Freeman hopes to finish off unbeaten season with state title
Ask Jeff Smith who has been playing well on the Freeman defense and he begins by naming linebackers Bryan Riggs and Shay Thomas. Then the Scotties’ coach mentions Rory Malloy and he’s off on a roll. Before he stops, 13, 14 names have spilled out.
He pauses, and then remembers the numerous kids who run the scout team, giving Freeman’s defense its first look at the opponent’s offense.
Is it any wonder Smith credits the defense’s success to a team effort?
And what an effort it has been.
The Scotties have yielded 58 points this year, an average of 4.8 a game. That defense has led them all the way to Tacoma, where Saturday at 10 a.m. in the 1A championship game, they’ll get their toughest test of the season: No. 1-ranked Royal.
The Knights are 13-0. They average 51 points a game. They’ve yielded just 94. And, since a 28-21 season-opening win at Othello (a 2A finalist), their closest game was last week’s 35-21 semifinal win over previously undefeated Friday Harbor.
The Scotties (12-0) opened the postseason with wins over two other SCAC teams, Wahluke and Zillah, but, though both were in Royal’s league, neither are in Royal’s league according to Smith.
“I don’t know if the Zillahs or the Wahlukes, this year, they were good quality football teams this year but I don’t know if they were quite as explosive as Royal is,” Smith said. “They both had quite a few weapons, but I don’t know if they had the quantity of weapons that Royal has.”
Smith is quite aware of Royal’s top weapons: junior running back Jeff Jack and wide receiver James Dykes.
Jack has rushed for 1,578 yards and scored 19 touchdowns this year. But it was Dykes who took over the spotlight in the Knights’ win over Friday Harbor. The senior had a big kickoff return for a touchdown and then caught a Ray Valle touchdown toss to clinch it.
Freeman is acquainted with the Knights. Last year Royal ruined the Scotties’ perfect season with a 25-6 win in the quarterfinals.
“Recently it’s kind of creeped up where it’s gotten to the point where it’s ‘gee, wouldn’t it be great if we could play Royal for the championship,’ ” Smith said. “Royal beat us last year in the quarterfinals and we’re looking forward to matching up with them again.”
The Scotties are banking on their defense to slow down the Knights like it did to previously undefeated Napavine last Saturday. In the 28-6 win, the Freeman defense had six sacks and six other tackles for losses.
It’s a defense not built on scheme but on fundamentals, a philosophy Smith brought with him from his years coaching at Lewis and Clark under then head coach John Hook.
“We try to put kids in places where they will experience a lot of success,” Smith said. “What matters most is what the kids do on the field and what sort of fundamentals they use on the field. The bottom line is, if you can’t tackle it really doesn’t matter what you are running on defense.
“We emphasis that in practice and we talk about it a lot. We tackle every single day, every single person, all the way down to the last freshman, all the way down to a person that just kicks.”
The constant hitting and fundamental foundation allows defensive coordinator Jim Wood to play to the Scotties’ strengths and to hide their weaknesses.
But even their weakness, a tendency to get a little excited and try to do too much according to Smith, is something the coaches forgive.
“If we’re going to make a mistake, we might as well do it at 100 miles per hour,” Smith said. “It’s better than just sitting back, waiting for something to happen.”
The Scotties can’t make too many mistakes Saturday, though an offense keyed by senior running back Kevin Hatch, who also plays defensive back, and sophomore quarterback Andrew Dresback, might be able to overcome a few hiccups.
Hatch, the NEA’s Most Valuable Player, has rushed for 1,614 yards this year despite having missed time with a broken collarbone. Dresback keeps teams from loading up against the run, having connected on better than 50 percent of his passes for 1,315 yards and 14 touchdowns.
“When we sat down and tweaked our offense a little bit (prior to the season), Hatch is a talent you would be foolish not to tweak your offense around,” Smith said, noting that the Scotties were coming in with, chronologically at least, a sophomore quarterback. “Even at the start of the season he didn’t really seem like a sophomore. He worked so hard over the summer, I really saw him walking in as a junior.”
No matter what, Smith knows his players have their hands full.
“I’ll tell you, it’s going to be a battle,” Smith said. “They’re obviously a very good football team.”
In other Gridiron Classic matchups featuring local teams:
B-11: Lind-Ritzville (12-0) vs. DeSales (12-1), 4 p.m. today
The Broncos will try to cap coach Mike Lynch’s 31 years at the school with a second title to go with the one they won in 1980. But the Irish pose a formidable test.
The Irish’s spread passing game, keyed by quarterback Jack Dixon and wide receivers Nick Conley and Cesar Lopez, is tough for any B-11 team to contain. They add to that an ability to make changes on the fly, as they did in the semifinals against Republic.
“The best pass defense is to have somebody back there with (the quarterback) while he’s trying to throw it,” Lynch said. “We need to get some pressure on the passer.
“Kim Cox is a good enough coach that, it may take them a while to get it all going, but he’s shown the capability to figure out what it is you are doing then devise ways to pick you apart.”
The Irish’s only loss was 15-14 to Baker, Ore., a school whose enrollment would put it into Washington’s 2A classification. DeSales is making its seventh finals appearance since 1996, and it won three consecutive titles from 1997 to 1999. But they have lost the championship game two of the past three seasons.
Two years ago in the quarterfinals, Lind-Ritzville defeated the Irish 28-27 en route to a finals berth, where the Broncos lost 17-14 to Northeast B-11-rival Reardan. Some of those Irish are still playing, including junior tackles Michael Tompkins (6-foot, 240-pounds) and James Crosby (6-2, 235), defensive stoppers in the middle.
“Tompkins and Crosby and a few of their other kids were starters two years ago when we played them, as freshmen and sophomores,” Lynch said. “They did a nice job for them then, much less getting two years experience and that much bigger and stronger.”
Of course, the Broncos aren’t bereft of talent either, starting with running back Nick Ashley (1,992 yards and 29 touchdowns) and quarterback Travis DeWald (1,451 yards passing).
“This is what you play for, an opportunity to play a game of this magnitude,” Lynch said, “against an opponent like this one. And to play for a state title.”
B-8: Columbia (Hunters) (10-1) vs. LaCrosse-Washtucna (11-0), Saturday, 1 p.m.
Jeff Nelson’s team has won the last two B-8 title games easily, running away from Touchet in 2002, 38-6, and then routing Jubilee Christian 60-20 last season.
Those wins are all part of a 34-game winning streak for LaCrosse-Washtucna, currently the state’s longest. The Tigercats haven’t lost since a 38-28 defeat to Inchelium in the 2001 playoff semifinals.
All that success means “the pressure is all on them,” Columbia coach Chuck Wyborney said. “They’re supposed to win, everyone thinks they’ll win, so we will go over there, hopefully, as loose as a goose and play as hard as we can and see what happens.
“I’ve been telling our kids all week that, at this point it’s mental. You don’t show up and say, ‘Let’s see if we can play with them,’ and somewhere in the game decide you can. You have to go over there with the attitude you’re going to find a way to win.”
Part of that success came at the expense of Columbia, with the Tigercats winning a semifinal matchup 42-24 in 2002 and a first-round contest last year 44-0.
“LaCrosse is awful good,” Wyborney said. “If you’re looking for a dynasty in 8-man football, they are obviously it. The beat us pretty good last year, but we actually only have three kids who started last year who will be starting this week, so we are a different team.”