foxbat

Harrison 42 - Richmond 6. Final. Harrison takes last NCC title heading out the door.

Richmond scores. PAT fails. 42-6 with 8 minutes left in game. May beat the rain after all.

Harrison leads Richmond 42-0 at half. Richmond will receive in the second half.

Harrison with a one-play drive after punt. PAT blocked. 42-0. Should have running clock starting in 2nd half.

Quick score after Richmond punt. 36-0 Harrison with 5:50 left in first half.

Harrison with four carries in a row to fullback. Plain old power football. Harrison leads 29-0 with 7 minutes left in half.

Harrison with short field after punt out of the end zone. Leads Richmond 22-0.

Harrison with long pass for TD. 15-0 over Richmond with 5:45 left in Q1.

Harrison scores on opening drive. 2-point conversion is good. Leads Richmond 8-0. About 7 minutes left in Q1.

Now Harrison has to pull off the win in 5A just to mess things up ... they are north of Lafayette, but playing in IHSAA 5A South.

And Zionsville was actually ranked 30th in 6A by enrollment in 2019-2020. Played 6A in 2019, but 5A in 2020 and 2021.

That's LCC's LaRocca. Definitely makes the coin flip a lot more strategic as deferring to the second half also gave you the advantage of having the sun at your back and less of an issue when you finally had to face it in the second quarter. Sometimes karma needs a hand.

2 POINT GAMES Bowman @ Benton Central Tipton @ Rensselaer Northwestern @ Twin Lakes Western @ Central Catholic Hamilton Heights @ West Lafayette Carroll @ Sheridan Seeger @ North Vermillion North White @ West Central North Judson @ Pioneer Bluffton @ Lakeland

A couple weeks ago, I went to watch Faith Christian play 8-man ball. Faith is new to IHSAA in the last decade, but has never competed in football ... their size and, frankly, newness to the sport have them at a decisive disadvantage. Their opponent that day was Indiana Deaf who had been a long-time participant in 11-man IHSAA. As might be expected, ISD looked quite formidable against a squad who had only four players that had played organized football before this season. In talking with the dad of one of Faith's players, he mentioned that they played or would be playing, Rock Creek and Dugger, both of whom have played 11-man before and mentioned that Traders Point Christian, a team that has been to three sectional finals in the past five seasons in 11-man IHSAA ball, was also moving to 8-man in the coming season.

Yes, the HCC voted the TippCo schools out. While football may not have been their thing there, the schools did perform decently other areas.

That's a great question. It's probably more a question for 1A/2A schools, but I've seen situations where a 5A JV squad has maybe 20 kids on the squad and I know there have been situations the last couple of seasons where a 5A JV squad has cancelled on another school's JV squad or asked to play the freshman squad instead due to lack of depth/numbers to safely play JV.

Can you clarify? Are you saying that p/p schools make the teams in those classes stronger or that p/p are strong in those classes ... and ultimately beyond their class ... so the class looks strong, but it's really just a p/p program giving the illusion of a strong class? One implies that p/p helps to sharpen the sword and the other implies that p/p is the sword. I tend to think of it as the former.

I don't think this is necessarily true. My boys play LOTS of travel baseball as well. The biggest reason that we care about pool play is not getting stuck with the 8:00 am game on Sunday and maybe playing one less game on Sunday if you get one of the byes. Outside of that, the boys like it for the "prestige" of saying that they were ranked #*whatever*. Ultimately, when the parents and coaches talk Saturday night about what's coming Sunday, invariably, the statement is always made, "It doesn't really matter where we get seeded because we have to win them all tomorrow to get the championship." Also, with the way baseball tournaments are nowadays, the seedings tend to be somewhat random or near random anyway based on pool play. As an example, my son played in the USSSA State Tournament this last season. There were 45 teams registered with two pool play games. There is no way that you can convince me that seeding with two games played mattered at all to the Sunday activities other than by luck of the draw unless you were an 0-2 team that got run-ruled two games in a row. In another tournament, with a two game pool, we got rained out of our second game, and game was called for weather in top of 3rd and we were awarded the win because, as home team, we were ahead with three innings completed. With the other team not scoring any runs, we had a 100% win rate and zero runs allowed in tie-breaker seeding and were given the #1 seed for the next day. That #1 didn't really mean much, although the kids loved it. Our team philosophy, and the kids know it too, is ultimately to win the tourney, you gotta beat whomever you play when the bracket starts.

