By Rob Patrick
Battered and bruised after playing two of the most physical teams on their schedule, Conway and Cabot, the Bryant Hornets face a third team of that nature this Friday when North Little Rock comes to Bryant Stadium for Senior Night, their last regular-season home game.
At midweek, the Hornets coaches weren’t sure who all would be available for duty.
“We’re beat up,” acknowledged head coach Paul Calley. “But, like I told Coach Griff yesterday, we’re beaten but we’re not defeated.
“Once you get into the meat of our schedule, you’ve got people beat up and banged up and you continue to have that,” he added. “It makes me sick that we’re not at full strength. That’s the hard part. You work so hard and you try to get these kids ready and you depend on having everybody and, when you don’t, you’ve got to scramble to try to put things back together. We’ve always done a good job of doing that, it’s just I hate it for the kids that don’t get to play.”[more]
Coach Griff (defensive coordinator Steve Griffith) said, “We are banged up quite a bit but our guys are excited about getting back home and playing against North Little Rock and hopefully continue our part to stay in a tie for first place in the conference.”
At 6-1 in league play after last Friday’s 21-9 loss at Cabot, the Hornets share the 7A/6A-Central Conference lead with the Panthers and Conway’s Wampus Cats but North Little Rock’s Charging Wildcats are right on their heels at 4-2. Of course, seeding in the conference for the post-season is totally up in the air because of the addition of West Memphis from the 7A/6A-East Conference for the playoffs. The Blue Devils are once again wading through the Class 6A teams in that league.
“It seems like it’s almost like this every year,” said North Little Rock coach Brad Bolding regarding the knot of teams at the top of the standings. “And that’s the unfortunate thing about West Memphis coming in. They sit over there and play that soft-ball conference that they’re in. They run right through it and they come over here and get the number one seed which is — I know that all the coaches in our conference don’t like that and that’s going to be a pretty good discussion when we get together at our conference meeting.
“This year, we’re really young so we’re not right in the fight, in the mix at the top but those guys up there, it’s just almost a repeat,” he continued. “Our main thing right now is, we’re in the playoffs, we’re looking to get a home playoff game. If we can beat Bryant then that’s what we would get.”
The Hornets could still finish with anything from a top seed to a No. 5 with the injection of West Memphis. They too would clinch no worse than a home playoff game with a win.
“North Little Rock presents a lot of problems for us because of their athleticism,” Calley reported. “They’ve gotten better on offense each week as well as defensively. They’re playing some young people on defense but they’re big and there’s not a whole lot of drop off from last year (when the Wildcats downed the Hornets, 29-7). They’re going to be hard to move the ball against.
“We’re going to do some things different this week just because they give you so many different looks,” Calley continued. “We’re going to try to simplify what we’re doing and get ourselves in the best possible play and call a lot of plays at the line of scrimmage. Last week, we had a lot of stuff scripted.”
In review of the loss to Cabot, Calley offered, “Offensively, I thought we played as good as we have all year. We just didn’t score. We moved the ball but we had some breakdowns in the red zone, scheme-wise. We didn’t block some things right that should’ve scored. And I took some chances that, looking back, I wish I hadn’t taken.
“But our guys are still confident,” he asserted. “They’re disappointed but we’re not giving up and we’re trying to fight through these injuries. We have to play a lot of people both ways, which we don’t want to do but we don’t have a choice. It’s that time of the year and it seems to be worse now than it’s ever been that I can remember.”
Griffith assessed last week’s contest as well, saying, “After reviewing the film, we played really hard but you really have to tip your hat to (Cabot), they played extremely hard. When we compared their performance to what we’d seen on film, several young men, I thought, really stepped up and went above and beyond what we’d seen of them.
“Our guys were battling,” he added. “We just couldn’t get off the field on fourth downs. They were able to make a play several times by just a very small amount. It got us into that fourth quarter and we were taking some chances we don’t normally take and they popped a big pass play and that was the ballgame.”
Turning to North Little Rock, Griffith stated, “They’ve got a big offensive line. They’ve got a tall, rangy quarterback that throws the ball well and he’s a threat to run the football much like the young man we saw from Texarkana. Running backs, they work several guys in and out and they’re all very capable. The fullback is a good blocker and an outstanding receiver.
“It’s going to be a big challenge but I feel like our guys, if they can get back up and play at a high level of intensity, we can do a good job against them but it’s going to take a great effort.”
“It’s always a great game,” Bolding commented. “Those guys are very well coached over there. I know all those coaches and those kids play really hard. They’re going to get after it. I think turnovers and mistakes are going to be the key to winning the game and making tackles on first contact.
