Originally Posted by
trojandad
first, good show, learned a lot about paris i didnt know....
i think grant was very fair with us, i think chance andries is the best kept secret in 3a ball...i guarantee carthages coach knows him, he withstood every double team they threw at him in last years game holding holland to just 80 something yards...counting solo tackles and assists, hes averaging almost 20 tackles/game...hes the reason coach can now concentrate on the rest of the defense...
gilbert is getting almost as many reps on defense as offense this year and it shows, g2 can attest he spotted an orangefield runner about 10 yards and brought him down before he scored, then the defense pushed them back out of field goal range...coach is running the heck out of monroe and those two sophomore backs and letting gilbert sense the game overall rather than just as a runner...
speaking of gilbert, i say very little about his overall demeanor, but if you hang with the team youd be hard pressed to know which one is the star if you didnt already know, the guy is so much of a team player....coach really has a luxury of not having to stroke his ego and concern himself with the big picture of winning it all....not much more can be said for the top dog of a team....
you guys got on the subject of who was the toughest team on the horizon, well ive got a thought or two on that....everyone that has read my posts knows that i have been trying to figure out why we had such an easy time with athens last year (44-14) when some of those other "district of death" teams had their hands full with them...well i wont keep beating that horse, but here is another angle of unknown in that game....on that playoff run last year we beat bridge city, columbus and athens by pretty much the same margin, and wimberly by a bigger one than most (even me) expected, but in the games except for the athens one the other teams expressed disgust, disappointment and even anger at losing so badly, it showed in throwing helmets, penalties on the field, etc.....athens showed none of this, absolutely zero....jdog and i were calling them the stepford team because no matter how poorly they were doing, theyd politely walk off the field on 4th down, say little when a big play was executed on them, it was amazing to watch...it was as if they knew they were going to lose and it was ok....this is the same team that fought back against chapel hill so you know they dont quit, and yet we were the only ones that scored from 11:53 in the 2nd qtr until the end....
it was the strangest playoff game i ever witnessed in the lack of emotion from a team, especially in the 4th round....then a friend walking out with me, when talking about what we had seen, said "i think they played the best team in the state, knew what that was like, and couldnt believe what they were facing in us"....now i know hes a homer and a half, but it made itself even more clear the next week when wimberly was behind us far more than anyone expected and some of the def backs got disappointed in the way the game was going and picked up some very understandable roughing calls (wimbopro and i were talking about it during the game)....it even brought out more the lack of emotion athens played with....
i say all that to say i dont have a clue what to make of athens, that was the one playoff game we had that almost didnt seem like it was even a game, more like a scrimmage....its the team that, should we play again, i hope we dont go to sleep on for that very reason....but i still think our rough time in region is gonna come from wo-s....like its EVER been possible for that bunch to fly under the radar, this is that year...both their losses scare me, and if they win their district well most likely meet them in the regional finals....theyve played far better competition so far this year than we have, and i sure hope that doesnt end up showing for us...one thing good about lesser competition during the year, tho, is we have FAR fewer injuries this time this year than last year.....