Hillsboro Hawks at Pacific Indians (Class 4 State Quarterfinal)
Photo Credits: Paul Stuthers (Hillsboro) and Amaya Manning (CCHS)
The Hillsboro Hawks were already facing a psychological see-saw from solid favorite to stout underdog, should the 10-1 Hawks be fortunate enough to defeat District 2’s champions this Friday night, and progress to play the winner of Lutheran North vs Hannibal in Week 14. (If Hannibal makes it into a game against a Mississippi Magazine school, we’ll have to break out the A-Team posters again.) But it’s no secret that Pacific’s upset of Sullivan throws a curve-ball into the state bracket, making the Class 4 “bracky” a bit wacky as the Hawks look to advance further than any Leon Hall team in history.
We had Sullivan High School inked as the Festus-Hillsboro winner’s State Q-Final opponent all season. Sullivan beat North County (and Pacific) last year before winning District 2 and going to Class 3’s state Final Four, and it did not appear as though Class 4’s slightly harder division would serve to slow down the Varsity Eagles in ’23, not after SHS had beaten NCHS and Union by a combined score of 70-21 in the contests leading up to last Friday’s Class District 2 Championship Game vs Pacific. But the upstart PHS Indians got their running game going behind a big night from senior tailback Raidon Fowler, additionally holding Sullivan to just 200-or-so yards in the 21-20 upset. Pacific, like Crystal City, is riding on its top W of modern times.
That’s football in the Meramec Valley for you. Just when you think you’ve got the Large Schools of the area safely ranked in a given season, somebody jumps up and surprises the field. Following a midseason loss at Festus R-6, the underdog ‘Injuns conquered Hermann and St. James in tough scrums, exploiting a weaker schedule down the stretch to extend a winning streak. November’s shock of a development is that Pacific’s win has streak lasted right through the Sullivan scrum.
Never fear, Hillsboro’s probably got Pacific checked from football POV. Pacific didn’t need to fumble 5 times or throw a battery of INTs to lose to Festus 49-13. Pacific lost the line of scrimmage to the Varsity Tigers’ cast of sophomore and junior linemen, and Hillsboro’s senior OL can see the Black & Gold’s physicality and raise the ante with superior experience. Pacific’s Luke Meyer, a tremendous 2-way player who scored 18 touchdowns for the Indians earlier in the season, has been absent with extended injury woes. Preston Brown’s “Pistol Flex” offense is 10-to-15 years ahead of its time on the MSHSAA level, so it is certainly unlike anything Pacific’s defense has dealt with in many Moons. While the HHS Hawks aren’t exactly coming off a prodigious night versus FHS, Chase Sucharski’s heroic late catch showed that Brown’s passing game has come of age.
What’s more worrying is tonight’s atmosphere. Hillsboro’s used to a home-field advantage that’s crazy loud when the Hawks need it to be, but is also populated by fans who’ve watched decades’ worth of the brand defeating its rivals, so it’s not always “giddy” at Leon Hall when the Hawks happen to be losing 0-21. To the Blue & White’s credit, Week 12’s District Championship Game remained very rowdy even as the #1 seed labored to get things figured out in the opening half. But our late-year playoff contests along the river (the big one) tend to turn into mass-attended “neutral site” games if there’s good weather, with many of the spectators moved to cheer for both teams’ TDs. MSHSAA rules also tamp down how much a school is allowed to press its home-field edge in the District and State playoffs. Hillsboro’s PA announcer last Friday broke the rules exactly once, praising Hillsboro after a tackle-for-loss against Festus. But that was just the emotion of a championship slipping out by accident.