“Mistakes — we made them over there two years ago,” he recalled. “I think last year, we probably had a better football team. We were pretty good with having 12 kids sign to play college football. We had a good football team. The match-ups are a whole lot different this year than it was last year. Not to take anything away from last year’s Bryant team. They had a good football team. We were better than a lot of people we played — the majority of them. The games we lost, we made mistakes to kill ourselves.
“This year, we both have guys that run well and, obviously, when you play close games, special teams come into play,” Bolding stated. “And, lately, our special teams have been a strength for us. But it’s been a little while since we played somebody the caliber of Bryant.”
The Charging Wildcats are coming off consecutive wins, 42-0 over Little Rock Central and 47-21 over Little Rock Catholic after suffering back-to-back losses, 14-7 in overtime to Cabot and 38-6 to Conway. Early in the season, they suffered losses to 7A-West foes, Springdale (24-17) and top-ranked Bentonville (45-9).
“The season’s gone pretty much how we thought,” Bolding assessed. “We had a close game against Springdale. Bentonville, we were starting 10 sophomores and it was tough for us going into that game because that was the first game those guys had played in. We’re totally different from the first game to where we are now and that just has to do with team experience. The Springdale game, we turned the ball over five times, inside the 10 twice. That hurt us.
“In the Cabot game, we didn’t score inside the 20 and on the 2 — the 2-yard line — or we would’ve won that game,” he continued. “We went into overtime and actually scored and got a penalty that negated the play. So they beat us 14-7. Of course, Conway, they played like they’d been playing all the way up to us. Man, they were good.
“The main thing for us is we’ve gotten better every week and you can tell now that our kids have some game experience that’s made a lot of difference.
“On offense, our quarterback’s kind of come of age recently, in the last two or three weeks,” said Bolding. “He’s a junior and we’re real excited about him for, obviously, the rest of this year and for next season. His name’s Kaylon Cooper.
“Our sophomore running back Altee Tenpenny is going to be a big-time player by the time he’s a senior,” he continued. “He’s rushed for almost 700 yards which is pretty good for a sophomore playing 7A. Dominique Golden is another back we’ve got.
“We’ve been running three backs all year. That’s one of the reasons (Tenpenny) doesn’t have more yards. With Dominique, they’re two different style runners. Altee is more of a straight-ahead, make a cut then use his speed. He’s a bigger back, about six-foot, 190. Dominique’s kind of like the back (Tim Johnson) we had last year. Not quite as shifty as he was but he’s really, really fast. He’s smaller but a very strong kid. I’ve been real pleased with him. And Kendall Williams is another back that’s kind of like Altee, about six-foot, 205 and runs really well too.
“So being able to get the ball in those guys’ hands has been really helpful to us,” Bolding concluded. “And we’re able to throw the ball better now. The quarterback, the last three weeks, has kind of reined in his arm. He’s got a very strong arm. He can throw it 70 yards but at the first of the season, we had no idea where it was going. Just the reps and playing in games, getting game experience, he’s really reined that in and has been throwing the ball really well lately.”
BRYANT HORNETS
2010 statistics, unofficial through 8 games
Opponents 28 27 47 30 7 3 — 142
BRYANT 70 87 72 31 7 7 — 262
Team stats
Oppt. Bryant
First downs 127 147
Rushes-yds 278-1232 298-1599
Passing 110-196-7 84-131-4
Passing yards 1244 1160
Fumbles-lost 18-7 13-5
Penalties-yds 58-516 37-336
INDIVIDUAL STATS
Rushing: Clark 101-662, Dismuke 63-514, J.Powell 34-144, Pritchett 26-144, J.Bell 20-97, Tolbert 2-51, Harris 3-8, Hampton 1-5, Henson 3-0, Davidson 2-0, Smith 1-(-2), Lessenberry 40-(-6)
Passing (C-A-I-Y): Lessenberry 75-109-3-942 (4 TDs), Davidson 10-20-1-218 (4 TDs), Dismuke 0-2-0-0.
Receiving: Nichols 27-452, Winfrey 18-254, Garrett 11-96, Clark 10-113, Elmore 6-68, Daniel 4-46, J.Bell 3-38, Tolbert 2-47, Pritchett 1-10, Dismuke 1-0.
Scoring: Clark 60 (9 td-r, 1 td-rec), Dismuke 30 (5 td-r), Denker 42 (27 of 29 conv., 5 fg {20, 35, 32, 44, 19}), Lessenberry 30 (5 td-r), Tolbert 18 (1 td-r, 2 td-rec), Powell 18 (3 td-r), Winfrey 18 (2 td-rec, 1 ko return), Nichols 12 (2 td-rec), J.Bell 12 (1 td-r, 1 td-rec), Pritchett 6 (1 td-r), Hampton 6 (1 td-r), Harris 6 (1 td-fumble rec), Lowery 4 (4 of 4 conv.)
