Red Shift

A lukewarm to kind of spicy upset. Belfry has outscored opponents by an average of 22.75 points per game in games they have won. Their only loss was the first game of the season by one point. They are probably underrated. I don't know that the Lady Devils expected to have a perfect record for even the first half of the season. This week begs the questions, "Will Russell move up, move down, or stay about the same in the BGP polls?" And "Will Belfry make an appearance in the top 20." I think the Magoffin County win will boost the Lady Devils more than the Belfry loss will hurt them, especially if Belfry moves into the Top 20.

I don't know that was so much an excuse as it was an observation. I believe Bf1 did say Belfry was a good team that played well. An excuse would have been more along the lines of "Well, Russell should have won, but they were tired from 6 games in the last 9 days and played in a much harder pool than Belfry did. They also had to travel farther than Belfry. Further, the refs just blew the game. Belfry just got lucky to play Russell on an off day." The fact of the matter was Belfry was the better team yesterday, but a second game has a very good chance of turning out differently. (That's what makes high school basketball fun!) This is a big win for Belfry, and if Russell had to lose at some point, I'm sure that they're glad they lost to a good team. And although Merle would surely like a 12-0 record, he's probably not too disappointed in 11-1.

Two scores as per KHSAA Scoreboard: Russellville 52 Grundy, Va. 40 #20 Russell 94 #16 Mogoffin Co. 82

I believe VanHoose had 30 points. It seemed like 25 of those came in the 2nd half. Russell scored 29 in the third quarter, more than doubling their score from the beginning of the half. Dodd seemed much more pleased with the Devils' effort after today's game, especially the defensive intensity. Even though it was a four point game after 2 quarters (28-24), Russell seemed in control for most of the first half, they just missed a few lay-ups on the runout and VanHoose was a little cold from outside. The more positive aspect of the game was the Russell foul situation. I don't believe Russell committed more than 8 fouls in the first half, and they had fewer than 7 in the second. Further, Russell looked decent from the line, particularly Scott Gill who went at least 4-6. I was more than pleased with the effort, especially because Russell was still in school today and had to play this game almost directly after the last class.

Good win for the Devils after a long week of basketball. Nonetheless, they have a lot of work to do if they want to repeat as 16th Region champs. Russell looked good early, leading by about 10 at half time, but won on a pair of free-throws after the buzzer. VanHoose was held to less than 20.

Final.

Final. Caught this score coming home tonight.

http://http://www.wsaz.com/sports/headlines/4803751.html Here is WSAZ's coverage of the game. I think its the second story in the Saturday morning sports wake-up call clip. (Right column under featured sports videos). It includes that 4th and goal play from the goal line view and an interview with Kasey Clark.

Most importantly, congratulations to Mercer and GREAT job Devils on a season that just came up three points short. You went up againts improbable odds and came so very close to doing it again. Keep your heads up, (and this coming from an often pessimistic person) I was more than impressed with the effort, the improvement, and the will to win the in the last two weeks of the season. I guess that was actually two comments. Oh well...

The only comment I want to make on this is that Mercer's special teams didn't seem much if any better except in one aspect - the kickoffs. (Mercer had two touchbacks). I would wager to say (though I'm not positive) Russell had more return yards and longer punts on average. Mercer's lone kicked XP was as badly kicked a good XP as I have ever seen (It reminded me of the Ashland OT extra point that would have won Russell the game had it been missed.) Their other XP's were scored on a broken play, thus I wouldn't say that Mercer's were much better than Russell's if they were at all, rather that Mercer was able to minimize the effect of their mistakes in the kicking game. Russell's only missed fieldgoal was a 42 yarder into a swirling wind. By far the biggest factor in this game was turnover margin. Russell was driving toward the Mercer endzone with about 6 minutes left in the first half when the Devils fumbled the ball. I believe that was a drive that Mercer turned into points. Though the many TO's sealed Russell's fate, it was Jone's first INT that really seemed to hurt the Devils as they were driving inside of Titan territory when it occured. The other three hurt, but not as these two did.

fear_the_mullet I know this is way off topic, but I believe Russell's mullet trumps your mullet any day. I give you the King of Mullets:

It sounds like the Devils are getting a nice, loud welcome back up the hill.

I suppose that's so, but I even think that you could stand some more home seating. There were an awful lot of Pirates standing around the fence too.

