Cardinal Ritter 26, Hillsboro 13
The best lawyer shows are the ones in which the good-guy (or good-lady) lawyer doesn’t win every case. There’s that wonderful “Columbo” episode, for instance, in which the murderer is acquitted by a jury, and everyone in the courtroom is smiling, celebrating, and expressing relief, except for Columbo, who’s got an impish grin and his head cocked to the side, standing out like a sore thumb amidst all of the other faces.
Long-time MSHSAA fans might have stood-out with “cocky detective” grins of their own in the 4th quarter at Leon Hall on Friday. Hopefully, no one in Blue & White mistook their moods as happiness that the Hawks were losing. It’s hard to explain to students at a Homecoming Game why a 13-point loss to Cardinal Ritter – or a 13-point loss to the Green Bay Packers – would be “exciting” to see from the point-of-view of anyone but an opposing cheerleader.
But in reality, Hillsboro’s effort-in-defeat against the Varsity Lions made a statement louder than a million “79-0″s ever could. Plenty of folks got to see their team beat a cupcake at Homecoming this year. HHS students got to see a home team that could conquer a division killer – a special version of the Hawks that can out-play a private-school titan at its best.
HHS showed again that it’s got a potential Show-Me Bowl lineup on its hands, becoming the first team of ’22 to pressure, frustrate, and even pick-off Cardinal Ritter quarterback Carson Boyd. Hillsboro overcame an early blocked punt and several other painful bloopers to take a 13-12 lead midway through the 2nd half, and if you had told a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter in pregame that a public school would be losing the field position and turnover battles and still tearing-up Cardinal Ritter’s defense for a go-ahead TD, they would look at you like you suggested a positive headline on Marjorie-Taylor Greene.
As far as The Geek is concerned, Cardinal Ritter’s forthcoming 4th-quarter comeback and 26-13 victory is academic. Academic! Yes, yes, an “undefeated” Friday Night Lights record is a big fat deal on a campus like Leon Hall, but Hillsboro’s bid for an undefeated W/L record in 2022 would be even more meaningless than Crystal City’s would have been, should the Hornets have been credited for their skin-o’-the-tail winning TD in Week 6. There’s some uncanny similarities between Jefferson County’s best Class 4 and Class 1 campaigns this season, and the meaninglessness of a “perfect” record is among them.
Hillsboro is guaranteed a #1 seed in the District playoffs, and home-field advantage is a matter of draw, not record, in the rounds after those. The Hawks don’t need more regular-season wins to quality for the C4 tournament with honors, and they’re most concerned with going “unbeaten” in 1-to-6 elimination games (hopefully closer to 6 than to 1) to come later on. Accumulating a 9-0 regular season mark might simply lead to more pressure on the team to maintain the “0” even though Hillsboro’s potential “1” loss could sting a lot worse than Homecoming Friday. The only way to finish a High School campaign unbeaten is to also win a state championship, and winning a championship over a group of teams with a true division-killer in it would be far, far bigger than “15-0.”
St. Mary’s, of course, not Cardinal Ritter, is the District 2 powerhouse that HHS must contend with if the Hawks are fortunate enough to win District 1 this season. But the St. Mary’s Dragons and Cardinal Ritter Lions are so similar in size, talent, and performance in 2022 that it’s scary – in fact Mississippi Magazine wouldn’t handicap either team to defeat the other by so much as a TD-plus-conversion if the match-up occurred.
If anything, you can say that Cardinal Ritter is a tad deeper, polished to a greater degree, and more versatile – St. Mary’s reliance on a few play-makers is nothing like Cardinal Ritter’s balance (Marvin Burks has yet to rush for 1000+ yards for a reason), and the Dragons’ sophomores haven’t been as monumentally strong as Ritter’s in garbage-time. In layman’s terms, if the Hillsboro Hawks can fight Cardinal Ritter to a stalemate for 3 quarters, then there’s no way the superior depth of St. Mary’s will vanquish the Blue & White in the 4th quarter of a hypothetical Class 4 Quarterfinal. In fact, you can argue that Hillsboro is a deeper unit than St. Mary’s on offense, given wonderful strides made by QB Preston Brown and other unexpected youth-contributions for the Hawks this fall.
Kudos to Bill Sucharski for not sacrificing bodies and piling-up injuries to try to make more of a statement against Cardinal Ritter. Hillsboro’s point was proven long before the last whistle. Personally, this blogger imagines that if HHS had survived its brutal out-of-conference slate to roar to the finish line, as the Hawks did last year, a number of veteran MSHSAA fans – “Columbo” smiles or not – would wait for “the other shoe to drop” in the postseason. At 7-1, Hillsboro’s team is healthy, hungry, and good enough to manufacture TDs against Show-Me Bowl level opposition. That’s just plain thrilling, no matter which school happened to score the last touchdown on Friday.
Festus 41, Farmington 20
After all of The Geek’s pitiful hand-wringing over the FHS defense this season, you’d think Friday’s performance would merit a lede (who knows why it’s called “lede” – it LEADS the stupid story so everyone should just call it “the lead”) about Midmeadow Lane’s defense having its best game of 2022. Indeed, the Tigers not only improved their after-snap positioning and block-breaking to limit Farmington’s explosive plays, the unit’s strength and conditioning started to come to the forefront on plays in which the Black Knights’ solid offense looked to be almost enveloped by the white jerseys. That’s right – the boys are now wearing some spiffy new road uniforms, and they might be nicknamed the Albino Tigers – not really – but we can officially retire “Black & Squint Yellow” if this trend keeps up!