As for this Friday at Pacific High? Look, speaking just this once (or “this twice” if you count Week 12’s bottom-of-page) as a Midmeadow Lane booster instead of a 12-team reporter, Pacific is everybody’s favorite away-team school in the Tri-Cities because the program is so NICE. One might joke that the only reason Festus and Pacific don’t join a football conference together is that they’d have to become bitter rivals, and nobody wants that to happen because they’re friends. In fact, supposing Black & Gold met the Pacific Indians in a Show-Me Bowl game (MSHSAA does crisscross the bracket occasionally), The Geek would have to post this rasslin’ promo, whether our classy readers liked it or not:
“Nice” doesn’t add up to “easy” when visiting Pacific in the playoffs. Because the Meramec team is in such uncharted waters, we don’t know exactly WHAT to tell Hillsboro to expect. But with what little postseason success the Varsity Indians have had over the last 10-20 years, we’re afraid that PHS’s Week 13 crowd (and announcers) are going to scream, shout, and bawl barbarically for blood whether the Indians are playing well or faring poorly against Hillsboro. They won’t know any better! Jefferson County’s spectators wouldn’t act any differently – nobody would if their alma mater’s sports team emerged from downtrodden decades to make it into Missouri’s state playoffs. They’d cheer like they were winning if the score was 0 to 50. (Mississippi Magazine would LOVE to make Crystal City’s unique crowds the exception for this rule, but we actually don’t know because CCHS Football literally NEVER gets blown-out anymore, and probably isn’t in danger of being whitewashed by any opponent unless the Hornets swing over their heads in the 2024 playoffs, or unless Dan Fox starts scheduling Union High School instead of Union Middle School.) Hillsboro could have just as many problems if Pacific takes a surprise lead as it contended with when Festus took its halftime lead last weekend, but not for the same reasons. PHS cannot play a better championship tilt than Hillsboro can, but the Indians sure know how to crest on a wave of momentum. The FHS Tigers committed game-management errors to help HHS in Week 12, but we can’t expect that twice from 2 good coaches. If Hillsboro’s sloppy in Week 13, one thing Pacific can do is jump all over those mistakes, with a “giddy” crowd for aid.
Pacific’s home-field announcer, for all we know, will behave like a Regional Radio crew calling Valle University versus the Lamar Tigers tonight. “THERE’S a massive gain for Pacific on First Down! OH, and WHAT A HOLE FOR THE RUSHER on Second Down! Now, Pacific has got a 3rd-Down-and-7, because my last 2 sentences were JUST WISHFUL THINKING!” It conceivably could require a warning from MSHSAA’s on-field refs to put a stop to it at PHS. “THE INDIANS HAVE IT GOIN’ NOW, FOLKS! DON’T FRET THAT HILLSBORO STILL LEADS TWENTY-EIGHT TO FOURTEE…wazzat?…penalty?…15 yards?…a forfeit!?….AND WOULD YOU LOOK AT WHAT PRETTY UNIFORMS THAT THE HILLSBORO HAWKS ARE WEARING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. JUST A BEAUTIFUL HUE OF BLUE!”
For the purposes of tonight’s quarterfinal, the Hillsboro Hawks might as well be taking on a champion from STL’s Public High League. The opponent will be an underdog on all counts, not as blessed with elite playmakers as the Varsity Hawks, not as deep or fundamentally sound across all-22. But their momentum-factor is like a fizzing bottle with a cork. Hillsboro can prevail in a tough game, boring game, a lopsided game, or otherwise, but do NOT allow Pacific to break open that bottle. Pacific’s going to shatter windows with a home-field roar at some point, and HHS must stuff beeswax in its ears and seal the cork.
Our advice to Bill Sucharski’s staff is to break the “don’t look ahead” rule just this once, and return QB Preston Brown to his part-time role under center for some good old-fashioned Triple-Option pigskin from the Hawks. It would reestablish the Hawks’ OL and DL as weapons after a dodgy night vs Festus’ bigs, drain the clock on a Pacific team that’s too inexperienced to do much about it, and force the winner of Lutheran North vs Hannibal to spend 5-6 days yelling “Assignment Football!” at their defense and preparing to meet a regular option-style offense. That’s when you put QB Preston Brown back behind center, utilizing the element of surprise in a more balanced attack, and perhaps score enough touchdowns to upset a big-shot.
Sucharski is a lot like Coach Fox, though, in the sense that they tack to Point A when expected to head for Point Z. If Hillsboro coaches ask Brown to pass and scramble 30+ times in Week 13, we’re still confident that Blue & White will find its way to a “finesse” victory just like in last Friday’s classic comeback. PREDICTION: HAWKS 42, PACIFIC 10
Crystal City Hornets at St. Vincent Indians (Class 1, District 2 Championship Game)
The Gridiron Geek is upset about having to publish this prediction. (Couldn’t you tell? They usually come out on Thursdays.) Put bluntly, there is no way we can maintain the blog’s integrity as an unbiased pundit (no matter WHAT you hear from the occasional Lonely Old Goat) and call #2 seed Crystal City a favorite over #1 seed St. Vincent this weekend. We could say Crystal City’s about to score a tremendous upset, or that St. Vinny’s is going to lay an egg, but St. Vincent High is still the considerable favorite-to-win. The Indians’ record at home beats Crystal’s poor record in away-contests with ease, and a dynamite home-field victory for CCHS in the semifinals only helps to make the Hornets look great at CCHS and weak on unfamiliar turf, not to mention on deeper turf. Some local fans read Mississippi Magazine and react “YAY!” if we predict a hypothetical school will beat Bishop DuBourg 20-14, but don’t vibe that it’s a compliment when we say that someone is probable to lose to Lutheran North by the same score. They just see the prediction of an L, and leave the site unhappy. Crystal’s boys will have to out-play our pick to win, but we’ve also got a hunch they’re about to out-do a TON of picks.
