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5A: Valparaiso (13-0) vs New Palestine (13-0)


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5A: Valparaiso (13-0) vs New Palestine (13-0)  

115 members have voted

  1. 1. Who ya got?

    • Valparaiso
      24
    • New Palestine
      91


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2 hours ago, OldschoolFB said:

 Very hard to run up the middle against Valpo as Spegal found out.  BUT New Pal went to speed option to get Big Charlie running downhill and they broke one.  Outside of that run, I think Spegal was held in check to around 4 yards per carry.   Of course, you can’t leave that out which is why he has run for 10000 plus in his career.  

New Pal’s Hook and the kid going to MSU and their LBs impressed me a lot.  

Valpo has most of their lineman on both sides that impressed me.  Obviously #11, Plus the other DE and #33.  Burbee is very good and Valpo WR proved to be better than they were in Semi State.  

I loved that game tonight. 

Yeah, King (#54 for New Pal, committed to Michigan State) definitely showed he's a Big Ten player.  Moves extremely well for a guy his size.  Valpo's defense really did do a good job...they shut down Spegel as much as anyone and take away the one really long run they held him to under 4 ypc.  Pretty good considering he was getting 10 a crack on 20+ carries per game.

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58 minutes ago, PhilLee said:

Yes I'm sure Ralph envisioned his starting QB getting hurt and a guy who had thrown 1 pass all year playing 3 quarters at QB to win a state championship.  Just shows you how much poise Roudebush has to go in there and still run the offense and not "look" like a typical high school backup QB.  Many teams would have been done against a high quality team like Valpo and New Pal was not.

Valpo screwed up with all of the dumb direct snaps to their RB's.  Cost them big-time at the end of the 1st half, when they had a chance to go into half with the lead.  That and their passing game just looked like the QB was going to keep throwing it long and hoping for something good to happen.  New Pal looked very vulnerable trying to cover receivers and RB's in the flat and on crossing routes.  Then again, the QB lacked accuracy to make those throws a few times they tried them.  

Valpo had stretches of that game where they looked like the better team.  Just too long a drought in the 3rd quarter to beat a team like New Pal, who always makes teams pay for mistakes. 

No, but he did envision a speed option package for his QB2 that he thought Valpo would struggle with. And he was right. Even more important when QB1 left the game injured...

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4 hours ago, FWfootball10 said:

Lol I noticed the shrugging on every play as well. I mean it’s obvious his speed is why he isn’t getting more offers. He literally has everything else. I think his stats are a little bloated playing in New pals conference. Teams do play in worse conferences than new pal though. No matter what he does in college he is without a doubt one of the best high school running backs in Indiana history. Once again congrats Spegal and New Pal. 5a was loaded this year towards top and they come out on top of everyone. 

"Stats are a little bloated" ... quite the opposite. Against the lower-half of the HHC, he played a half, maybe one possession into the second half. I'm really, really tired of people claiming all of this happens because of a "weak schedule" that happened to include a regional champ and a semistate champ in the regular season. The upper half of the HHC was a Yorktown team that was ranked part of the year in 3A, a *very* good Pendleton Heights team, a similarly good Delta team and Mt. Vernon, which won a regional. 

He had nine 200+ games this season - against Center Grove (6A finalist), Mt. Vernon (4A regional champ), Whiteland, Franklin, Cathedral & Bloomington South - the latter four coming in consecutive games in the 5A tourney, all four against teams that were ranked at some point in the year (also against Greenfield-Central, New Castle and Delta). To insinuate he piled his yards up against weak competition isn't really accurate. 

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5 hours ago, OldschoolFB said:

My 2nd grader doesn’t make that excuse. Make the play.  Not half the play.  

New Pal lucky to have Spegal or they would be good team but not great.  Should be utilizing Hook more on O.  Smart play by Coach Ralph on the option to Speegs 

Any team would be fortunate to have the all-time leading rusher and scorer in state history. It takes a team to be a state champion - especially when you're a 4A enrollment school playing in a 5A tourney. He's a great kid and a great player. But he's also running behind five really good linemen. 

Hook was likely more in the gameplan, but when Roth went out, that took a lot of the passing game out of the playbook. Hook did a lot of damage on short crossing routes this year & then getting YAC, and you could see early he was a big part of the gameplan, but changing QBs meant changing the offense to fit Roudebush's strength. Roudebush did a *tremendous* job running the offense. 

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I digress. I am just aware of the teams in the conference that new pal has played.. Thanks for correcting me. Spegal deserves all of the accolades he is receiving. Valpo stopped him for the most part. Spegal on that run in the second half changed the trajectory of the game and that is what New Pal needed. 99.9 of the running backs couldn’t have made that run. Congrats New Pal! 

 

Great players make great plays in big situations, that is what Charlie did. 

