smatting

When Vic has open field, it's over. And he has the best balance I've ever seen on the HS level, period. Some of his runs tonight, while aided by excellent blocking and less-than stellar tackling, were simply amazing.

I disagree with your characterization of X's attitude in the state championship. At the beginning of the season, some of them were lazy - which prompted the comments from Glaser that you reference. I can't speak for each individual player on the team, but for the final game for most of them it was a totally different matter than how you describe it. They came into the game confident, but somewhat afraid because everything seemed like it had come too easily and they knew it wasn't going to be another game like the regular season one or the Scott Co. final last year. They knew a team like Trinity wasn't going to be that easy to beat the second time around, and that is what resulted in their playing tight. Rather than being cocky, they had a bit of a deer in the headlights reaction when the PAT got blocked and Curley went down. The confident execution and swagger they had going quickly vanished, and they couldn't recapture it. Had the PAT not been blocked, I honestly think it would have been a very different game for the St. X offense, which seemed sort of shocked. Trinity captured a lot of momentum with that play and didn't look back.

Mike Mattingly from St. X may be walking on at Notre Dame.

Agree - Isreal was a stud last year against St. X, which is the only time I've seen him play - he was quick and very decisive for a sophomore. He seemed to give Lex Cath a dimension their offense had lacked in previous years.

Vic is working with a trainer right now and is really finally learning how to lift and pack on muscle. As long as they can block for him upfront as well as X usually does, he should have a monster season. As others have pointed out, Eckman and the sophomore Finch should be more than capable of keeping defenses from being able to tee off on Anderson completely.

Anderson has blocked a decent amount the last two years. He threw plenty of good blocks for both Justin Brown two years ago and Mike Mattingly last year.

Ugliest thing I've ever seen. Just kidding, nice ring. Just wish the green and gold guys had gotten another one.

Congratulations to the amazing St. X seniors. What a game you played all 4 quarters and OT - a total team effort. We are so proud of you. Keep that fire going as you start district play. Go Tigers!

Shoot, andigidy, you always seemed like a good guy, being a reasonable fellow X-man and all....then I have to go see that ugly OSU graphic next to your screenname...Go Irish! All in good fun, of course. Ought to be an excellent game out in Tempe.

I have to respectfully disagree with you somewhat here. Field position was very key, as you say - it was huge that Trinity's offense had few three and outs because it kept the Tigers pinned back after the first quarter. But Trinity's run defense played very well considering the strength of the opponent. St. X ran the ball well reasonably well in the game, but Trinity kept Vic and Michael from making big plays, which no one else had really been able to do this year. Once Anderson and Mattingly got into the secondary, there seemed to be nowhere to go because Trinity's guys tackled very well. Curley's injury negated his running, which made it easier for them to defend, but they still played solid defense.

Trinity wouldn't have been able to beat St. X last year, IMO. This year's St. X team was more talented, but last year's was on an absolute mission and was a monster in the playoffs. They didn't even play a single close game in the playoffs, unlike this year's team. And having Tronzo would have meant the difference between sacking Petrino (Savko) or allowing him to scramble for big yards at times.

Of course they advertise. They are private institutions who rely on tuition and donations to subsist. They don't receive government funding, and running a school ain't cheap, to say the least.

Classy, LSU, really classy. You should be able to put aside some personal vendetta and not make posts like this about a 17 year old kid on a public forum. Especially since he didn't need to make touchdown catches in two out of the three games because X was running it into the endzone every 4th play.

I believe it is very important that people know that Coach Glaser absolutely did not have students fitted for state championship rings, nor did they design the ring. He simply asked players to visualize what they were playing for, a very valid motivational strategy. Also, the closed thread suggesting that Tiger fans might turn against Coach Glaser was begun by a Trinity fan and does not represent the feeling among the Tiger players, parents, and alums I know. We are incredibly proud to be associated with a man who treats every St. X player as if he were his own son. Our season speaks for itself, despite the last game. St. Xavier's season was spectacular, by any measure.

Exactly. Thank you for being a rare voice of reason.

That's not my argument, if you read it again. Of course any St. X fan would prefer the state title. Several Trinity fans said it was ridiculous to argue that St. X was the stronger team despite the loss in the final, and I disputed that notion.

And again you guys refuse to address the content of my initial post, which clearly explains the simple point I was trying to make to refute some of the sillier claims made by T fans in this thread.

I don't disagree with 90% of what you say in this post. I'll just drop it.

Apparently they don't offer classes in reading comprehension and logic over on Shelbyville road. It is, to some extent, a matter of semantics - in how one defines what makes the best team. But I put forth a reasonable argument that St. X was the stronger team - i.e. the team that would win most often in a series - and you tried to refute it with an irrelevant point. Imagine this hypothetical to show the problem with your assertion that the team that wins the championship always had the best overall season: (Disclaimer: this is NOT supposed to be St. X and Trinity - it's a vastly exaggerated hypothetical) Team A goes 6-5 against a weak schedule in the regular season and is blown out in a laugher by team B. Team B goes undefeated throughout the regular season against the best schedule in the country, steamrolling all of their opponents. Both team A and B advance to the finals where they meet again. A faced an easy playoff road, while B played the hardest teams in the country to get there and blew out some of them. Before the finals game, team B's coach dies and its starting QB and TB get food poisoning. Team A wins the playoff game in a close battle on a poor call at the end of the game. Would you still argue that team A "had the better season," or "was the stronger team" in every sense of the word? I think that contention would be absurd.

St. X lost the title game. They deserved to lose it. They were outplayed by Trinity. I'm not sure if I could make that any more clear. That doesn't mean that it can't reasonably be argued that St. X was the better team in 2005, especially given the mitigating circumstances in their sole loss. Rockpride said he was sick of the argument that St. X had the better season, and that the argument was absurd. I say that, objectively, one could make the argument that St. X was the better team - i.e. would have won more often than Trinity if they played a series. That's all.

Actually, one could quite easily make an argument that St. X had a better overall season. They lost fewer games, won more, had a harder schedule by far, and blew out the only team that beat them in the most lopsided contest ever in a series that includes games when Trinity was a brand new school and St. X an established power. Congratulations to Trinity on their state title. They played the better game on Friday. But it's not hard to make an objective argument that St. X was the better team this year. They lost one game, to their biggest rival, when their starting QB broke his foot on the game's second play, and they were robbed on a spot that should have given them a first down that would have allowed them to potentially send the game into OT. I think if St. X and Trinity had played 10 times this season, X would have won 7-8 of them.

If the criteria is who would win most often if they played as they were heading into the final game... 1. St. X 2. Trinity 3. Lex Cath 4. Bowling Green The rest I know nothing about.

Just to clarify, I meant knocked out of the game, not knocked unconscious.

FWIW, Curley actually broke his foot on the third play of the game and then pulled his groin on a subsequent play - not to mention the neck injury that ended up knocking him out. Kudos to Trinity for playing a very good, tough and smart game. Curley's injury certainly did not hurt their chances, though. His attempts to continue to play were admirable, but it obviously kept him from being able to run the ball, which, IMO would have changed the game.

It was a relatively isolated incident. You have to keep in mind that Sass and Speers think Anderson is something just shy of the second coming and want him to touch the ball on every play, even on defense and special teams and at halftime and during water breaks. The asthma wasn't really a consistent problem throughout the season, more just a case of St. X getting both backs the ball. The injury he suffered at the end of the first Trinity game was what limited him for some of the year.