File photo courtesy of Paul Dotson
Editor’s note: Tonight’s game will be streamed live at https://youtu.be/deNnvv1F00U
“Like I tell (the players), it’s only going to be cold and wet on one side of the field,” stated Hornets head coach Buck James. “It’s not going to be cold and wet on the other side of the field. One team is going to know it’s cold and know it’s wet. The other team, it’s not going to matter. They’re going flourish in it. They’re going to enjoy it. They’re going to have fun in it. They’re going to have fun doing it.
Temperatures in the low 50’s, an 80 percent chance of rain — the conditions figure to be completely different than they’ve been for the last six weeks when the top-ranked Bryant Hornets are challenged tonight by the Cabot Panthers in a 7A-Central Conference game.
“I know when I was a kid when we had a chance to go out and play in the water and play football, we were making diving catches and doing all that kind of stuff,” he recalled. “Sometimes when we grow up, we get out there and we feel like the water’s wet and the weather’s cold. We’ve got to be kids and go out there and have fun doing it.”
Besides that, it’s going to be strange to go to Cabot and see a team not running the old dead-T like they have for years under Coach Mike Malham. After Malham’s retirement at the end of last season, Scott Reed, who made his reputation as the head coach at El Dorado, has changed things. Cabot is running the spread.
Reed and James have competed against each other many times.
“We competed against each other for eight or nine years,” James acknowledged. “He came in I think the second or third year I was at Camden.
“He’s a very good coach,” he said of his counterpart. “I think you could probably poll everybody in Arkansas, and I would say he’s probably one of the top three to five coaches in the state for the last 10 or 15 years. Very well-schooled, has a great command of what he wants to do and how he wants to do it, always competitive and, when he’s good, he’s really good. He’s the kind of guy that you have to beat. They don’t beat themselves. They’re always sound. They’re always disciplined, and they always play hard.”
And this Cabot team, do James see those qualities in it?
“I see that,” he answered. “It’s probably not near his most talented team by any means but, for the first time to ever be in the spread offense and to be in a multiple defensive coverage and fronts, I think they’ve done a heck of a job. I’m very impressed with what they’ve been able to do and how easy they’ve made it look.
“As they grow and mature into his program, they’ll definitely be a force to be reckoned with,” James added.
Regarding the scheme, he said, “They’re really a lot like us. They’re offensive scheme is similar to ours. They’ve got a strong-armed quarterback. He can make every throw. They’ve got two really talented receivers. The other ones are very functional. And they’re offensive line is very capable. They’re strong-looking kids.
“Defensively, they’re probably a step slower than what we are but they seem to be in the right spots,” the coach continued. “They’re very disciplined. They are a very competitive defense. They’re solid in the kick game.
“They’re a team that you have to beat. They’re not going to beat themselves. They’re a lot like Catholic. I said that about Catholic back when we played those guys. They’re sort of the same kind of team that Catholic is.”
The Rockets handed the Panthers one of their two losses this season, 28-26, to open conference play. Cabot came back to beat Fort Smith Southside, lose to Conway by 10 then defeat Little Rock Central.
“But you see Catholic beat North Little Rock,” James noted. “Cabot is capable of beating anybody in our league. If things fall their way, they have a chance to be competitive with anybody.
“You have to play well. You have to play well for as long as it takes. That’s what we’ve got to understand.”
It’s interesting to think about how each Bryant opponent prepares for the Hornets. It figures that every one of them from Benton to open the season and Southside last week, everybody had some belief that they could not only play with the top-ranked team but would find a way to beat them.
Of course, every one of them has lost badly, all by mercy rule, five of the seven invoked by the end of the first half. Bryant first-team offense has only played two series in the second half all year.
Cabot is a 36-point underdog tonight.
James doesn’t pay much attention to predictions like that, however. He has said in the past that his team and coaches are concentrating more on just getting better as the weeks go along and not as much on each opponent.
Asked where he thinks the team has improved the most, he points to the two spots where the Hornets had the most inexperience to start the season.
“I think our offensive and defensive lines have consistently improved all year long,” he related. “We lost four offensive starters, we lost three defensive starters and the way those guys have come in — and we’ve played multiple guys on both sides of the ball, five to eight offensive linemen and eight to 10 defensive linemen — I think those guys have improved each and every week.
“The thing I think that they’ve got to understand is that the effort and the attitude and the focus that they’ve played with they’ve got to stick with because, physically, we’re not as imposing as we were this time last year,” James said. “So, we’ve got to rely on our heart just as much as our feet and our hands and their head, to do what we’re supposed to do. I think we can’t lose sight of that, that we’ve got to go out there and give them our best game every week.
“It’s sort of like a kickball game,” he said. “The person who makes an out every time could be the one who comes up and kicks a home run. You’ve got to make sure that you do your job and you do it well and you don’t let your guard down.
“I think so far they have.”
James recalled when he had teams that were dominated by other teams and how they approached it.
“When I took over at Star City and I took over at Camden, I think we were in that boat just like Scott is,” he explained. “That’s the way it was for us against North Little Rock when I first came here. You have to take the attitude that, hey, you might whip my tail but I’m going to be right back and I’m going to come back tomorrow and I’m going to come back next week and I’m going to come back next year, whatever it takes. But I’m going to come back and you’re going to have to beat me every time. That’s the kind of mentality Scott Reed has. That’s the kind of mentality I have.
“There were teams that worried we were going to drop them (off our schedule) because they were so much more dominant that we were when we first came into the league. I said, don’t worry about that. We took our lumps against P.A. (Pulaski Academy). We took our lumps against Fayetteville. We good our lumps against North Little Rock and we just kept battling.
“I think, in life, you can’t sit there and celebrate your successes,” he pondered. “It’s your failures that define you. As a coach especially. Your kids have got to understand that their weaknesses, they’ve got to turn into strengths. I think that’s what our kids do. That’s what we do as a coaching staff. And that’s why we focus so much on what we do and not so much on what our opponent does. If we can take care of ourselves and we’re competitive and we’re athletic enough and we’re good at what we do, then it gives us a chance to be successful. If we’re having to worry about whether we can run with them or hang on the field with them and all that stuff, then our whole mindset has to be different.
“And that’s the way we were at first. And they just beat us to the ground. But what I’m proud of is our kids got off the ground and they went to work. That’s what it takes. In anything in life that’s difficult, it makes it harder if you’re not willing to fight and grind through it and persevere. That’s what our kids have done.
“Granted, they can’t look over their shoulder,” James warned. “They can’t be going out there and thinking we’ve got this won or we’re going to win this game because we show up, or you get the same thing that Arkansas got against San Jose State. There’s no givens. There’s nobody that’s going to give you the trophy or give you a prize just because you show up.”