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2 hours ago, crimsonace1 said:

"Stats are a little bloated" ... quite the opposite. Against the lower-half of the HHC, he played a half, maybe one possession into the second half. I'm really, really tired of people claiming all of this happens because of a "weak schedule" that happened to include a regional champ and a semistate champ in the regular season. The upper half of the HHC was a Yorktown team that was ranked part of the year in 3A, a *very* good Pendleton Heights team, a similarly good Delta team and Mt. Vernon, which won a regional. 

He had nine 200+ games this season - against Center Grove (6A finalist), Mt. Vernon (4A regional champ), Whiteland, Franklin, Cathedral & Bloomington South - the latter four coming in consecutive games in the 5A tourney, all four against teams that were ranked at some point in the year (also against Greenfield-Central, New Castle and Delta). To insinuate he piled his yards up against weak competition isn't really accurate. 

I’ll admit I was wrong about Charlie’s stats being bloated then as long as the New Pal fans admit they were wrong about Cathedral “clearly” being far superior than Valpo was. 

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I think, to sum it up, the better team won a hard fought game. No surprise there. The surprise, to many people, was that in the end Valpo was better than most people thought. A 7 pt. margin was an accurate reflection of the difference between the two teams.

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I will be the first to admit that Valpo impressed me and proved me wrong.  I stated earlier in that week that I wanted to see how New Pal would respond to potential adversity in the fourth quarter.

I then cleared my head and thought deeper that we are praising a school of nearly 2000 for “making it a game” with a PUBLIC school of just over 1100.

Amazing job by both schools.

Say what you want about the success factor and many think it is a system designed to level the playing field and eliminate P/P success but New Pal continues to knock down barriers.

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17 minutes ago, CaptainHook said:

Very proud of this group of seniors. 22 of them. Some of who’s role was strictly scout team. But they practiced hard, and waited their turn. The smallest school in 5A just beat the biggest with their QB2. Remarkable. Couldn’t be more proud of Eric Roudebush!

Yes.  Making last night even more impressive.  A 4A school, playing up at the 5A level, loses it’s starting QB, playing against a school with 800 more students and they DON’T SKIP A BEAT.

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8 hours ago, DACNUT said:

My analysis one point come to fruition. Valpo had numerous opportunities to do what Michigan City, Cathedral couldn’t, get up on New Pal and let their larger DL and OL take control. Instead, New Pal on the possessions immediately following the other teams not taking advantage give the other teams a one two three punch. In this case Valpo a one two. Great game and awesome to see three future D1 players in Hook, King, and Jones play great and impactful games. For those of us in the DAC, we also know Jones younger and more athletic brother who is a 6-6 freshman will be with him next year in the DLine. 
 

Now we will get a chance up north to spend the next several months hyping up our kids and communities, to get the opportunity to help a team north of the Indy area win a title in 5 or 6A. 

Please tell them to plan on more 7on 7 time.  The passing game is what killed your chance for a state title.   Athletes are there.  Just need better coaching and repetition. 

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4 minutes ago, DT said:

Please tell them to plan on more 7on 7 time.  The passing game is what killed your chance for a state title.   Athletes are there.  Just need better coaching and repetition. 

DT, you hit the nail on the head. I attended Valpo’s game against Dwenger, and came away thinking they had no chance against New Pal because their pass offense was dreadful — they’d never be able to score enough the keep up with the Dragons. In this game, their QB actually threw the ball much better than he had against BD! Still, if they had a passing attack that was on par with their defense, running game, and special teams, they might well be celebrating a state championship today.

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30 minutes ago, Bobref said:

DT, you hit the nail on the head. I attended Valpo’s game against Dwenger, and came away thinking they had no chance against New Pal because their pass offense was dreadful — they’d never be able to score enough the keep up with the Dragons. In this game, their QB actually threw the ball much better than he had against BD! Still, if they had a passing attack that was on par with their defense, running game, and special teams, they might well be celebrating a state championship today.

I was surprised the passing game was as poor as it was.   Opperman threw into triple coverage all night or threw the ball 5' over the heads of his receivers.   And he is such a good looking athlete.  Valpo should have been using 2 TEs based on the personnel they have on roster.  

Marshall has done a spectacular job but he is clearly not a QB coach and his offensive coaching acumen is suited more to DAC style ground and pound football.   Hope they shore up the staff in the off-season and address this area of weakness.  

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4 hours ago, FWfootball10 said:

I’ll admit I was wrong about Charlie’s stats being bloated then as long as the New Pal fans admit they were wrong about Cathedral “clearly” being far superior than Valpo was. 

Anyone who may have said that, including myself if I had, was clearly wrong.  I'd argue we saw the best 2 teams in the state regardless of class last night.  That was a different Valpo offense than we saw a week ago.  I'm sure the conditions were a factor but it's also a testament to how truly strong the Dwenger defense is. A fantastic championship game where New Pal just made a couple more plays. 

