Lamar- 18
Dixie- 14 Green Sea-Floyds- 47 Hemingway- 7 Breakdown- After 16 weeks and hundreds of games, 28 teams have taken their Kool-Aid and bologna sandwiches to the kiddie table, leaving a pair of grown folks to sit inside to eat steak and raid the liquor cabinet...or something like that. That Lamar is playing for a title is obviously not surprising, since that's kinda their thing. What is surprising is the degree to which they struggled against Dixie in the upper state championship game. That is no knock on Dixie who has come miles and miles as a program, had a great group of seniors, is well coached and is tougher than Dollar Store steaks (that's not one of those crazy "Travis made that up" deals either. I saw steaks for sale for $1 each a few years ago in a Dollar Store. I'm pretty handy with a grill but I don't believe I could do much with those. Nor could Bobby Flay. What part of a cow do $1 staeaks come from? That's gotta be hoof meat or his jublees. And did the cow have like scurvy or rubella or something? But I digress). They deserved to be where they were. They did not play a dialed back schedule as they had the previous two years as they slowly built and progressed. They gave dang good AA Landrum and 96 teams real battles, they beat Christ Church, they curb stomped the rest of their region etc. but what happened last Friday seemed to have a lot more to do wiith Lamar not playing very well than Dixie hanging tough with them. They had a very un-Lamar like six turnovers, including five in the first half. Dixie ran one pick back for a score and ran another back to the Lamar one to set up another score to give them that 14-0 lead they enjoyed at half. One that made me suspect that Twitter was drunk or that the entire football world was executing a colossal prank of some kind on me. I actually tried to think of a time recently that Lamar beat themselves (or put themselves in a position where they could possibly lose a game) and drew a big, fat blank. It doesn't happen. Discipline and robotic efficiency are their hallmarks. Even coughing it up as often as they did, though, they rallied for a win, largely because their defense didn't take to sucking all of a sudden. Dixie, who is big and experienced up front and has a terrific one-two backfield punch couldn't squeeze out one, tiny drop, They had less than 90 total yards of offense. Good as they were all year, their offensive style was just a terrible matchup with Lamar. You can have success against them through the air if you can hold up in pass protection, you may have limited success with misdirection, option, multiple looks and other sleight of hand, but if you try to line up and run it between the tackles on them, they'll point and laugh at you. Or hit you really hard, one or the other. I understand that Jacquez Lucas didn't play in this game which obviously makes a big difference. Still, they found a way to advance and will have a chance to defend their title. The lowerstate championship game was not nearly as close or compelling. Truth be told, Green Sea-Floyds doled out a gooo-oood rootin'. That they did demonstrates how well they are playing and the degree to which they have improved as the season has worn on. When tbey played Hemingway earlier in the year, they scored with three seconds left, went for two, got it and won 22-21. I picked Green Sea to win but was expecting something similar to that result. Instead, according to a coach I talked to, the Trojans ate Hemingway alive wth jet sweeps and some double wing looks. Coach Kiefer apparently shows a lot of different looks, often based on the opponent. Defensively, they just kinda kicked Hemingway in the face. Even with their top end talent (a series of scary athletes all of whom are named Darius) Hemingway didn't get to 100 yards of offense. And as mentioned, their defense left the field bow legged and with with marks. All-in-all they had a good, if inconsistent year. Despite losing 16 starters and their coach from last year, they overcame a slow start and were one of the last four teams standing. They just ran into a dadgum buzzsaw. And given how bad Green Sea has been for so long and what they've dealt with this year in terms of hurricanes and flooding and whatnot, it's hard not to root for them. They are lowerstate champions for the first time in school history. Good on them. We'll see if they can take it one step farther today. I'll have a preview and my pick Friday morning.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
Categories |