Saturday’s big games, Part II – reactions

Time for some post-game thoughts on Saturday’s big contests – 1) Navarro’s 31-21 playoff loss to Altair-Rice, and 2) OU’s unforeseen 65-21 shellacking (and it wasn’t even that close) of Texas Tech.

Let’s start with Navarro.   First things first – everybody tip your caps and congratulate Coach Les Goad and the kids on his team for an outstanding 2008 season.  The Panthers finished 10-2, won the program’s first outright district championship since 1982, and strung together a 10-game win streak before falling in the second round of the playoffs. 

Turnovers were the story on Saturday in Victoria.  Navarro gave the football away five times (four fumbles, one interception), and Rice turned three of those turnovers into touchdown drives.  There’s your ballgame.  The Raiders are a skilled bunch offensively and mix the run and pass out of the spread as well as I’ve seen a 2A team do it.  Their 6’5″, 200 lb. receiver Marquis Tolliver is almost an impossible matchup for defensive backs at that level of high school football.  They have a tough, physical back in Zacchaeus Foster who grinds out yards on the ground, and several other playmakers that quarterback Myles Dumont can deliver the ball to.  As Coach Goad alluded to in our post-game interview, you just can’t give a team that good that many extra possessions and expect to come out on top. 

Still…The Panthers never quit, they never hung their heads, and they kept hitting, blocking, & tackling as best they could until the final buzzer.  Jacob Garcia had another great game with 142 rushing yards and three touchdowns on 20 carries, but Navarro never got much going offensively aside from Garcia.  He finishes the season with 1,726 yards and 33 touchdowns.  Those are All-State numbers, and this kid is just a junior, so defenses around the area have to deal with him again next year.

The game’s turning point (or lack of a turning point, I suppose) came just before halftime.  Leading 19-7 with less than a minute remaining, Rice curiously elected to go for it rather than punt on 4th and long from around midfield.  Navarro stopped them, Rice was flagged for a personal foul after the play, and the Panthers looked like they would capitalize on the pristine field position by driving inside the Rice five-yard line.  Navarro looked poised to make it a 19-14 game at the half, but a fumble at the two-yard line kept the potential points off the board and allowed the Raiders to take their 12-point lead into the locker-room.  HUGE turn of events.  Navarro still managed to cut the deficit to five in the second half, but Rice pulled away from that point.  I would like to have seen how the game might have played out had the Panthers punched it in just before the half. 

Oh…one final thought:  Do you think Navarro basketball coach Bob Ermel is breathing a HUGE sigh of relief that his All-District point guard Zach Hernandez, and starting small forward Will Valdez, made it through football season without injury?  Such is the life of a 2A basketball coach.  Looking forward to seeing those two continue their athletic feats on the hardwood this winter.

On to the Sooners and Red Raiders.   Turns out (and who would’ve thunk it) that in the era of spaced-aged, fast-break, glamour-and-glitz, spread offenses, there’s still a place in the game for dominating the line of scrimmage, playing great defense, and running the football.  Now, it would be easy for me to say that on Saturday we learned that OU is a program capable of such things in a big game, and Tech isn’t there yet.  But that wouldn’t be fair.  Saturday’s outcome, despite the ramblings of ESPN types, does not erase or negate what happened when Tech and Texas met in Lubbock a few weeks ago. 

What we learned on Saturday is that home field advantage is an ENORMOUS factor in the Big 12 South this season, that OU’s defensive struggles were a bit overstated, and that Tech’s reported dramatic improvement on the offensive and defensive lines were a bit overstated as well. 

Bob Stoops and his staff took full advantage of the extra week to prepare, and flat out had their team as ready to play as a coaching staff possibly can.  Brent Venables orchestrated the best defensive game plan of any game in college football this season nationwide, given the opponent.  OU had the athletes to match up with Tech’s skill position players out of a base defense – the Sooners didn’t do much substituting or use many nickel or dime packages.  Their linebackers stayed in the game regardless the down and distance, and were fast enough to stay with Tech’s receivers, for the most part. 

Also, Graham Harrell didn’t exercise the best judgment in the week leading up to the game by declaring that he couldn’t be sacked.  That fired up the OU defensive line, I think.  He was sacked only five times all year coming in, and he went down four times on Saturday.  Tech’s first five offensive possessions resulted in three punts and two failed fourth-down conversions.  In addition to Heisman candidate Sam Bradford having another coldly efficient 300-yard, 4 touchdown game, the Sooners had two running-backs (DeMarco Murray & Chris Brown) top the 100-yard mark and racked up 299 rushing yards as a team.  Game over.   

So now we’ve inched a step closer to what any real college football fan should want – a scenario of BCS chaos that absolutely BEGS for a playoff to determine the national champion.