For the second time in three weeks, Columbia Academy rolled over Wayne Academy 60-14, but this time it was in the first round of the playoffs.
With the blowout win, the Cougars will make the 180-mile trek to Rayville, La., Friday night to take on Riverfield Academy (10-1) for a juicy second round matchup.
Despite winning 10 straight, the Raiders have been viewed by outsiders as a team that hasn’t played against elite competition this season unlike the Cougars. But CA head coach Randy Butler believes it doesn’t matter who the Raiders beat, just that they have continued to win against whoever they line up against.
“I’ve heard the last couple of weeks when people start talking about matchups that Riverfield hasn’t played anybody. Well, they’ve won 10 straight games. It doesn’t matter who they’re playing,” he said. “When a team wins 10 straight games, they’re doing something right. They’ve got good players and are well coached. It’s obvious when you put on the tape that they have good players and play as hard and as physical as any team I’ve seen this year. They’re right up there with Simpson. They’re fun to watch because they play so hard.”
The Raiders are a run-first team based on the veer but resemble Georgia Tech’s triple option attack with running the same plays over and over again from tight or more spread out formations.
“They run the veer and are very similar to Simpson. They run inside dive, outside dive and don’t throw it a lot. We have to tackle and take care of the dive. They’ll run the same play at you six straight times. You may stop it five straight times, but if you get out of your gap or miss a tackle, they’re going to move the chains,” Butler said. “They’re similar to Simpson but more multiple formation wise. They run a lot of the same plays but out of multiple formations, motions and shifts. If you start thinking and looking too much at all of that, you get back on your heels and you get knocked off the ball.”
As aggressive as the Raiders like to play offensively attempting to run right down the opposition’s throat, they may be even more aggressive on the other side of the ball.
“Defensively, they’re downhill. I’ve heard (offensive coordinator) Norman (Joseph) the past few days looking at them say I can’t tell if they’re blitzing or their linebackers are just super aggressive when they see a run action,” Butler said. “That shows you they’re very, very aggressive up front. They’re going to come after you and can create a lot of negative plays. Above all else, they run to the football. When you’re a defensive coach, you love to see defenses run to the football and try to get 11 kids to the football every snap. They’re fun to watch; they really are.”
Butler believes that if the Cougars keep playing the way they have during their current four-game winning streak, they will have a good chance at advancing.
“We just have to be persistent and protect the football,” he said. “We’ve done a great job of creating explosive plays. Defensively, we have to keep big plays out of their hands. If we do that, we’ll be fine.”
In Friday night’s opening round win over Wayne, the Cougars were led by an explosive, efficient offense and an opportunistic defense that had two pick-sixes from Aaron Thomas and one from Harrison Hartzog.
“It’s mind boggling that it ended up the same score. Looking back the two things that stand out about that game is we didn’t turn it over again, which is five straight weeks. That really just helps. When you don’t turn it over, you’re usually going to win the football game. I wish somebody would do a study on NFL, college and high school to check to see what the percentage is of teams that have not turned the football over for five straight weeks. It’s something else,” Butler said. “The other thing was we had three pick-sixes. When you score three touchdowns defensively, you’re probably going to win the game. You add that to no turnovers, that’s how we scored 60 points.”
While the Cougars technically cruised to a 44-point win, it was only a two-possession game at halftime.
“We had a chance to go up three scores before halftime, but we had a few penalties. That was very disappointing. At halftime I challenged them to get it right, and we came back and played much better,” Butler said. “We made some adjustments defensively for the second half. We had been exclusively in one defense the first half, then we actually played what we had played against them two weeks ago. That really helped a lot.”
If the Cougars are able to win Friday night in Rayville, they will either head to Indianola Academy, where their season ended a year ago, or host Leake Academy in the semifinals of the MAIS AAA state playoffs.
Kickoff is at 7 p.m.
Pictured Above: Ras Pace breaks a tackle going into the end zone. | Photo by Holli Powell