Agree with you here when it comes to sectionals. In the eight seasons, from 2009 - 16, LCC and Pioneer finished the season ranked #1 and #2 in 1A four times and #2 and #4 in 2012 and #1 and #3 in 2016. In 2013-2014, they couldn't meet because LCC was in 2A via SF. In other words, in four of six seasons, they were #1/#2 in the state. Here's how that went down: 2009 - #2 LCC eliminated #1 Pioneer in the first round of the sectional 2010 - #1 LCC eliminated #2 Pioneer in the sectional championship 2011 - #1 LCC eliminated #2 Pioneer in the first round of the sectional 2012 - #2 LCC eliminated #4 Pioneer in the sectional championship 2013 - No meeting, different classes 2014 No meeting, different classes 2015 - #1 LCC eliminated #2 Pioneer in regionals 2016 - #3 Pioneer eliminated #1 LCC in regionals And there's a longer history of these two teams ending each others' seasons earlier in the tournament than just these, but these are the recent ones where you had #1 and #2 meeting in sectionals. Matter of fact, Pioneer knocked off LCC in 2017 and 2018, although it was #1 vs. #2, on the way to being SF'd for the 2019 and 2020 ... and they haven't met since. In all of those years, I don't recall any of the Pioneer or LCC players or coaches worrying about the fact that they were meeting first game of sectionals, last game of sections, etc. I always remembered them always talking about #1 vs #2. Probably would have been fine playing against each other at the church picnic with a chance to play #1 vs. #2.

Looks like Harrison and Plainfield will play each other for the fourth time in two seasons as they draw each other for the first game of Sectional 13. Game will take place at Harrison. Last year, Plainfield avenged a first game of the season lost to Harrison. Hoping Harrison returns that favor having lost the opener to Plainfield this season 15-14.

Sectional of Death will have a doozy of a first game with Chatard and Tipp Valley. Heights will likely have a safer path through the Valley of Death ... probably facing off against Chatard in the sectional championship game unless TV and Guerin have anything to say about it.

Don't know if Lutheran and Greenwood Christian decided to play or not as they were both showing Week 9 as needing opponents. Would suck if they are shorted a chance to play in Week 9 due to uneven divisions.

So last night in the Harrison-Logansport game, Harrison was leading 43-7 with a running clock and got the ball back from Logansport late in the 4th. They gave the ball to one of their linemen to carry the ball, ala The Fridge, and he gained three yards. A couple of QB sneaks after that and they were still moving the ball and very deep in Logansport territory. It became apparent that even running QB sneaks and the like, a score could happen before the game clock expired. Harrison then took a knee three times in a row ... sitting around Logansport's 12 or so, but still had around a minute and a half to kill. Choices seemed to be 1) take another knee and give Logansport the ball with a maybe a minute and a half left, 2) run the ball or go for a field goal ... thus adding points to the scoreboard, or 3) figure out how to get a net 10-yard punt. Harrison opted for #4 and took a delay. They then took a second delay and then a third. By the time of the third delay, there wasn't enough time on the game clock to make the play clock relevant and the teams lined up. In essence, Harrison ran the equivalent of six plays' worth of time of the clock with just three snaps and ended up on the Logansport 27 or so when the game was over. Am I missing anything or, in that situation, the defense has no way to keep that clock from literally burning down as Harrison still had another 60 backwards yards that they could have given and burned a play's worth of time for each one. Even at half a minute per play, they had another 6 minutes worth of penalties that they could have peeled off the game clock. Granted, the defense could call a timeout, which would then force a snap on 4th down in that situation or, under normal circumstances, accepting the delay penalty kills the game clock until the snap occurs ... thus also forcing the 4th down snap. With the running clock, that clock stop in accepting the delay penalty seems to be nullified ... correct? ... leading to a situation where you don't even have to take a victory formation to run down the clock; just a half dozen or more delays if there aren't timeouts remaining.

Harrison wins over Logansport 43-7. The win assures Harrison of at least a share of a final NCC title on the way out of the conference. A win over 1-7 Richmond next week gives them sole possession of the title.