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It was Crum-Hieftje's replacement that got beat on the 87-yard TD pass in the 4th, but fortunately, the game was pretty much decided by that time. Since the game wasn't video streamed, I don't know how the kid did for the entire game, but the Huskies are a running team first. When they said Bryce Taylor was a go for the game, it turned out that he was limited to just kickoffs, but he kept North's speedy kick returners from getting the chance for big runbacks, something that Seymour was able to do a couple of times last week. The Perez kid, a backup running back, has done the extra points for South in place of Taylor and he hasn't missed yet on them. With WVNI not carrying the game for some reason, I had to listen to Joe Smith's play-by-play account and was wanting to pull my hair out for the entire game. As you pointed out, he's a really nice guy and I have talked to him some over the years, but listening to him calling the game was brutal, and for me, it was cruel and unusual punishment. I don't know how many times he would talk about a play and not tell you where the ball was at until after South had run two or three plays. He would also often keep you guessing at down and distance and if you are lucky, he might tell you how much time was left in the quarter. There were a couple of times where South had a huge gainer, and they would run couple of plays after that and he failed to tell you where the ball was at. I had to dust off my crystal ball to try to see if I could come up with some of the game details.

Bloomington South 42 Evansville North 21 (final) EN's huge o-line gave South some trouble in the first half, but halftime adjustments allowed South to pretty much dominate the 2nd half, giving up just the one score on that 87-yard pass play in the 4th after the Panthers pretty much had the game in hand. South travels to Decatur Central for the semi-state game.

Bloomington South 42 Evansville North 21 (3:05, 4th) South's Gavin Adams scored on a run which was his third rushing TD of the game which killed any chance that the Huskies might have had to come back in this game.

Bloomington South 35 Evansville North 21 (8:32, 4th) After a punt, South downed the ball at the EN 13-yard line and the Huskies then burned South with an 87 yard pass play to their leading receiver James Mercer, so they are still in the game with under 9 minutes to play.

Bloomington South 35 Evansville North 14 (end of 3rd) EN has the ball in their territory to start the 4th. South held the Huskies to three 3 and outs in their five possessions of the 3rd to include the current possession going into the 4th.

Bloomington South 35 Evansville North 14 (1:51, 3rd) South scored on a 26-yard pass play from Alley to leading receiver Waldon to create more separation with the Huskies.

Bloomington South 28 Evansville North 14 (10:08, 3rd) South took the opening kickoff of the 2nd half on a 61 yard drive and scored on a 33-yard pass play from Alley to Waldon. This has been a very clean game and South has had no flags so far and Ev. North had just two in the first half with both five-yard penalties on off-sides.

Bloomington South 21 Evansville North 14 (half) South scored on a pitch to RB Gavin Adams for a one-yard TD run. South also had the ball in EN territory on their previous possession but turned the ball over on downs at the EN 27-yard line. South will receive the ball to start the 3rd qtr. A large Evansville crowd made the long trip up I-69 and they filled the visitors' bleachers plus an overflow crowd.

Bloomington South 14 Evansville North 14 (7:41, 2nd) The Huskies scored on a 3rd and 7 from the South 15-yard line on a bubble screen where the receiver broke two tackles to tie the game.

Bloomington South 14 Evansville North 7 (end of 1st) EN has the ball in South territory to start the 2nd qtr.

Bloomington South 14 Evansville North 7 (5:17, 1st) After stopping EN on a 3 and out, a poor punt put the Panthers at the Huskies 41-yard line. Jarrin Alley scored on a 31-yard QB keeper to give South the lead.

Bloomington South 7 Evansville North 7 (8:17, 1st) South responded to the Huskies game opening TD with a quick TD set up by a long 44-yard pass from Alley to Waldon. Gavin Adams scored on a short run.

Evansville North 7 Bloomington South 0 (9:25, 1st) The Huskies received the ball to open the game and went on an 80-yard drive capped off by a 44-yard TD run by Northington to take a quick lead.

I just saw that Jeffersonville head coach Isaac Parker has resigned after an 0-10 season. He didn't have a winning season in his five seasons with Jeff and the best record he had was a 5-6 record during the 2020 season, losing to Castle in the regional championship game that season.

No, there was nothing that I saw about that. It's probably something we will find out on game night. As it's been pointed out, the Huskies are primarily a running team, so it may not be that big of a problem at least for this game.

South received some good news and bad news. South DB Drew Crum-Hieftje is done for the season and his high school football career is over with due to the broken arm. Coach Johnson had hoped it would be something they could cast and have him play, but it was not to be. Surprisingly, at least to me, South kicker Bryce Taylor is expected to play. I thought his season was over with considering the broken collar bone, but evidently it wasn't as serious as I thought. He's been a big weapon for South with his strong leg.

He's a soph this year.