Sophomore LB Mason Schirmer was all over the place for Festus High School, and the D-line forced a big fumble to flip the field and change the tide of the opening half. But it’s very hard not to talk about Black & Gold’s offense in spite of the much-needed progress on the other side of the pigskin. Something clicked Friday night for the Tigers’ 2 “starting” quarterbacks – and it appeared as though a whole new brand of team had taken the field in contrast to the scatter-shot FHS attack of Weeks 1-7.
Essien Smith and “Miah” Cunningham (The Geek can’t figure out if that’s the QB’s old nickname in the Farmington-friendly locale MyMyInfo works out of, or if someone at Regional Radio is so mad about the Farmington-to-Festus QB transfer that they won’t dignify a recap with our signal-caller’s real first name) were almost immaculate as passers from the pocket. By TGG’s count, the quarterbacks combined to complete their first 7 throws of Friday night, hitting speedsters Arhmad Branch and Landen Yates for big-time runs after catch. The ease with which Festus sprinted down the gridiron on swing passes, Jet-option runs, and only an occasional home-run ball, such as the 4th-quarter bomb to Yates that sealed Week 8’s victory, was surprising and delightful to see against a truly well-respected rival.
The ’22 Tigers are surely a work-in-progress. The FHS kicking game is still a mess (where have you gone, Emily Holt, a neighborhood turns its lonely eyes to you), and the boys squandered a precious mid-game opportunity to knock the Knights out of the game, allowing the hosts momentum early in the 3rd quarter and making the finish more dramatic than it needed to be. Baby steps are a rule when you began 2-4.
But scoring 41 points on Farmington also shows that the Tigers can successfully battle a bugaboo. The Black Knights started Friday night trying to yelp confusing signals at the LOS and hijack as many 5-yard penalties as they could, the very same method responsible for ending a Festus win streak in 2020. Cunningham’s offense (and Smith’s offense) was as steady and relaxed before the snap as the FHS defense stayed cool-as-cucumbers as the Black Knights barked-out in vain.
Jackson, the “unbeatable” Week 9 opponent, is only 5-3 and doesn’t look so spectacular by Class 5 standards this year. However, that doesn’t mean we should all be screaming for a Black & Gold upset bid. JHS is still the better and more experienced team, and would not go gently if the Tigers did threaten a surprise win. Big picture considerations must prevail – a classic battle with Jackson in which 3 key players were hurt would go down as the worst Pyrrhic Victory in FHS lore.
St. Genevieve 41, Jefferson 34
We’ve said that the high-octane St. Genevieve offense was having issues, and 40 points-scored is probably the Dragons’ lowest water-line against a .500 team from Class 2 so long as Aiden Boyer is playing quarterback. But gosh, what about a Jefferson offense that chewed-up the Dragons for a similar rushing total as Valle Catholic in its clobberings of the C3 institution, and made a finish nail-biting that TGG had felt embarrassed (and biased) to have predicted at 40-15.
JHS’s amazing numbers up-and-down the depth chart had to start showing up at some point, and it happened in Week 8 when not as many people were looking. Maybe the Festus Tigers and our local “triple-option” teams really do have a lot in common.
Parkway South 30, Fox 20
Friday’s loss dooms Fox to a bus-ride District Quarterfinal on 10/28, and TGG doesn’t really want to talk about it.
St. Vincent 49, Grandview 6
It’s hard to pretend not to be sad about Grandview’s recent scores too. Get well soon, Eagles…you’re still going to be a hell of a spoiler when the roster gets healthy again.
Webster Groves 21, Northwest 0
As they say on yuppie blogs, 2 of the 4 biggest schools in the county ranking side-by-side in dead last place, below several C1 teams as of Week 8, “wasn’t on our Bingo card” for 2022.
Seckman 35, Oakville 14
HC Nick Baer’s remarks following Seckman’s fine defensive outing vs Oakville makes TGG think Baer could be considering calling various top-string blitzes to try to disrupt CBC, Marquette, and/or Lindbergh in the C6 playoffs, instead of playing “bend but don’t break” pigskin and trusting Cole Ruble to score 7 times.
St. Pius 42, Bayless 6
SPX padawans should become MICDS fans for exactly 5 days in Week 9 – Country Day needs to clobber Duchesne by 13+ points for the Lancers to potentially avoid the Pioneers in Week 11.
St. Clair 52, Windsor 13
WR A.J. Patrick and the Owls caused havoc in the 1st quarter as predicted, but Windsor’s depth still doesn’t stand up to a mid-enrollment playoff contender.
Perryville 22, Herculaneum 20 (Saturday)
As was the syndrome earlier this season, TGG is hit with a stunning final score to report on following a weekend’s worth of stories, emotions, and hyperbole on other big games. Herky’s upset defeat won’t do much to depress the fun and fanfare surrounding this Friday’s epic rivalry match at Crystal City, but we’ll try to suss-out what it means from a football POV in this Thursday’s issue of the Jefferson County Power Poll.