Tonight’s scrum at St. Vincent might be the last stand of Crystal City’s skeptics around the region. They’re tuning in to hear what they think will be a whitewash for the #1 seed in Perryville, over a #2 underdog from which they probably don’t know a single player, but have a vague idea of “Crystal City” in their heads. And why wouldn’t they? St. Vincent ’23 has blown up its small-school conference rivals like St. Pius X by 5 and 6 TDs at a time. The CCHS Hornets’ senior Class of 2024 has invested countless hours of blood, sweat, and tears working to become just as good as Jefferson or St. Pius X on the gridiron, and now that it’s happened, they’ve got to turn right around and play a club that’s been whipping Highway 61 schools all over the field. Indians QB Christian “Separate Wheat From” Schaaf pilots a Spread attack that’s averaged 40 points throughout a 6-game winning streak following St. Vincent’s customary loss to Valle U. St. Vincent’s defense has not pitched as many shut-outs as usual this season, but the Indians still keep a physical unit of Iron Man linemen who forced Jefferson into a “New England Patriots” style 75% pass offense in the Varsity Blue Jays’ tough 28-21 defeat to St. Vinny’s for the I-55 Conference title.
Meanwhile, the Crystal City football season has been one of unmatched glory…if you don’t count the road games. If you count the road games, then we’re looking at the “Tennessee” of MSHSAA as it compares to the Hornets of ’23 – a contender who’s infinitely more likely to botch a rare, great opportunity when playing away from home. Crystal City can blame the soggy turf of slower fields for some of its mishaps against Van-Far and Herculaneum, but there’s nothing about a slow pitch that should prompt a Varsity team to fumble 17 times in a row. CCHS romped rival Russellville, beat Gateway Tech, and chalked-up Chaffee again at the Sunken Place this year. But on the road, the Hornets have let slower turf get inside their heads.
In “Hoosiers,” Coach Norman Dale walks his team into the biggest arena they’ve ever played in, and has “Ollie” (the Hickory Huskers’ 5’3 backup guard) get on a teammate’s back and tape-measure the basketball goal from the floor to the rim. It’s TEN FEET, the same ten feet as measured at the Huskers’ tiny campus gymnasium. Crystal City’s fleet-footed team knows what kind of cuts, sprints, and moves aren’t as easy when the Hornets aren’t blessed by the special fast track of the Sunken Place. It shouldn’t be a mystery by now. What the Hornets must do is make sure that the grass at St. Vincent – which appears to be shorter-than-usual natural grass or maybe a firmer, grainier-than-usual pitch of artificial grass – doesn’t hurt them anywhere above their feet. If the different playing surface begins to get in your head, then it’s 2 full yards above where it needs to be. Regardless of where a Friday kickoff happens, the distance from midfield to the goal-line is always exactly 50 YARDS.
Common-opponent games is another theme St. Vincent’s “sure thing” prognosticators will play like a piccolo. St. Vinny’s beat Herky 40-0 early this season, although it happened right after Herculaneum took on its second wicked wave of injuries. The scores “St. Vincent 49, Perryville 7″ and St. Vincent 35, Grandview 13” were somewhat eye-popping also, as the Indians rumbled rough-shod over the I-55. In the playoffs, St. Vincent took a 28-0 lead over Van-Far, and ultimately won 42-6.
But in The Geek’s opinion, Crystal City’s hurdle through District 2 has been far harder than what St. Vinny’s has had to contend with. Russellville is a Central MO opponent but a familiar one, and not yet as ingrained on its campus as the pigskin traditions at Bowling Green or California. Van-Far committed almost as many turnovers as Crystal City did against Louisiana High in the “other” Indians’ semifinal loss at St. Vincent, which actually took longer to Turbo Clock the Russellville Indians (TOO MANY INDIANS! YOU CAN NICKNAME A SCHOOL SOMETHING ELSE YA KNOW) than Crystal City did this season. In fact, the championship campaign at STV has given off a vibe of running-in-place as opposed to speeding up as the autumn goes forward. St. Vincent began the year nearly upsetting the powerful Scott City Rams, which fared nobly in defeat to Valle University last weekend. But by the time the Valle game rolled around, St. Vinny’s was nowhere near the level of the manufactured Varsity Warriors. St. Vincent crushed St. Pius in Week 7, but eked out a trophy vs JHS 13 days later.
