Basementbias

2 hours ago, 07_statechamp54 said:

From the game I saw last night, it’s the same type of offense just this version isn’t most to all of the carries belonging to one guy (Kiser). They spread the wealth pretty well. Fairfield ran the exact same offense in round 2, so Luers is recently familiar with it. This week they will have to play another very disciplined game defensively. 
 

Does anyone have any insight as to how pioneer is defensively?? I watched some of the game last night but was mostly focused on the 2 teams offenses, as Luers’ defense has been somewhat inconsistent at times.

Probably still pulling both the guard & tackle as well. That was a different wrinkle compared to other teams. They also like to let the interior line go when running outside so they can block downfield. They used to have a hybrid 5-3 to 5-2 (play like a 3-5/3-4 some instances). They have 3 down interior linemen and 2 standing up DE's and at least 2 inside LB's with a 3rd playing a monster or a nickel type db. Lengthy and quick but not really bulky up front. They look deceiving to put it in a way. Very physical type of guys. 

11 minutes ago, LuersLurker said:

Fairfield's offensive line had Luers D Line on its heals most of the night.  I watch helmets.  I saw Luers helmets most of the night which means they were being pushed back and controlled.  Could pose major problems if Pioneer is similar to Fairfield.

Not sure how they operate this year, but past seasons they primarily ran the ball and looked for a simple pass play when they lull you to sleep. I believe they still have the twins and they are speedsters. They had done quite a bit off tackle in 2016 and 2nd man through with Kiser. Probably similar with some changes.

Good luck to Luers! Having a family kicker on your roster again and hope you guys can get to LOS! 

SA 49 Southwood 21. No knock on Southwood, they are a really good team. This SA team is just that good in comparison of watching them play this year and seeing Southwood last week.

South Adams by a large margin. Southwood & AC was close until the Jets forced the issue and forgot how to tackle. Southwood had trouble defending AC's passing attack. South Adams passing attack is much better than AC's. Southwood can key on the pass, but SA has Miller & Summersett that can pound the ball as well. South Adams defense has looked like it has gotten much better on run defense than earlier in the year. Their pass defense is good enough to shut down the Southwood passing game and I think they'll have more pressure on the QB than AC did (though AC had a lot).

9 minutes ago, Purdue Pete said:

My dark horses are still alive.  Am feeling good about all 3 this week.

Looking forward to all 3 matchups this coming Friday night. Norwell vs Concordia should be a good one. Eastside vs Luers part 2 could be interesting. Then the one I'm biased about is AC vs Southwood (hoping the Jets can pull it off). Seems like this Southwood team is like the 2017 team that knocked out the Jets. Hoping for similar results of 2016 & 2018 that favored the Jets. It's filling the void of the old AC vs Southern Wells sectional games.

Currently SA is the team to beat so far in the North. Not enough body of work to make a statement on LCC. AC will have to deal with Southwood who is back in now. All teams have to beat COVID as well. It was definitely a tale of 2 halves for the AC vs SA regular season matchup. The Jets had started to ground and pound for much of the first half and were driving to score to get a larger lead when Currie was injured. After that, the game completely changed as AC went ultra vanilla in my opinion. South Adams did start running the ball with Miller blocking for Summersett and giving their passing offense more time. A rematch of both healthy would be interesting to see what happens. Still think SA has just a little more this year plus that bad taste in their mouth after last season.

Nice, hopefully Southwood can advance on as well as my Flying Jets for a good sectional final battle.

Congrats to all the Unified Teams for getting the season accomplished! That is no small feat as the athletes could be considered in the high risk category and their teammates (considered partners in the rules) had to be aware and unselfish. Football by the spirit of the game in its purest form in my opinion.

It seems counter intuitive to be able to block and tackle each other and lend a hand to help each other up on the field, but not shake hands. I can see if you only want to allow the players who have played in the game to shake hands and the others do the wave. In todays world, I'll just leave it at that and thankful teams can still play. Really sucks to see our undefeated Sectional rival have to bow out because of COVID.

