Rez

Does Coach Barrow have the sprinklers out yet?

What do you mean just this Friday? This is all of us Indians fans, every day.

Barbers Hill and Crosby disappointed me the most by beating PNG.

BH band is very good. I usually don’t notice bands, but they sound too good not to notice.

PNG and FB Marshall a toss up? Usually I’d have FB Marshall a 20 point favorite. Are they worse than usual?

Vidor and PAM is a new fan favorite. Riveting.

Oh wow that’s a heartbreaker. Interception with a chance to come back.

“Have to explain...” I’d love to explain that. “The other team is terrible. Blame them.”

PNG is 5-0 against BH. Twice in 2009 (week 1, followed by bi-district), then bi-district in 2010. Then 2016 and 2018.

What about Port Neches’ defense?

Bh ran out of hot chocolate in the Lee game. I would have been mad but I was too busy freezing to death. Here’s hoping PNG stocks up better.

I saw Austin Akins (6a school. I don’t know what enrollment) play Lake Travis this year. Even factoring in that they were playing Lake Travis, Akins is one of the worst football teams I’ve ever seen. I’d put any SETX 5a or 6a team above them, and Silsbee and West Orange as well. It was embarrassing. They couldn’t execute even simple plays. They couldn’t get off a punt (and I don’t mean Lake Travis was overpowering them, I mean they could not do the snap, catch, and kick part successfully, even in an empty field with no opponent). So there are some terrible big schools, but I attribute that to coaching. With a decent coach, a larger school has a serious advantage over a smaller one.

Right, but there is a clear advantage. It’s not a perfect correlation. But it’s kind of odd that a 4a school with 1000 kids can’t play a 6a school with a 1200 kids more, but a 6a school with 2300 CAN play a school with 4000 more. And while the starting 22 is all that matters, the odds of having a good player goes up with the number of kids. So even if the smaller school might be better than a big school in certain isolated cases, the big school still starts out with an immediate and obvious advantage. But you’re right that there are exceptions.

The worst manifestation of this problem is in 6a. You have schools with just over 2300 playing schools like Allen with over 6000. What a joke. I’m hardly going to slap anyone from Allen on the back for winning district with that advantage. You could make two 5a schools out of just the size difference between some of these schools and we’re supposed to get excited for that matchup? 6a needs divisions.

I think the PNG D will keep us in the game. And the offensive potential is there. My most optimistic is to say it’s a winnable game for us.

I don’t think BH will throw much. I’d like to see a statistical breakdown of their completion percentage over ten yards. And they have a huge runningback. Not super fast, but he’ll get his yards. Png can contain a running game. We’ve done it all season. It’s going to be a matter of scoring for PNG and it’s simply not a guarantee like it has been for the last decade or so. So Bh certainly looks like the favorite, and it would be irresponsible to not say so. Png has home field, a good defense, but an offense that sputters. Bh has a complete team, and that can make all the difference.

This is a district championship game (BH playing to win outright, PNG playing to get at least a share) and it will largely determine who gets the #1 seed. Huge game.

I don’t want to lose Vidor for Lumberton in 12-5a. Vidor, if you stay, I promise I will call Nederland your rival, and won’t even make fun of you that much for it. [insert sappy 80s break-up song].

I don’t know. That sounds like a pretty far-fetched theory.

If Crosby wins, they will put themselves in a position to take the #1 seed for playoffs. They would then face Nederland and Baytown Lee, which are both winnable for Crosby. Even if PNG wins out, Crosby has the head-to-head over PNG. If PNG were to lose to BH and BH wins out (after a loss to Crosby), Crosby would have the head-to-head over BH. Anything can happen, and Crosby is turning into the dark horse of the district. This is a huge game for both teams.

Not sure what there would be to talk about. There’s only so many different ways of saying “PNG wins.” The exciting games this week are BH/Crosby and Vidor/Nederland. Huge district and playoff implications for those games. I just hope PNG doesn’t overlook Santa Fe and let them squeak out a win. Part of me wonders if we didn’t overlook Crosby. It’s a game I’m sure the team wants back. A loss this week would make the next two weeks that much more crucial, and they will already be two of the biggest games of our season.

That’a not good. So they will stay 5a, but have 4a numbers? It’s going to be a rough 2 years.

Even if Vidor drops down, I think PNG and Nederland will still want to schedule them. The only downside is we’d be unlikely to see that kind of offense in the playoffs.

Vidor fans have definitely treated Nederland as a rivalry game over the years. And that’s fine, despite what I said in my post above. The more they’ve made it a big game, the more it feels like a big game. So it might as well be seen as a big game. I remember a student from LCM told me, when I was attending PNG, that they saw PNG as their rival, that they had their spirit week when they played PNG, etc. I was so surprised, given that PNG didn’t exactly get super amped to play LCM and that we had no idea it was a special game for LCM. But if LCM has started consistently playing us to close finishes the way Vidor does with Nederland, we might have noticed a little more.

Vidor, we need to talk. We know you’ve been talking to Nederland, And everyone knows that you’d really like to be Nederland’s rival. It’s true, Nederland does hate you. Nederland just doesn’t “hate” hate you. They hate you more as an “opponent,” not so much as a “rival.” Nederland has been hating us exclusively for nearly one hundred years, and I can tell you it makes us jealous to see how much attention you’ve been paying to Nederland. Don’t try to get between our hate. It’s time to move on. There are plenty of fish to hate in the sea — LC-M has been looking good lately, and Lumberton isn’t that far down the road. Maybe even Barbers Hill would be willing to hate you for a while, since Crosby hasn’t really been performing lately. You’re a really, really great team to hate. I’m sure you’ll find someone. Just stay away from Nederland. With sincere but non-committal and non-rival hate, PNG Fans