Thoughts on the game: 1) I want to make an apology to the PA guy whom I called unprofessional before even remembering what he was like. I expected something completely different and aside from being a little repetitive and cheesy (Everybody, let's rumble!) he was very enjoyable, accurate, and professional. 2) Russell's defense was a monster. They really only allowed two long drives to the Belfry offense, once at the end of the first half, once toward the end of the second. The stunting and blitzing really disrupted the Pirates offense up the middle, and Russell's speed to the outside eliminated the sweeps and option plays. They have improved vastly over the course of the month I have gone without seeing them. Some of the Devil's deep pass coverage looked a little leaky, but all in all Russell's defense dominated the game. 3) Tyler Jones was exceptional. There were a couple of plays that he kept alive (the final TD and a first down run late in the ballgame come to mind.) There were several others in which minimized a loss by getting closer to the line of scrimmage. The only bad pass I can recall off hand was an overthrow of the TE Corey Hall. He ran the bootleg to near perfection and was the keystone to the offense. 4) Russell never let being at Belfry phase them. I can give some of that credit to fan support that came down. Not only did they overflow the visitors seating but I believe they backed Russell enough to neutralize that homefield advantage. 5) I have to be honest, the margin of victory could have been quite a few points wider. I believe Russell had two Red Zone opportunities that resulted in zero points. This is not a knock on Belfry, because they too could have scored a couple of TD's. However, I want it to be known to all the Mercer Co. fans that this too could have been a blowout and it was against better competition. With that being said, I can't say Russell is the favorite going into next week's game. Again, the pass coverage looked a little weak at times, the kicking game in terms of extra points didn't look great, (though Evans may have just been having a bad game) and the offense occasionally moved back- wards more easily than it should have, though for the majority of the second half it looked great. Lastly, I want to say that the CAM is a very nice stadium. Even though it could stand an expansion or two, for the most part they were facilities worthy of highest honor. (I just wish there was an easier way of getting there.) Congratulations to Belfry and good luck next week to the DEVILS!

Well, here are my two cents on the matter: I don't like PA guys who are homers. I have been brought up that all officials, play-by-play announcers, PA speakers, etc. should promote at least on some level a professional (non-bias) air about them. However, it is just a nuisance to me and I really don't think it has much bearing on the game, which is what really matters. I am excited about the game tomorrow and can't wait to get on the road. I haven't seen the Devils play in over a month and I am hoping to see both a very much improved ballclub and a winner on Friday. I'm also excited to see Belfry's new stadium, I hear its fantastic. It's going to be a slugfest out there tomorrow night - good old smashmouth football - and though I haven't seen Russell recently or Belfry at all, I believe the key to this game will be turnovers. Simply based on the last two meetings momentum has been huge. When Russell has turned the ball over they have been beat, when they keep the ball, they seem to be superior. It should be another great one and I can't wait.

A score he got while taking it directly behind me. I'm still waiting on my score...

I want to be out of school on Friday, but I'd rather be able to go to the game.:mad:

Unfair! Unfair! (No not like that! ) I hadn't heard the news (I sure didn't see it in the paper) and this is the first time I've been on BGP since the news broke. Congratulations Kala on her huge achievement!

As for the schedule, it is a vast improvement over this year's. I really like the trip to Lawrence Co. and the "trip" to Raceland for the last game of the year. But I'll be honest, I don't necessarily like the bye week in the last week of the year. You likely will not know who you will be playing the next week until the week before the game anyway. I suppose, though, that I'd rather have it week 11 as opposed to week 1.

Yep. But I'm all for burning anything Ashland. (Just wish we could have done it earlier this year:mad: )

I had no official word about Nick, but it was the collar bone and it was possible he either broke it or dislocated his shoulder. I believe it was on a kickoff tackle that he went down hard and then kind of got dog piled. It sounded like he went to KDMC during the game. But again, I had no official word. As for Tyler I didn't hear anything, but yes he did limp off the field late in the third quarter.

35-21 Ashland scores a TD late to win by 14 in a "closer than the experts think" affair.

JB plays a little bingo tonight, as did Catdaddy.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!!!!

There's alot on my mind right now so sorry if I just jump from one thing to another. That one hurt. Earily similar to the Kiwanis bowl three years ago. That was all I could think about going into OT, and I wonder if it perhaps leaked into any of the Devils' minds on the field... Russell simply missed on opportunities to win the ball game or put the ball game away. Certainly the 5 fumbles should show that Russell had every opportunity to win. I do wonder why Russell didn't stick with the power-I in the second half. I realize that Russell only has a limited set from that formation, but it seemed to be very effective on that first drive. I suppose I can understand McGlone going back to his bread and butter, however. How far in front of Frazier did the pass on third down in the 3rd OT skip? I really don't know the answer to this, I couldn't see the actual play and I would like to know. I feel terrible for Evans (the Russell kicker). He seems to be having a bad year. He had to quit the soccer team due to leg problems, he didn't have a good game against Greenup on the PAT's, and then tonight, which you certainly can't blame him for. However, I would much rather him miss now than in the playoffs (where it always seems the Russell kicking game haunts us). If Dwaine is reading, keep your head up, we've got 13 games left this season, we need ya. I feel horrible right now for everyone on the Russell side. I certainly didn't wish for this on my senior year, but we can still have an excellent team and season. It will be interesting to see how this team reacts. I've been worried about how this team would react. It's been 13 games since they've been in this position, but hopefully they can get well against Boyd Co. next week. Sorry for rambling and being totally incoherent, but that's part of what this site is for, right? Hopefully I'll be able to regroup by tomorrow with actual thoughts on the game. Note: I'm not on the ball team, I think that would be pretty apparent from the time it took after the ballgame to post - I just take these things very hard.