DeSales Dad

Colts get their first undefeated regular season in school history!

He's back and CAL will be a different team in the playoffs. It is still VERY MUCH a three-headed monster in the west between DeSales, CAL, and Mayfield.

Road trip!!! :-)

My biased opinion is that the winner of the DeSales/CAL game has the toughest path. That's a QUARTERFINAL game. The winner follows that with a four-hour trip to Mayfield the day after Thanksgiving to even GET to Lexington. No-brainer in my opinion...

Welcome to the site, Roundsteak. Several astute observations already. There was a young man who graduated last year who broke a four generation string of St X graduates to attend DeSales for the very reasons you mentioned.

Everybody except Mayfield.

The best part of the deal for the upcoming games was that St X approached DeSales with the idea for a three-year series, and offered DeSales two of the home games. It's a win-win for the Colts. There will be an electric atmosphere for that game next season.

Agreed. DeSales beat St X in a JV game in 2014, but like you said, the numbers at the varsity level are often a separator. Ones versus ones isn't that different, but it's when you sub two or three deep, particularly on both lines, that the drop off becomes much larger.

They do have a three year series with St X starting next year (Louisville, not Cincinnati).

The young Colts come up an extra point short of sending the game to OT. Beware 2A. The future is bright in the south end of Louisville.

Final

Ads looked impressive, especially in the second half. It might be that NEITHER team gets there, but I would love to see the seemingly unstoppable Danville offense against the stingy DeSales defense. The Colts are giving up 9 points per game against a tough schedule and have given up a TOTAL of 3 points the last four games. There are these teams named CAL and Mayfield before that, of course.

And I thought the Danville-LCA thread was a little salty....

This season, X and Trinity stand alone in the city. Then probably Male, even though they haven't been competitive with either. After that, I think our little 2A Colts are in the next tier with PRP, Butler, Manual. Am I too Colt-jaded in that statement?

I think there may be a DeSales contingent going to watch this game. Think we would stand out if we wore our bright orange??? :lol2:

Hopefully the young Tigers can bounce back. They will have their hands full again, and for those outside of Bardstown, this also carries an old rivalry. Mark Brown and at least one of his assistants were at Nelson County when they were state champs and Bardstown was REALLY good. It was a heated rivalry between two very good teams back then. I would look for Brown and his Panthers to get some payback from last year's defeat.

WOW!!! Congrats to the team with the best mascot name in the state! The 2A puzzle may have just added a piece. You know it's a good win when you get comments from fans of other 2A contenders - I see a couple from Mayfield to go along with this one.

Good win for Boyle. Lexington Catholic has a lot of talent at the skill positions, but they are lacking in the trenches. Unfortunately for them, that's where most games are won and lost.

The varsity usually gets 1-2 series against Shawnee and then it's time to watch the future Colts get some significant varsity action.

Wow...strong words calling them better than last year's team. I know TP well enough to know that he isn't a blow hard. Having not seen this year's edition of the Cardinals (I went to their game against Corbin last year at Lindsey Wilson), TP's words give me pause. As I mentioned earlier, I think this is a toss-up among the three teams in the west. The home field advantage is big for Mayfield, although I don't believe it has anything to do with the mystique of War Memorial. I think it has more to do with a four hour bus trip the day after Thanksgiving. That's a tough task for a bunch of teenagers, especially if the Colts are fortunate enough to get that far. They are SO young. It would not surprise me if such a drastic change in routine threw them off.

As usual in the past few years, any of the three teams from the west could win it all. To me they are all equal - CAL will be a different team in the playoffs with Carr back, DeSales will be a different team because they are SO young and growing up every game in front of our eyes, and Mayfield is Mayfield and will be playing at home this year. I don't see a Desales 2013 or CAL 2016 type team in this crowd (as I personally think those are the two best 2A teams in the past five years).

As an alum, it pains me to see what is going on there. Their numbers are terrible, and I'm not sure why. Just for clarification, Nelson County is not a very good program historically. They only had a handful of winning seasons before Mark Brown came there. In less than 10 years, he turned them into a state champion at the highest level, knocking off Trinity on the way to the championship in 1996. When he left, the program faded back into its historical place, although this season has been particularly bad. Brown has the magic touch for sure. He had turned Marion County into a power before coming to Nelson County, then did the same thing at John Hardin and is now doing it again at E-town.

Cry in my beer moment...From the DeSales perspective, the Colts have a tough chore on an annual basis. We would have to beat CAL (with Carr back in the lineup), Mayfield, and Danville/LCA to win the title. And this year, that road would include a trip to Mayfield. I think Bart Starr and the Packers were the last team to beat them at home in the playoffs. Of course, CAL has the same predicament. I don't think any other team would have as tough of a road starting in the QUARTER finals....

As an interested observer, this post, to me, is the key. I haven't seen Boyle, but DeSales played LexCath a couple of weeks ago and it was entirely one-sided, especially in the trenches. Lex Cath had one first down with a minute to go in the third quarter. The QB is really good and has some nice receivers, but he could not breathe until DeSales went into the "prevent yourselves from winning" defense. He picked them apart at that point. Without having seen Boyle, but knowing they held Danville to 10 points, I would look for Boyle to win this by at least two TDs, possibly more.

I can only speak to 2A because that is nearly all that I watch. That being said, the top 5 in 2A would beat (in many cases, HAVE beaten) some top 10 teams all the way up to 6A. However, even the best 2A teams can't compete with the elite 6A teams. We learned that last year when CAL, the 2A state champ, got handled relatively easily by Simon Kenton. This year, both Danville and Desales have beaten Top 10 6A schools (Danville over #10 Frederick Douglass & DeSales over #6 Butler, according to the 10/2 rankings). I think the current top four in 6A would not be touchable by a 2A team, but PRP at #5 is possible. The Panthers and DeSales have a common opponent in Butler, both of them defeating the Bears by a narrow margin. So, in essence, my opinion is that the best teams in 2A could be considered top 5 teams as high as 6A. But there is no doubt that the watering down effect is faster in the smaller classes.