Good to see Fairfield getting back to strength. Same for Norwell as well. I hope this can convey hope to Southern Wells to stick with it. They're playing a JV schedule with mostly Freshmen. Have saw some of the JV scores, and they haven't faired very well in contests vs other JV squads in the conference. Fairfield can give that group hope that brighter days are ahead, just have to work hard for them. A big shout out to Eastside Blazers. An OT loss to a much larger school was the only blemish this year. They are building off of last years sectional title. Also another good year for Eastside's sectional opponent Bluffton. The ACAC needs their teams to get back to strength. While it's fun to see SA, Woodlan (not too long ago), and AC have success, it's more fun when they earn it against strong opponents like the late 90s through 2000s Heritage & Southern Wells squads.

5 hours ago, Duke of Denham said:

In the example, North Judson would have played LCC at Logansport.  It’s a nice field don’t get me wrong, but it ain’t the Brickie Bowl.  The facility at North Judson is significantly bigger with more space for additional seating.  The home and away stands are just as big.  When Judson hosts a regional they typically bring in additional stands for the endzones   Also, to drive to Logansport on a bus isn’t that much shorter of a distance than to just drive to Lafayette.  I would know I drive it all the time.  Hosting a regional or semi state also means an influx of revenue for your town for that evening.  Fast food, restaurants and bars all see the windfall of additional people in town for a few hours.  All that revenue should go to a bigger town and not help either school?  I might be a homer, but from an economic standpoint it’s a terrible idea.  Why should some other town receive the benefits of the success of some school 45 minutes away? 

Yep, I get that. I'm not so bullish on turf for the regionals being a requirement. Heck not sure I like having it be a mandate at all. I do however favor the neutral sites for regionals & semi states. I could handle not having neutral sites for regionals. Your example with my reasoning would have had it at Twin Lakes or North White depending on the size of the venues. Guessing Twin Lakes may have more seating but I could be wrong and definitely not sure how it compares to NJSP seating. I do know that I wouldn't want it to be played at LCC's field. It looks like a baseball diamond turned into a football field 😆.

10 minutes ago, hhpatriot04 said:

Basketball makes it work. Are all the regional and semistate hosts at schools which would feed into those rounds? For instance, Washington hosts a 3A basketball regional, but it's the same regional they would play in if they win sectional.

I wonder if it's not happened yet where a school would host but have their team at another site. I'm guessing that the IHSAA made it so that the schools hosting are only hosting their class or their class and another.

17 minutes ago, Bobref said:

Frankly, the direction in which the conference model seems to be headed - increasingly “closed” conferences with fewer and fewer non-conference scheduling opportunities - is detrimental to high school football. I would simply do away with the conference format and go to districts by class... with opportunities for some out of district/class games.

Idea is to get away from the 10 or so team conferences and maybe top out at 6 or 7. Let's say 6 conference foes that you play in the beginning of the season. Then week 7 is first round of playoffs. You lose in week 7 but can schedule weeks 8 to 10 for regular season games to play other teams knocked out.

Just now, Coach Nowlin said:

Absolutely!!!   I know @CoachAnderson has been very much involved in that !! 

I've not saw it in person, but it popped up in my google feed last year. I loved reading about it. I'd love to see it grow throughout the state. Also wondered if there was a paralympic type football, or if unified encompassed that.

The best sport of football, may just be the Unified Flag Football. I think most of us should watch them play and realize what the game is all about. Maybe we can take some of that over to contact football. Yes, we like to see competitiveness in contact football, but we need some of the humility, grace, & sportsmanship from Unified.

I'm liking Ohio's COVID tournament set up currently. They normally play 10 game regular seasons with playoffs that you have to qualify for and are seeded. This year they're playing 6 regular season games before the tournament that is all in if you opt to participate. It is still seeded like before, but after losing in the playoffs you can schedule up to 3 regular season games depending on when you lose in the playoffs to get the normal 10 games. I think this could really be beneficial for programs having tough years with young teams. More games those teams get at the end of the year, the better. Not necessarily would you have more games, still the same number, but most likely with teams in similar circumstances allowing teams to improve instead of getting throttled by 35+ to end their season. 

