This Week in HS Sports - October 15, 2009

Week 7 sees things start to heat up

With apologies for the absence of recent posts, I offer the tried-and-true excuse of problems this week with my trusty laptop…
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Okay…I know you always ask yourself which high school team is my favorite OUTSIDE the state of Texas. Well, the answer is John Glenn High School in Westland, Michigan. The reason? It’s my wife’s alma mater. The Rockets have a pretty good team this season, and they were aided by this strange ending in their Homecoming game…
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The Houston Chronicle’s Week 7 area rankings are out and you can see them here. The 5A Top Five—in order—are The Woodlands, Hightower, Katy, Cinco Ranch and Klein Collins.
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Dave Campbell's Texas Football also has their Week 7 statewide rankings posted and three area teams—The Woodlands (3), Katy (7) and Hightower (8) – occupy the Top 10.
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The deeper we go into the season, the more interesting things get around the Houston area.
Our Friday night radio crew will be in League City to watch Clear Brook and Clear Lake pound on each other for four quarters. These teams have similar offenses—Clear Brook head coach Phil Lanier is a former Lake assistant—and that means they both like to run the football a lot.
Lake is coming off a game against Alvin in which they didn’t even attempt a pass. 70 plays, 70 rushes. On the season the Falcons have only attempted 32 passes in six games. But that’s three more than Brook has thrown.
Both teams like to run from a modified version of the wishbone, a double-wingback type of formation. Fullback dives and power sweeps—the stuff that old-school football is made of!—should be the order of the evening. For Clear Brook, we expect to call Brandon Ellison’s name quite a bit. In six games, he’s already carried for 711 yards. Sean McCraney, with 590 yards, is the leading rusher for Clear Lake.
Ironically, because these two teams are so synonymous with a running attack, the game very easily could come down to whichever team manages to pass the ball better.
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On Saturday night, our crew heads to the Berry Center in Cypress. The Cypress Ridge Rams will take on the Cypress Falls Golden Eagles in what likely will be a crucial game in the Eagles’ season.
After starting their season with an impressive offensive performance, and win, against Bryan, Cy Falls lost four in a row—to Westfield, North Shore, Jersey Village and Cypress Springs—before holding on for a big win over neighborhood rival Langham Creek and their old offensive coordinator Todd Thompson, 29-28. Langham had a last-second 35-yard field goal attempt hit the crossbar in the loss.
So, at 1-2 in District 15-5A, if Cy Falls could pull off another upset, they move right back into the thick of the district’s playoff race. The Rams are coming into the game at 2-1 in district play following a closer-than-expected win over Cy-Fair, 39-36.
We expect to see a lot of offense and I think the team that wins the turnover battle will post the ‘W’.
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Our Dot-Com Game of the Week affords us another opportunity to see the area’s top-ranked team, the Woodlands Highlanders, as they host the Oak Ridge War Eagles in a District 14-5A matchup.
The Eagles are coming off a close loss, 22-21, to Conroe in their district opener last week. The Highlanders are still undefeated.
This much we know: The Woodlands’ Daniel Lasco is always impressive. At times this season, the Oak Ridge offense has been extremely impressive. But, the Highlander defense has been surprisingly impressive. If the War Eagles are to come away with an impressive victory, they’ll have to figure out how to negate Lasco and the TWHS defense.
How’s that for a creative use of the word ‘impressive’? Impressive, isn’t it?
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Our TAPPS game features Houston St. Thomas and Beaumont Kelly. With St. Pius, who has already defeated both teams, in the driver’s seat for the District 3 championship, these two teams will fight it out for the other automatic playoff bid from the district. They’ll meet for the first of two games this Friday night in Houston.
We also have some great District 20-4A matchups as the Vidor Pirates travel to Port Neches-Groves. The undefeated PN-G Indians (6-0) are currently 3-0 and tied with Beaumont Central for the district lead, but Vidor (5-1, 2-1) is just a game off the pace and will be looking to jumble up the district race. This one should be a big-time battle!
Meanwhile, Beaumont Central (5-1, 3-0) will be looking to avoid an upset at the hands of the Nederland Bulldogs.
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Here are some of the best-of-the-rest matchups this week—
Cypress Woods and Cypress Springs meet Friday night at Pridgeon Stadium. Springs (surprisingly?) sit atop the District 15-5A race, but they have some tough matchups still to come, starting with this one against 2-1 Cy Woods.
Spring Branch Memorial will travel to Crump Stadium to take on the Elsik Rams. Both teams are currently 3-0 in District 18-5A and this one will be for outright control of the district. If Memorial wins, they will have already beaten Strake Jesuit, Stratford and Elsik.
Pearland and Pasadena Memorial find themselves tied atop the District 22-5A race and they’ll faceoff against each other on Friday in Pasadena.
Hightower and Elkins will meet to determine who stays undefeated and on top of District 23-5A/Zone A.

Previous stories : August 15, 2009  August 20, 2009  August 26, 2009  August 31, 2009
                                September 8, 2009  September 16, 2009  September 18, 2009  September 25, 2009
                        September 28, 2009  October 5, 2009  October 7, 2009