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4 hours ago, FWfootball10 said:

I’ll admit I was wrong about Charlie’s stats being bloated then as long as the New Pal fans admit they were wrong about Cathedral “clearly” being far superior than Valpo was. 

I thought going in Valpo would be NP's biggest test, and it was. I expected this to be a one-touchdown game (and it was). 

Unless you play in the MIC, every conference has 2-3 struggling teams. The HHC had 2-3 struggling teams (against which Spegal really didn't play a lot), a couple of decent teams and three pretty good ones. Spegal's biggest games came against the top teams on the schedule. He rushed for 1,200 yards and 17 TDs alone in the five tournament games. 

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I noted in one of my post about Valpos passing game, and Opperman, looks good, always has a clean pocket, but as we saw last night, inaccurate. In terms of 7 on 7, they all do it, but when you are whipping teams the way they have the past couple of years, he never really needed to pass the ball. With those unneeded Hail Mary passes, there was just a lack of imagination on the routes and in featuring their best athlete, Osario. He had a lot of targets, but heck he should have got more as he was the one clear mismatch on the field last night. However, New Pals secondary had a lot to do with them struggling with passing as he had a crazy amount of time to pass and kids were not getting wide open. 

Couple of post have mentioned New Pals size and that is for sure what makes this more amazing as Valpo at least for this year was pushed down somehow, still haven’t figured it out, to 5A, after going to semi-state in 6A and being larger than two other schools that are playing up, success factor math. 
 

I also agree with everyone that the winner of this game, New Pal is by far the best team in the state. I have no doubt they have the toughness, physical strength, and enough athleticism to beat Carmel. The one difference I also saw last night that I’ve seen in. New Pal the last two years is how they just get those turnovers. Tremendous offensive line play, just a pleasure to watch.

 

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3 minutes ago, DACNUT said:

I noted in one of my post about Valpos passing game, and Opperman, looks good, always has a clean pocket, but as we saw last night, inaccurate. In terms of 7 on 7, they all do it, but when you are whipping teams the way they have the past couple of years, he never really needed to pass the ball. With those unneeded Hail Mary passes, there was just a lack of imagination on the routes and in featuring their best athlete, Osario. He had a lot of targets, but heck he should have got more as he was the one clear mismatch on the field last night. However, New Pals secondary had a lot to do with them struggling with passing as he had a crazy amount of time to pass and kids were not getting wide open. 

Couple of post have mentioned New Pals size and that is for sure what makes this more amazing as Valpo at least for this year was pushed down somehow, still haven’t figured it out, to 5A, after going to semi-state in 6A and being larger than two other schools that are playing up, success factor math. 
 

I also agree with everyone that the winner of this game, New Pal is by far the best team in the state. I have no doubt they have the toughness, physical strength, and enough athleticism to beat Carmel. The one difference I also saw last night that I’ve seen in. New Pal the last two years is how they just get those turnovers. Tremendous offensive line play, just a pleasure to watch.

 

I believe Center Grove would beat New Pal in a rematch this weekend.  

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1 minute ago, CaptainHook said:

Come on. Put this to rest already. Beat em twice. With and without #30.

Charlie looked a little worn down last night.  Perhaps the 300 plus carries has worn him down physically.

I think that he might be mentally worn down as well.  Im sure he is ready for a break.  

I believe CG is the most talented team in the state, and you will probably see them go on a run of 2 or 3 consecutive state championships.  They are playing now at peak effectiveness and fully healthy.  

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17 minutes ago, DT said:

Charlie looked a little worn down last night.  Perhaps the 300 plus carries has worn him down physically.

I think that he might be mentally worn down as well.  Im sure he is ready for a break.  

I believe CG is the most talented team in the state, and you will probably see them go on a run of 2 or 3 consecutive state championships.  They are playing now at peak effectiveness and fully healthy.  

Worn down = Valpo’s D is pretty damn good.  Come on man.

While you might be right about CG, Charlie being “worn down” would not be the reasoning.

Didn't look worn down on that 80 yard romp to me...or the late drive where he made that Valpo LB look like a bowling pin.

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19 minutes ago, DT said:

Charlie looked a little worn down last night.  Perhaps the 300 plus carries has worn him down physically.

I think that he might be mentally worn down as well.  Im sure he is ready for a break.  

I believe CG is the most talented team in the state, and you will probably see them go on a run of 2 or 3 consecutive state championships.  They are playing now at peak effectiveness and fully healthy.  

"A little worn down" - had 160 yards and the go-ahead score against one of the state's best defenses (if not the best). He also had two big first-down runs to seal the game when everybody in the stadium knew he was getting the rock. I've watched nearly all of Charlie's games the last couple of years. He looked anything but "worn down." Valpo is really, really, really good up front and he had to work for every yard. 

But consider the source ... 

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