It's time to be critical towards the IHSAA for not having seeding or neutral site regional & semi state games. 😆 Can't be critical towards the OHSAA this year as they went all in and seeded all the teams for just this year. Next year back to being critical for not allowing all in towards them.

My 2nd cousin makes history for the storied Luers program!

13 minutes ago, oldtimeqb said:

I'm coming around to the idea, but my biggest sticking point is what you have in 6A and 2A.  Is it asking the impossible for Homestead's Athletic Director to host and get workers for the 4A regional while their team plays that same night?  Same with Harrison (WL).  It could be possible, but in my experience the PA, clock, stats, gates, concession workers, etc. are pretty dedicated workers.  They would most likely want to see the team play in the regional vs. working a game of two teams they have no connection to.

If this could be addressed, I would be 100% on board with the idea.

Definitely would have to have sites be schools that are out of the playoffs for it to work. Especially now with the state finals format not being determined until semi state matchups or even after. 

Yep, I'm on board with this as well. Would you have the Ohio mandate of turf as well? It appears so.

Just now, Footballking16 said:

Again, extreme outliers that are exactly that, outliers. Ohio also has 2x as many high schools playing football schools than the state of Indiana. I can hardly envision a scenario where a 9-0 team in Indiana isn't at least one of the 32 top rated schools in their respective class regardless of the schedule. 

Outliers yes, but outliers do happen is my point. I don't even want that to be a possibility. Keep it all-in and compromise to seed the top half of the teams in each sectional and random draw the bottom half teams. Hopefully the ping pong balls go right and reduce the blowouts that way but still recognize the top tier teams having great regular seasons. You'd have to come up with a weighted formula based on W-L, SOS, & opponent SOS like you mentioned before to determine the seeded teams.

5 minutes ago, Footballking16 said:

There's absolutely zero way that any playoff qualification method or rating system would be based solely on W-L record. It would be a combination of multiple factors including SoS, opponents W-L record, opponent SoS, etc. I'd have a hard time believing that even a winless Luers team that played a bunch of 4A and 5A schools competitive week in and week out wouldn't still be a top half rated 2A team.

True, but say that 9-0 Bluffton team is considered not to be in the top half due to a poor ACAC & non conference opponent schedule. I've saw rare instances that this was the case in Ohio were 9-0 Bluffton mentioned before is not in the tournament due to opponents records & SOS. In a few of those cases, those teams had 9 conference games, so that is why the mighty MAC of small Ohio HS football chose not to play a full conference schedule even though they could, because they feared that happening to them.

Just now, Footballking16 said:

How is letting a 9-0 team play a team that's 0-9 whom they already beat by 70 points earlier in the year exactly improving the tournament? You want to improve the tournament? Force teams to qualify and seed accordingly. 

I could see your point if they had a cluster system where everyone in each sectional played one another. However, let's pretend we're in the current format & the SAC had a MIC like year and Luers goes 0-9 but only loses each game by 7 or less. That Luers team would probably beat all 7 other sectional opponents by double digits, including say a 9-0 Bluffton squad. Far fetched, but just one example that I hate to see qualifying like Ohio does (except this year due to Covid).

16 minutes ago, Footballking16 said:

The unintended consequences of seeding would make the first round of the playoffs redundant to the point where the next logical step is a qualifier. The IHSAA doesn't want that.

If the sectionals were seeded appropriately, 85-90% of the opening round games statewide would result in 50-60 point blowouts. That is the definition of redundant. It's unnecessary and doesn't do anybody any good. The only way the IHSAA today can justify why a team that has gone 0-9 in the regular season surrendering 500+ points is allowed to play again is because of the all-in, blind draw. There's an off-chance that an 0-9 team meets another 0-9 team and a blowout is avoided. 

If you seeded the sectionals, the next and only logical move would be to eliminate the field in half after the end of the regular season. The IHSAA isn't ready for that.

I'm for seeding and an all-in format to fully disclose. I think the best method would be to seed the top 4 teams in an 7 to 8 team sectional and top 2 in a 4 to 5 team sectional and then random draw the bottom 3-4 or 2-3.