Maiden will be a tough one for the Knights I’m sure. The only thing that makes Maiden suspect in this one is the loss to South Caldwell. I’ve only seen South in action once against Hibriten, I wasn’t impressed. They do however have the fastest back in their conference in Spincer Piercy and can do serious damage to any defense when given running lanes and holes. Not really a pushover team but they did show weakness in scrimmage against Lincolnton over the summer from what you guys said.
Should be the most interesting game in conference Friday night and one the news crew should cover.
I predict it 3 ways- A 3 to 7 point thriller for Maiden, a thriller for North, or a stomping for North by 3 TDs or more, that can happen too and they have the personnel to pull it off on both sides of the ball.
Burke - The South Caldwell loss was due to poor coaching decisions, I believe my post about that is still somewhere...but I didn't go into detail. In that game we went for it on 4th and medium in our own territory and didn't make it, gave them a short field to score on, then on 4th and 2 in SC territory the next drive we decide to punt instead of going for it even though we were successful running the ball. Also in that game (and in a few others) we'll drive down the field running the ball but once we get inside the opponents 35 we'll throw 4 straight passes and turn the ball over on downs. There are other mistakes I'm sure but those are the two big ones that have stuck with me. We should have beaten SC by two scores at least.
Against West Lincoln we had a WR screen play that was ran unsuccessfully in the first half 4 times (maybe once we got a decent 5-6 yard gain)...then on the first drive of the second half we ran it 3 different times in that ONE possession with no better luck (with two of those tries back to back). Then at the end of the game with only 3.5 minutes left the coach decides to punt it from midfield instead of going for it when we only had 2 timeouts remaining...in my eyes punting it was just as bad as turning it over on downs because West WILL drain the clock on you. That's exactly what happened. I'm not saying that we should have won that game but you shouldn't beat yourself to a point that you don't find out.
Two missed field goals have prevented us from at least going into overtime to see how it would have played out. Yes I'm sour about both losses but daggum someone should be, having a bad taste in your mouth ought to motivate you to be better and to be dedicated to not losing again. It just feels like kids/coaches/fans these days haven't any real passion about things anymore and are just indifferent.
With all that said, a loss is a loss and a win is a win and on Friday night both teams will start the game 0-0 with the only objective being that you have more points than them when the final bell tolls because the best team doesn't always win but the one with more points does. North may be the better team, but we'll have more points. I'll eat my crow if I need to Saturday morning just give me some hot sauce.