Meanwhile, the Crystal City Hornets are shooting for the sky. Convincing playoff Ws over Harrisburg and Tipton should have changed the conversation, we’re just not sure if the conversers are tuned into how impressive those last 2 victories are. #7 Harrisburg was the nightmare draw for CCHS in the District Q-Finals, worse than Louisiana or Chaffee would have been, because the Bulldogs’ wild “Arkansas” tactics meant that Week 9’s sluggish offense had to rebound with a fantastic game, otherwise, the point tally would’ve favored a school that only cares about scoring points. As for Crystal’s semifinal victim Tipton? Let’s just say if the Cardinals were up against St. Vincent, there would be NO blow-out predictions anywhere.
If the hot Hornets can eliminate Tipton, they can eliminate St. Vincent too. It’s just a matter of taking the show on the road. Crystal City’s defense is speckled with youngsters who’re maturing physically just as the games get harder, which makes a scary defense even more frightening from St. Vincent’s POV. Crystal City held Tipton’s amazing offense to 6 points without – gulp – Seth Senter on the field or Camden Mayes at 100%. If Mayes is running at full speed this week, while Senter comes back to try and have the bout of his life at OL and defensive tackle, that makes CCHS’s defense nearly too much to contain. The Geek can’t fathom St. Vincent scoring more than a TD-per-quarter, no matter how many passes STV chucks around.
Besides the unit’s obvious momentum, what we really love about Crystal City’s defense in Week 13 is that Senter and Mayes’ return gives Coach Fox all kinds of options. CCHS’s defense isn’t just peaking on Fridays, but it’s also flexible enough to cope against a wide-open opponent, and since the kids are all so used to playing Iron Man minutes that there’s no need to steal minutes from another unit’s lineup to “load up” the defense for a game, like Hillsboro and Festus are forced to do sometimes. Crystal City’s defense is plenty loaded-up already, and if Fox chooses to play youngster Gage McPherson on the defensive line against St. Vincent and puts Kanden Bolton, Camden Mayes, and Evan Wolfe in an aggressive coverage against St. Vincent’s many receivers, he’ll have an All-Star linebacking corps on the field that can blitz at the Indians from all over.
TGG believes the only way Crystal City gets blown-out in this championship game is if coaches lose their nerve on defense, and try a conservative “bend but don’t break” strategy against St. Vincent to try to produce another fast clock, and hope Crystal City scores on its Red Zone opportunities while the Varsity Indians whiff on theirs. STV’s offense is too big, fast, and seasoned for a wait-and-hope style to give the Hornets a chance. If allowed to progress smoothly down to the 20-yard line, the Indians will say thank-you-very-much and keep war whooping all the way to the end zone. Besides, the time for Crystal City game plans designed to protect a small lineup from injury has come and gone. It’s Week 13, and the Hornets are fairly healthy. Carpe-Diem applies to the championship in Perryville. Let your Iron Men play a long 48:00 and let’s see what happens.
It’s even more important for the CCHS defense to be disruptive, opportunistic, and ideally to hawk the ball. The one thing we don’t think Crystal City’s up-and-down offense can do is drive 80 long yards, reliably, against St. Vincent’s stout defense. A winning Hornets touchdown is more likely to come on a short-field chance set up by a turnover, a sack-fumble or an INT. Bradley’s Farm regulars know just how dangerous Bolton’s backfield is running with an interception. Tonight is when a CCHS secondary manned by some of the best players in Cale Schaumburg’s backfield may get its best opportunities to gallop for points when St. Vincent is supposed to have the football, and has an offensive snap blow-up in its face instead. Crystal’s sudden-change effort on offense has to be 200% ready to strike quickly if the Indians have a T/O and a let-down.
Think of Week 13’s prediction this way – everyone who’s watched football has heard of a “14-point swing” on a turnover, right? If The Geek thinks St. Vincent is about to win by 2 touchdowns and keep CCHS from making even more history that way, then maybe we’re a sack, a fumble, and a scoop-and-score from the Final Four. PREDICTION: ST. VINCENT 27, HORNETS 14