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I would venture to guess that Lee will give NS a better game than Sterling because of the way they matchup. Sterling has a much better offense than Lee, but that was going to be neutralized by NS's defense anyways. Lee has a better defense than Sterling, so the Ganders should be able to cause a little more resistance to the NS offense than Sterling could. Lee will need to play mistake free ball. Cut down on penalties and turnovers. The Ganders will also need to score on special teams or defense once or twice. The Ganders had West Brook right where they wanted them except for the 4 turnovers and 15 penalties killing them. Even after all of those mistakes, it was a 7 point loss. I could see a scenario where Lee is able to hang with NS. Is it likely that Lee will win? Not very. But there is a slim chance.

While I won't discredit the help that the Dayton coaches have given to Lee, I will also add that for the first time in a long time, Lee has basically every single athletic guy they have playing defense. This is why you see the offense suffering so much. Lee has a TON of speed on defense this year. Thomas Bates at safety, CJ Mixon at cb, Trenton Warren at cb, Treion Murray at olb and Dandrick Jackson at olb are all sprinters on the track team. Tunwar at ilb soubles as a receiver on offense. Raymond at one de is about 5'8" 185. Zellars at ng is extremely underrated and should get a D1 scholarship. He was hurt all last year. In the years of Drew Tate, Bates, Mixon and Warren would be receivers and Murray would be the running back. Lee just doesn't have the numbers any more to field athletes on both sides of the ball without a lot of guys playing both ways. Plus Olin just is really hamstrung with the qb situation this year. There's really no point in putting any athletes on that side of the ball, because it's a lost cause. Just try to stack the defense and win that way. Again, Dayton has a great coaching staff, and I enjoy watching them play. I am glad that Olin went to them for help if that is the case. However, the biggest difference is just that all our athletes that used to be on offense are now on defense.

Baytown Sun said that Havins is out for the year at qb, so it's not going to get much better for Lee. Good defense and pathetic offense the rest of the way. 10-7 over Channelview doesn't give me the warm fuzzies lol I'll take a win either way at this point.

Tonight at 7 o clock in Baytown. I won't be able to make it, because I work until 8:15, but I hope Lee can pull one out here. The crazy part is, I was thinking about it lying in bed this morning, and it's not too far from the realms of possibility for Lee to go 1-4 in district and get a playoff spot. Hopefully we can beat CV and PAM and get to 2-3. I would feel somewhat comfortable with that record making the playoffs. I never have any intention of winning a game in Port Arthur though. I don't care how poorly PAM is playing or how good Lee is. It's always a difficult one.

Did #7 play at all for Lee at qb? He is by far and away the best qb on the team. I mean an enormous canyon between him and the next closest guy. He has only played sparingly all season because of injuries though.

Bruins over Ganders

Absolutely. I don't toss around the word "inept" casually. Lee's offense is completely inept this year. WB's jv should have been able to stop Lee's offense, much less the WB varsity, so I'm not surprised that Lee's scores came off turnovers and not extended drives. Why did the qb get hurt? Did he step in a pothole in the sideline? Did he get crunched by a couple of Gander defenders? If it was the latter, then you really can't use a what if there, because that's part of what makes a team a good defense. If a team is fast and hard hitting, then there is the possibility that a couple of guys on the opposing offense might get nicked up and not be as effective as when the game first started.

"The two teams combined for eight turnovers and 24 penalties in the District 21-5A game with the Ganders having four turnovers and 15 of those penalties." This is what it said in the Baytown Sun. So, Lee actually made more mistakes than West Brook did as far as turnovers(same amount) and penalties(Lee with way more). Maybe Lee just has a stout defense like I've been saying, despite the fact that their offense is completely inept. I couldn't make the game unfortunately. I didn't get off work until 6:15, and I work on the southwest side of Houston. From the writeup in the paper, sounds about like what I would have expected. WB made more mistakes than I would have thought, but I knew the Bruin offense wouldn't carve right through Lee's defense like they have been doing. From the Sun article, Lee had 4th and goal from the 1 in the middle of the 4th quarter to tie the game up, then were called for a false start. Not sure why they didn't just go for a field goal at that point to cut it to 4 after the penalty pushed them back to the 6. Oh well, sounds like I missed a good game. Hopefully Lee will be able to eek out a couple wins against PAM and CV and sneak into the playoffs. We shall see.

I meant 2-3 obviously. I could see Channelview beating PAM or Sterling or Lee. I could see Sterling beating PAM or Channelview. I could see PAM beating Sterling or Lee or CV I could see Lee beating PAM and CV The only sure things are WB and NS

The Ganders aren't a great team this year. They have a great defense though. If there offense wasn't so absurdly horrible, then the defense would get a little more credit. It's tough that they have to keep on going back out there once the offense goes 3 and out. Sterling only had 243 total yards, 88 in the first half, with 60 of that coming on one screen pass. Second half, Lee tires out, because they are on the field too long and have no depth. Lee has given up 119, 250, 205 and 243 yards in their 4 games this year. Granted, none of those teams were near as good as West Brook. Still, giving up an average of 205 yards per game after 4 games, particularly knowing that Lee has NO OFFENSE AT ALL, lets me know that Lee has a pretty stout defense. If #7 can go at qb for Lee, then they have a puncher's chance, because Lee's defense will be swarming in the first half. Now, Christine Michael is such an elite level back, that he will have some plays where he's just too good for the Lee defense, but make no mistake, Lee's defense is very quick and good this year. WB 31 Lee 7

I wasn't there for the game. I was in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Congratulations to the Rangers. Hopefully the Ganders can bounce back and steal one somewhere to ease into the playoffs. I have a feeling wins over PAM and CV will not be enough. This could be one of those seasons where 4 teams tie at 2-4 somehow. Lee's defense came to play again from what I could read in the Baytown Sun. Lee just can't get any offense going and the penalties continue to kill us.

