scarab527

You’re giving way too much attention to Parkhurst

“Word on that forum” You mean one deluded fan said it and everyone else immediately crapped on it? Lol It’s hard to tell sometimes. I don’t wanna get into speculation, but I think there could be other things at play too.

This is probably going to irk some people, but I have a hard time putting guys who coached at private schools over public coaches with similar resumes. I also think people are sleeping on Howell heavily. He won 19 straight Sectionals. He coached in 11 state championship games. He’s HM at the very least.

Don’t think you can really slow them down. You’d have to beat them in a shootout.

I think part of laying claim to being the best team in the state involves not blowing 18 point 4th quarter leads.

Plot twist: Parkhurst actually hates Merrillville and his goal is to make the entire state also hate them.

Brewer and Gaddis are definitely up there and I wouldn’t blame anyone for having them, but not sure I could put them above Howell, Geeseman, or Moore. Dullaghan I almost put and probably should be on mine. He’s a big reason for the start of Indy football dominance imo.

Said before last week CP hadn’t been tested all year passing the ball. And they unsurprisingly got torched against Penn. IMO CP’s only hope in this game is Ehrlich extending plays and hitting Westfield for big gains in the scramble drill. The Dogs will need to win a shootout if they want to advance. Think this one will be close early but Westfield will start to pull away in the 3rd/4th. I’ll take the Rocks by 2 TDs.

My head tells me that Merrillville is too one dimensional to beat Snider. But I thought Valpo was too last year.

I’ll take New Pal all day on that.

It occurred to me that we arguably have 3 of the coaches who’d be on a Mt Rushmore of Indiana FB coaches still coaching this weekend (Russ Radtke, Bud Wright, Eric Moore). Not sure if this has been discussed before, but who’d be on your Mount Rushmore? Hard to narrow it to 4, but I’d go with: Eric Moore, Chris Geeseman, Don Howell, and Bud Wright. HM: Dick Dullaghan, Russ Radtke & Russ Isaacs

The money in the Region was trending towards Merrillville all week. Not a shocker for us.

Merrillville stops Valpo on 3rd and Goal as time expires to win 24-20

Valpo 10 Merrillville 10 Half

Good player, but he can’t hold a candle to DeSommer lmao.

True. I’m mainly talking about Indy/FW though I should make clear. The SAC opened up this year and Carroll was able to get two games vs Indy teams, Snider played Warren, North Side played LN, and Dwenger played Brownsburg. If the DAC wanted to, it could get games like this, I imagine. But for some reason these teams are (for the most part) seemingly content with playing local teams from lower classes.

Against the run they’re very stout. But like I mentioned earlier they haven’t been challenged in the passing game once this year. If Penn can take advantage of this fact, I think they could put up 28 points or more. If not, then I definitely could see CP holding them to 2-3 TDs.

Penn/Elkhart to the DAC and the East/West split was discussed on here extensively a few years ago. I thought it made a lot of sense at the time but I'm not sure of that now. I think the DAC is pretty content with its current membership as of now. And I really think it would benefit the DAC teams and Penn/Elkhart more to start scheduling better OOC competition (FW, Indy, Chicago Burbs) than that configuration.

Offensively and Special Teams. Defensively they've been really stout all year and the only time they've looked vulnerable on that side of the ball was when Jeff burned them on some deep passes to start the game. Which brings me to my skepticism on that side of the ball. CP has been stifling against the run this year, but haven't played a single team that can throw the ball consistently. A lot easier to stop the run when you know its coming. Offensively they've gone extended periods of games where they haven't been able to move the ball well against mediocre defenses like LC and Portage. Special Teams wise they've struggled fielding kick offs/punts (way too many fumbles) and have had issues with onside kicks (they've let teams recover numerous this year). They've skirted by with these issues against a lot of inferior competition. They won't be able to do so forever.

Idk man, it might be slightly hyperbolic, but 2018 Valpo took Carmel to the wire in semi-state and 2019 Valpo was monstrous. This year’s team is decent but in reality I think they’d be really lucky to keep it within 3 scores of either of those teams.

Not hate. Everyone knows I’ll always pull for the teams from the 219. Just calling it like I see it.

Basically, but even the good teams are down. 2023 Merrillville gets running clocked by their 2020 + 2021 teams. 2023 Valpo gets running clocked by 2018 + 2019 Valpo. CP feasting on a bunch of mediocre teams but still can’t blow games open unless they run up the score late. Every other team ranges from mediocre at best to downright terrible.

The DAC is awful this year and anyone from the Region will tell you that.

Going to go with Penn in a close one on this one. CP has played 2 legitimate football teams this year and couldn’t put together a good 4 quarters of football against either of them.

West Lafayette stymies Hanover on a potential game winning 2 pt attempt to come all the way back and win 42-41.