Regional picks: Evansville North @ Bloomington South - I watched the live 2nd half of the Castle/North game and also the archived first half of the Floyd Central/North game, and the Huskies certainly have some speed in their backfield on offense and the Rucker kid who is 5'9 and 160 lbs almost ran for 300 yards against the Knights and it included back-to-back 50-yard and 70-yard TD runs. With the Huskies relying more on their running game with their big o-line, Rucker and their QB average just over five yards a carry, and their other running back in Northington averages over seven yards per carry. With the Huskies on offense, this game boils down to South's quickness and speed on defense against the Huskies' big o-line and their speedy backfield. After watching the two halves of the games that I mentioned earlier, the Panthers' offense can certainly move the ball against the Huskies' defense and in their game with Castle, the Knights were able to move up and down the field on them to the tune of 433 yards and 50 points. The Huskies also turned the ball over a few times in the Castle game. South lost their star kicker to a season ending injury and they gave up two good returns by Seymour on shorter kickoffs than what we were used to, and we may or may not be without our best DB going into the game because of injury. North has to make the long trip up I-69 and with South playing on their home field, I believe the Panthers will win this game by 10-14 points or better. Whiteland @ Decatur Central - This will be a rematch of an earlier regular season game between the two Mid-State Conference teams. Whiteland got the better of DC, 31-15, in the third game of the season, and as MuleDriver pointed out, Bo Polston, their starting QB who has received an offer from Michigan, missed that game with injury. Polston returned the following week and DC lost their 2nd game in a row to Martinsville, 25-24, with Polston throwing three picks in that game. The Hawks have not lost since then and have reeled off seven straight wins going into this game. Four of DC's nine wins have been by seven points or less as they competed in probably the most competitive conference in the state this season. Whiteland has gone 5-3 since that DC game and they have won four games in a row going into this game. This will be a competitive game, but with the return game being played at DC, I believe they will get the better of the Warriors in what you might call a revenge game by at least two TDs.

I haven't seen any official team stats, but I did a little bit of research and came up with these team stats which have to be extremely close or right on the money. FWIW, there was a running clock in 7 of South's 11 games up to this point with two of those being a running clock to start the 2nd half. Evansville North has had two games and maybe a third game late in the 4th that resulted in a second half running clock. The running clock certainly impacted the team stats with the shortened game and the starters pretty much not playing in the 4th qtr. Evansville North has a lot of beef up front with their o-line and it averages a college-like 300 lbs up front. It will be South's speed and quickness on defense against that size. After facing four straight teams whose offense revolved around their passing game, South will finally play a team that relies more with their running game. Just about all teams that South faced this season couldn't run on the Panthers and primarily went to the air, so the secondary got tested a lot this season. South averages 207.4 yards per game passing and 164.9 yards rushing. Ev. North averages 137.8 yards per game passing and 232.3 yards rushing. South has had just six turnovers on the season so far to include five picks and one fumble lost. South has not had a turnover in their last three games and I didn't go any farther back on that. Ev. North has had 16 turnovers on the season so far to include seven picks and nine fumbles lost.

Go to the following link and then go to "recent" and there are both of Evansville North's sectional games against Floyd Central and Castle that are available, and they were not pay games so anyone can access them. Southern Indiana Sports Productions (ihsaatv.org)

Here is the travel schedule for teams that make it to the semi-state in the southern side of the bracket: A Bloom. South win puts them on the road to either Decatur Central or Whiteland. An Evansville North win puts them at home against Decatur Central or Whiteland.

Pick'em results from sectional championship play: LC_Bears_04 (4-0) - 37-5 ptr (4-0) - 37-5 Frozen Tundra (4-0) - 36-6 MuleDriver (4-0) - 30-12 Bulldog 15 (no picks) - 30-8 THPD (no picks) - 24-3 (Weeks 3 thru 9) The games involving CI teams went as expected with South the only team left going forward. I'm going to keep this going, but to make things interesting, I'm going to include the other regional game that feeds into the southern semi-state game. Here are the games to pick: Evansville North @ Bloomington South Whiteland @ Decatur Central

In my particular case, a person would be hard-pressed to find any posts this season criticizing the refs. I remember mentioning the number of calls going against South in games this season, but in most cases, I thought they were legitimate calls and they were mentioned because they impacted the game up to that point. I didn't mention it on this game until it was brought up, and I thought I would bring up that one particular case where the lack of a call was pretty egregious. When there is a sub-par officiating crew or one crew having a bad night officiating the game, and there are numerous questionable calls, it usually evens out with each team being affected by it. It doesn't change anything to labor on the issue, so I usually refrain from getting into it.

That game was archived at Seymour High School (ihsaatv.org). Also, the Ev. North/Castle game is available. It was 21-21 at the half in that game and I watched the 2nd half, and it was a game of all offense and no defense. There were four turnovers in the first half of that game, and a few in the 2nd half by both teams.

It was not a good week on the injury front losing one of the best kickers in the state to a weightlifting injury and then losing our best DB in Crum-Hieiftje to the arm injury. You may have seen it, but Coach Johnson says it may be something where they can cast it and he can still play, but they just don't know yet. Outside of the injury to our starting center in the 2nd qtr of the season opener, the offense has stayed healthy up till now, and the 0-line has played great, so there is that. Our front seven on defense has stayed healthy and there is a lot of speed there, so there is that also.