I awoke this beautiful Sunday morning and proceeded to the Los Angeles Times sports section to discover some very interesting happenings in both college and high school sports yesterday.
NCAA DIVISION III PLAYOFFS
Mary Hardin-Baylor 38 - Hardin Simmons 35
During my seven months living in Sicily, I had several opportunities to hear both Brandon Bennett and Matt Epperson discuss their shared feelings about a team that I grew to believe was the "Visigoths" of the NCAA Division III playoffs, one Mary Hardin-Baylor University.
I often wondered how a school with such a pleasant sounding name could possibly be SO evil in their minds. It was never fully explained to me but Matt's H.S.U. team ended their 9-2 season with a playoff loss to 10-1 M.H-B.U. yesterday in the first round of the playoffs.
H.S.U.'s other loss this season... you guessed it, 18-20 to these same Tigers from Mary Hardin-Baylor University.
Maybe Mary Hardin really was evil incarnate.
Terry Henigan's Irvine Vaqueros
win their First Round C.I.F. Playoff Game!
I found out that Terry's team plays in the VERY tough Pacific Coast League. I say this because the PCL's championship team, Laguna Hills is seeded #1 in the Southern Division playoffs and their second place team, Corona del Mar is seeded #2 in the Southern Division playoffs!
His Irvine (7-3) team was the PCL's #3 team and opened their playoff run against Westminster H.S. Saturday night. Westminster (7-3) is the Golden West League's championship team and the Southern Division playoff grouping's #4 seeded squad.
The Vaqueros improved to 8-3 as they held on to defeat Westminster 14-7. Next up is a Quarter-Final playoff game on the road against the Suburban League's #2 team, Norwalk. Norwalk is now 7-4 after upsetting 9-2 Garden Grove H.S. by a score of 38-6.
Burbank H.S. seen in possession of the football in this photo.
Burbank H.S. first opened its doors in September of 1908. That means that this is their 101st season of playing varsity high school football.
They finished the regular season with a 5-5 record, finishing in 4th place in the Pacific League. They were selected to play Santa Fe H.S. in the first round of the C.I.F.'s Southeast Division playoffs. Santa Fe entered the game with a sparkling 9-1 record earning them both the Del Rio League championship and the playoffs #2 seed.
In a big upset, Burbank won 20-14. Nice story but that is not what caught my eye.
This win was Burbank's first playoff victory since 1927!
81 years... Now that's a reason to celebrate.
Next up for the Bulldogs is a home game against 9-2 West Covina, the San Antonio League's #2 team.
NCAA DIVISION II PLAYOFFS
Abilene Christian 93 - West Texas A&M 68
This MUST be a mistake, after all, it is the start of the college basketball season. Surely the score was just misplaced in the paper.
But maybe, just maybe, the Italian Football League's offensive mentality has somehow worked its way back across the Atlantic Ocean.
Upon further review, here is what I found out.
This WAS a football game! In fact, it was a rematch of a regular season game these two teams played earlier this year, with Abilene Christian winning that wild one 52-35.
Coming into this playoff game, A.C. was 10-0 and seeded #2 in the playoffs while W.T. A&M was 11-1.
A.C.'s running back, #3 pictured above, Bernard Scott scored 7 TDs yesterday while carrying the ball 19 times for 292 yards. He also caught 3 passes for another 61 yards.
Do you like offense? Well these two schools combined to shatter all sorts of school, conference and NCAA records.
A.C.'s Offense stat sheet looked like this:
93 points on 56 plays good for 810 yards!
They scored a TD on 13 of their 15 possessions.
W.T. A&M's stat sheet was also impressive as you might imagine:
68 points on 94 plays that gained 721 yards!
So, in their only two losses of an 11-2 season, W.T. A&M averaged 51.5 points and lost them both to Abilene Christian????
If you ask me, this was a prime example of Italian Football League offensive football at its best!!!
2 comments:
I hadn't heard about that Abilene Christian game, but after seeing this, I went and looked at the box score. You know there were 57 points scored in the THIRD QUARTER, including three TDs in the last 1:14? It was only 14-14 in the fourth. I think everyone was just exhausted.
Maybe the biggest surprise: There were four punts. I'm amazed there were four possessions that didn't end with scores.
And I thought my 49-28 playoff game the other night (Thousand Oaks-Santa Barbara) was wild.
Wild???
This was an everyday, normal, routine game in the Italian Football League.
Four punts? Maybe in a season, NEVER in a game!
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