Rez

There should be crying - It’s horse crap to arbitrarily deny fans the ability to watch the game. The whole point of high school football is community involvement. It’s not our fault our playoff opponents don’t have communities (including our friends from the surrounding SETX community who show up for each other) that care about their team enough to get on the road and watch. The gamesmanship of trying to find smaller stadiums to leave PNG fans out is pathetic and cowardly. If they can leave us out, how about just have no fans at all? If PNG has to turn 2,000-3,000 fans away, Liberty Hill should have to turn that many away as well , but everyone knows they would have no fans at all if they had to do that. The fact is you could hold this game on the moon and we’d still show up, and most other teams struggle to fill up their home stadiums. And, it’s going to backfire - Now Liberty Hill will be utterly surrounded by PNG in a more confined space. They’re going to have PTSD from hearing Cherokee.

Did anyone get pictures from last night at buccee’s?

Watching more of last night’s LH/Pieper game, I think Pieper would have beaten LH with a healthy qb. LH didn’t do anything special on defense, they were just up against a team with a guy throwing from a hurt leg - He could barely move, and it seems to have affected his accuracy.

I’ve always wanted to do that, to see PNG from the other side.

Liberty Hill should put her on a shirt

Their defensive line is shockingly small. I’m having trouble imagining a scenario where they stop our run game.

Liberty Hill has probably had a rematch with PNG circled all season. Let’s get it going.

Great season, Jasper! We were pulling for you.

They played us really tough.

Refs helped so much on that drive

Specific to this game, you’re right that it’s not really accurate to call a Huntsville win an upset. They’re where they are for a reason, ranking and records don’t matter. Huntsville doesn’t have to be the best 6 weeks ago to beat us. They have to be the best this week.

Good point.

I’ve been watching some Huntsville film. I’m predicting a grinding, slobberknocker game similar to the one PNG had against West Orange. Huntsville is big on the defensive line, and they don’t give up big plays. They’re also fast on the D line, with quick hands. Number 55 has multiple long runs after fumbles or interceptions. And they’re capable of closing off the run game similarly to Lake Creek. In the playoffs, their defense is a mirror to PNG’s (though we played the best offense in the region in Lake Creek). Looking only at their playoff performance, they’ve given up an average of 16 points a game, identical to PNG over the same period. That being said, PNG’s offense has been better than Huntsville’s, and I think that will make the difference. I see two likely scenarios: One, PNG plays stiff defense and is able to move the ball relatively consistently, slowly inching up the score board for a final score around 21/28 to 7/14. Two, Huntsville keeps it to a close, one-score game and whoever wins does it by the skin of their teeth. Huntsville wants a low-scoring game, of course. I think we have the advantage in a shootout. The later the game goes with a 14-7 or 7-0 score, the more I start to see a Huntsville upset. Richmond and Texas City showed that if you let Huntsville hang around they can take advantage of it. We just have to come out clean, get up by a couple scores, and hang on. As improved as Huntsville’s defense has been, they haven’t shown the same leap on offense. If they have to play catchup, we control the game.

I miss those royal purple helmets.

Correct. Lost in round 2 to Brenham.

He was unstoppable

We didn’t necessarily need to adjust on defense. We needed to keep drives going so that SOC would run out of time for a comeback. When they moved a guy over on the d line, they largely took away the run and we started having quick three and outs. They basically said, “We’ll stack up on the line and force PNG to win through the air against our D1 secondary.” PNG couldn’t throw a fast enough ball on a good day against that secondary, our receivers weren’t quick enough to get open, and the qb was under pressure, so we weren’t going to keep drives open by throwing out of the pocket OR by running in the second half. The only thing I think might have worked would have been to take a Crippen out and put Shae in at QB - Shae could roll out, show pass, and run for a quick four out five yards. And, he might have been able to get a few passes completed as the secondary bit on the qb run. We could have chewed up a couple more yards a run and extended more drives, and just slowed them down a lot. We basically did that offense after crippen got hurt anyway, and Shae got some good runs at the end (and completed a few passes to set up a score) - I think if we had implemented that earlier, they would have had to adjust to the outside, possibly giving us back the inside run lanes. In other words, we could have adjusted to their adjustment and kept them guessing more.

I share the concern. Not that we’re not hard to beat - PNg’s been pretty dang hard to beat. But, I share the concern that we’ll come up against a team we can’t move the ball running against, and won’t make adjustments. Which is exactly what happened against SOC last season. SOC adjusted in the second half. PNG didn’t .

Am I correct that Connor Bailey hasn’t thrown any interceptions this season? He’s had a heck of a start to his high school career. Hard to believe he’s only a sophomore.

Not only that - If we make it to state, it’s not going to work against Soc or Lovejoy.

Does anyone know if Huntsville fans have an online space similar to this one ? I’d love to see what they’re saying about this game. They certainly don’t talk here.

What sticks out to me is the defense is very well conditioned and tenacious. They don’t strike me as particularly big, but they’re tough. They won’t be intimidated.

I’d expect them to bring at least as many as Montgomery Lake Creek, but I’m predicting more.

Two losses are to the favorites to win 6ad1 and 6aD2. Still counts for good experience - they’ve played both teams that are at least in the top three in the state (counting north shore, assuming qb is healthy). No other 5ad2 team has that experience, even if it’s in losses. And, they’ve beaten Midlothian Heritage, Lancaster (still in 5ad1 playoffs), and Melissa. Not bad at all.

Lovejoy’s schedule is crazy legit - One loss , to an undefeated 6A team playing in the quarterfinals this weekend. They beat College Station, Melissa, Texas High, Argyle. If anyone can beat SoC, it’s Lovejoy.