposing school children of their defense. As for Southside Christian, I pretty much had them penciled in as the upperstate representative the minute I saw the new realignment plan that moved them back down to 1A. They were a VERY LEGIT contender in AA last year, they’re well-coached, have a lot of athletes and frankly have court and legislature enforced advantages over public schools. I think it makes for an uneven playing field but it is what is, or am what it am or whatever the cartoon dude with scary forearms and a fondness for leafy greens used to say (that was a reference that was both dated and totally unfunny but I actually don’t apologize for it). So, I reached out to a couple of coaches for their thoughts on the matchup. Obviously, no one knows and analyzes matchups better than other coaches…they are certainly more adept at said than some drunken goober with a blog who makes weird references to 80-year-old cartoons. One actually liked Lake View’s chances. He cited their overall athletic ability on both sides of the ball. He also expected Southside Christian to roll Lamar last week and was surprised that the game was so close. He was basing that mostly on the common opponent of C.A. Johnson whom the Sabres vigorously diddled while the Silver Foxes got by them in an overtime shootout. The other coach pretty much pronounced that Southside Christian is a step above everybody else in Class A (he said they actually belong in AA) and he expected them to win pretty handily. Southside Christian outscored opponents this year 399-65 and it honestly probably could’ve been worse than that if they wanted to be big jerkfaces and run it up on lesser opponents, but they didn’t. In the regular season, they really only faced one quality opponent, that being McCormick whom they beat 47-20. That’s the most point they scored all year and probably the most yardage they allowed in a game (A’Chean Durant and Suderian Harrison good nights for the Chiefs that evening). They opened the playoffs with a rout of C.A. Johnson. Now, I was pretty sold on the Hornets early on, but something dropped off for them after they came so close but couldn’t quite get past Lamar in a region title game. Southside Christian labored a bit with a good Blackville-Hilda team but pretty much didn’t give up NOT NAM defensively in that 24-7 win. Then they struggled with Lamar (which I thought they would) but won 17-6. Now, I’m not actually tooting my own horn there because I thought they would struggle with Lamar in the sense that it would be a shootout and I was wrong and dumb and wrong on that count. They held Lamar to 40 yards rushing, picked off four passes and rallied from a halftime deficit for the win. I felt like they’d have to open the offense up a bit against Lamar after essentially pointing and laughing at everyone for a while and just running traps, sweeps and power. Quarterback Ja’Corey Martin did hit 8-of-15 passes for 108 yards and a score. He didn’t put up gaudy rushing stats as he had in the previous to postseason outings, but still got 87 and a touchdown on the ground. Lake View outscored their opponents 254-99 but did that against a markedly tougher schedule than the Sabres faced. They played Green Sea-Floyds, East Clarendon, Johnsonville, Allendale-Fairfax, Carvers Bay and last week defeated previously unbeaten Bamberg-Ehrhardt 20-7. Like Southside Christian, they trailed in the third quarter but came storming back thanks to that deep bunch of athletic manbeasts on offense. Adarrian Dawkins, who can seriously play pretty much any skill position, scored a couple of touchdowns. Ja’Correus Ford and Michael McInnis had big runs to set up scores and QB Derrick Bethea tossed a touchdown. They did that against a defense that allowed ONE DAMN TOUCHDOWN in the regular season. So, against a monster schedule and a slate of teams that can put up points by the metric crapload, they were really only challenged twice, that being last week and in the previous game against Carvers Bay (they won 30-22). So, in a lot of ways, their playoff run mirrors that of Southside Christian. So, who wins this one? It’s a hard pick. I think Lake View will have the most offensive firepower of any team Southside Christian has faced and the most guys capable of hurting you. The Wild Gators also made a couple of game-changing plays on special teams last week. That speed translates to defense too, by the way, where they have been consistently great all year. Southside Christian can’t be one-dimensional offensively and win this, I don’t think. They don’t have to go all wacky slapnuts five-wide, but they have to throw it effectively and efficiently as they did last week. Martin is good enough to prove me wrong here, but I also don’t think they can be totally reliant on him offensively. They need someone else to pitch in. The scale-tipper here for me is probably the Southside Christian defense, particularly their front. If you’ve seen Lamar, you realize they possess a frightening and outsized array of athletic large people. They are so good up front and Southside Christian still rendered their run game ineffective. They did the same against a good front line for Blackville-Hilda. Aside from McCormick (and remember, that game wasn’t even close), nobody has peed a drop against that defense. They are consistently dominant up front and Lake View, while they have plenty of athletes, isn’t much of a passing team. Even if they could, that front line of the Sabres remains a problem because they way they harassed McManus last week led to some of those turnovers (as did the fact that they put Lamar in a position where they had to throw it). Either team CAN win this, but I think it’s close, I think it ends up being low-scoring…but I also think my initial hunch on the season end up proving to be correct… The winner- Southside Christian
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November 2021
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