Photo by Kevin Nagle
“Finding a way to win” — it’s a compelling, admirable trait for a football team. It’s often thrilling — like a last-minute kickoff return or goal-line stand or scintillating touchdown pass. Just as often, of course, it’s nerve-racking and breathtakingly tenuous.
This season, the Bryant Hornets have used that knack to just the second 6-0 start in the program’s history, despite a pigskin full of adversity. It’s literally been a season of blood, sweat and tears, injury and illness.
The Hornets’ ability — really, tradition — of overcoming adversity and finding a way to win will be sorely tested tonight when they travel to Greenwood to battle against a program that is among the most successful in the state in recent years. The Bulldogs too are 6-0 and they have hardly had to break a sweat. They defeated 7A-West stalwart Fort Smith Southside by 7 and Fort Smith Northside by 10. Beyond that, they’re closest game was a 31-point difference. Last week, they smothered defending Central Conference champion Conway, 56-19.
Greenwood has won seven State championships since 2000 including three in row from 2010 to 2012.
The two schools met on the gridiron for the first time last year and the Hornets stunned the Bulldogs 38-21, in a game that was tied 14-14 going into the fourth quarter.
A quick glance at the yardage each offense compiled, however, might indicate to anyone that didn’t know that Greenwood at prevailed. Bryant finished with 265 yards of total offense. The Bulldogs had 472.
The difference was turnovers and special teams. The Hornets came up with two pick-6’s when the Bulldogs were threatening to score, turning possible points against into points for. They also recovered a fumble to turn back a threat in the Greenwood red zone. And Bryant’s defensive end Cameron Murray, playing on kickoff return, grabbed an onside kick and rumbled 63 yards for another score.
It figures to be those kinds of things that may need to occur tonight as well. The Hornets lead the Central Conference in rushing (1,488 yards) but the Bulldogs are second (1,390). Greenwood also passes the ball extremely well (1,775 yards) and is, by far, the top offensive team in the league, averaging 527.5 yards a game.
Running back Jordan Green, who rushed for 130 yards on the Hornets last season. In five games this year (he missed the Conway game), Green has rushed for 566 yards and six touchdowns. Quarterback Luke Hales leads the league in passing with 1,308 yards and 15 touchdowns on 77 or 100 without an interception. Ryan Padilla has caught 50 passes for 786 yards and six scores to lead the league.
Bryant, which had three stellar running backs to start the season, is down to one, junior DeAmonte Terry, who’s now the fourth leading rushing in the conference (561 yards, just behind Green). The Hornets will be hoping to pick up some help for him from somebody if for no other reason that to give him a breather.
Quarterback Gunnar Burks has been effective running. He’s passed well when he’s had to, including the go-ahead touchdown strike to Aaron Orender against Alma last week.
Defensively, the Bulldogs are in the middle of the pack while Bryant is on top of the league stats. The Hornets’ defense is the toughest to run on, allowing just 525 yards on the ground in total over its six games. No one else in the league has allowed less than 877 yards rushing this season. The Hornets’ front seven has been tremendous despite the loss of middle linebacker Devin Howard.
The secondary has struggled to slow down the passing game though. Only two conference teams (Conway and Greenwood) have allowed more passing yardage. Last week in one of those nail-biters, a 27-24 win at Alma, the Airedales threw the ball to considerable success until the Hornets’ pass rush started to make some headway.
Regarding the Greenwood defense, Bryant offensive coordinator Lance Parker said, “They’re kind of a vanilla 4-2-5 team. They don’t do a lot of different things because they don’t have to. They score so many points on offense. They’re going to be kind of a bend but don’t break defense but they don’t bend too much. They have four guys up front that are really good. Their linebackers are really instinctual and make a lot of plays, good tacklers.
“They’ve had some getting-lined-up problems but I foresee against us they’re going to make sure they’re lined up and make us execute our stuff to beat them and not try to overwhelm us with blitzing or anything,” he added. “That’s just not what they do. They’re going to play sound football and they’re not going to gamble and put themselves in a hole.”