We shall see what happens this weekend against Katy Taylor. Apparently, Lee looked like a completely different team once #7 took over at qb. He had been out with an injury all year. Lee has enough weapons on offense to score some points. Not near as many points as one might be used to if you have seen Lee's high powered offense in the past, but enough to win games. The Lee defense is the part of the equation that will surprise people this year. They are very, very fast throughout the starting 11. Thomas Bates, Trey Murray and Dandrick Jackson made up 3/4ths of the 400 relay team for Baytown this past summer during summer track. Bates is at one safety, while Jackson and Murray are the outside linebackers. Trenton Warren and CJ Mixon are the corners and they are both very fast. Zellars at noseguard is a bull. 7Lakes moved on us occasionally. The main problem Lee had was when 7L would surprise us with a little down the line option. Lee has all 3 defensive linemen bunched in over the guard/center/guard usually, so when you get outside in a hurry there's not a lot of turbulence out there. 7L had one 70 yard pass that should have been intercepted by two Lee defenders, but their receiver made an exceptional catch on the bounce. Without that fluke, 7Lakes only had 180 yards of offense on about 55 plays from scrimmage. This Lee defense is probably the best one we have had since 1997. It's a little bit better than the one we had in 2003 in my opinion. There's only the question as to if they will be too tired. Jackson and Bates both play a lot on offense as well as defense. DE Montgomery plays offensive guard quite a bit. Linebacker #11 also plays on offense occasionally as does the other de Raymond. We have a lot of guys going both ways. It looks more like a 4a team than a 5a team. We will see how it turns out. I won't be here for the Sterling game as I will be on my honeymoon.

I only stayed for the first half because my ear infection was killing me. Lee looked horrrrrible on offense in the first half. They inserted the backup qb and looked way better it appears in the second half. The defense still looks solid, just put in some horrible spots by the inept offense

Lee plays Saturday at 7 pm in Katy against Seven Lakes

Dayton 62 GCM 13

Dawson at least has some athletes, however young they may be. Rayburn and New Caney just aren't very good.

I could see Lee going 2-3 in non-district simply because they can't score any points. At this point, the offense has scored just as many points for the other team as they have for themselves.

Sterling definitely has an easy road ahead. I would guess that Dawson would be the only team left that could beat them before district starts. Sterling beat LaPorte last week, and that is who Lee beat last night. I can't say anything about South Houston, but I can tell you that LaPorte would get beat by some jv teams around Houston probably. This concerns me, because Lee couldn't move on them very much. Lee did have 9 false start penalties which put a halt to a lot of drives, but even then, they could not make any plays. LaPorte had no business being around at the end of this game honestly. Lee just screwballed around and almost got beat by a team that probably had run 25 plays for negative 30 yards of offense for the first 3 and a half quarters of the game. LP might not win a game this year.

The Baytown Sun says that LaPorte had 38 yards of offense. 55 of that came on their receiver pickin up a fumble and running it in for a td. Lee's defense was swarming. Just need to get the offense clicking. I knew we had a lot of false starts, but dang..The Baytown Sun says we had 9 of them total, with 7 of them coming in the second half.

Did you catch the game Big Gander?

Went and watched the Ganders play the Bulldogs tonight. The Ganders have their best defense in over a decade. Pretty much all of the athletic players are on defense. They have 7 guys starting over there that will be sprinters on the track team next spring. LaPorte probably only had 5 or 6 first downs. They didn't have any in the first half. They probably ended up with maybe 100 yards tops, with about 70 of those coming on a fluke fumble that a receiver picked up and took the distance for a score. The other LP score came on a fumble by Lee's qb that LP picked up and ran in for a td. The Lee defense is fast, aggressive and smart. This is the first time I can say that in a long, long time. One problem might be lack of depth. At least 7 of the starting defensive unit played both ways. They didn't play a lot necessarily on offense, but a few of them played probably 15+ plays and the rest played 4 or 5 plays on offense. Three of them came out with cramps in the second half. Zac Zellars, nose guard, was impossible to handle. For whatever reason he only played on 3rd downs. He probably got 4 tackles and 2 sacks just on 3rd down plays. He may have been hurt a little which might have been the reason for the limited snaps.. Thomas Bates had a punt return for a td of about 70 yards. Now, the offense.... Don;t ask lol They actually have a good line. They were opening up some holes in the running game. They just lack athletic abilisty on that side right now. All of the good athletes are playing defense like I said. It's pretty frustrating because usually the offense is great and the defense can't stop anyone. Now, the defense is really stout, but the offense can't move the ball at all. Final score Lee 17 LaPorte 14

Thanks for the input.

GCM was lucky to be in the game from what I can gather. I will be pulling for them obviously, but when all of their players com from a Sterling team that barely won a game last year, you're not going to have high expectations.

How did Lee's qb look? Did they play more than one qb? Last week they only played the tall, thin qb (Jirrells) because the other guy was out injured. I know you all focused more on LCM obviously if you were there, but any insight into how Lee did would be appreciated. Their defense looked quite good last week against Deer Park. It was the only bright spot as the offense couldn't do jacksquat. Lee is going to have great speed on defense this year but will lack playmakers on offense unless they play a lot of guys both ways. The Ganders are quite close to the 5a/4a cutoff now with the opening of Goose Creek Memorial, and I would not be surprised to see Lee down in 4a sometime in the near future.

Gotta go with North Shore. They haven't lost a district game in what...8 years?