I’ve been writing about prep football teams losing for the last few weeks, for the most part, so it’s nice to talk about a win.
Even better when there are two wins to talk about!
I guess you could say that last Friday made up for much of Durant and Plant City’s tough luck lately, as both teams won when they absolutely had to and locked up a couple of playoff spots.
The Cougars, whose regular season ended last week, now have two weeks to prepare for a Tampa Bay Tech team they’ve already beaten on the road. The Raiders, on the other hand, will play Gaither and then prepare for a rematch with Sickles — the team that knocked Plant City out in the first round last postseason.
That’s all I can get into for now, though, because I’ll be talking to both teams next week for a G.O.T.W. double feature. It’s time to talk about last Friday.
Durant abandoned the “air it out” game plan from the Hillsborough game and went back to basics against East Bay. As you can see, it worked quite well.
There were only four passes thrown during the game. One of them — Crispian Atkins’ 35-yard touchdown — was a screen pass, which is about as close as you can get to a running play without actually calling for a running play.
Atkins had himself a pretty solid game, catching three of those four pass attempts for 37 yards and a touchdown, and rushing 21 times for 122 yards and a score. He had 869 rushing yards before the game, and ends the regular season with 991. The last Cougar to rush for 1,000 yards was Jamarlon Hamilton, in 2012.
Whatever Durant did in practice to improve everyone’s discipline largely worked. For once, the refs threw more flags against the opponent than the Cougars. The only penalty that really affected the home team was an offensive holding call in the second quarter, which negated an 85-yard Davis touchdown. At least they got the score a few minutes later, after setting Kamerron Joyce up at the goal line to punch it in.
The defense was awesome again, stuffing the Indians at virtually every opportunity. By the time East Bay could make anything happen — an Ian Kuykendall QB sneak for a touchdown — there was only 1:10 left in the game.
Now, that’s how you knock out the defending district champ.
Also: I’m glad that it’s finally starting to feel like football weather outside. (This Buffalonian’s idea of football weather, anyway.) I get that Floridians are used to blistering heat and ridiculous humidity levels, but it looked like half of the home fans already brought their winter hats, heavy jackets and boots for this one.
As proof that Florida weather’s not so bad, here’s a picture of my best friend’s dad getting ready to grill outside last Christmas:
Just give the cold a chance — you’ll learn to like it.