Saturday, Oct. 04, 2008

Week 5 recap

There are some things that, even after 13 1/2 years on the job, still don't make sense to me.

Like how a 4A school cannot some years field a full cross country team.

Or how, year after year, a Davis football game at Zaepfel Stadium is like a game being played on Pluto.

Seemingly every year, a Tri-City team treks up I-82 to beat up on the Pirates. Then when said team's coach is called on his cell phone munching on a Miner's burger for the stats, he asks incredulously, "Didn't Davis call them in?"

Um, no. Then the inevitable follow-up: "Didn't the Yakima paper cover the game?"

Nyet again.

A curse word or two inevitably follows. Then, the explanation that no, we don't have stats, because John Crawford -- the CBBN's stats guru -- accepts only the home team's statistics for his compilation, so we didn't bother to take them ourselves. Followed by a fevered flipping of the mental Rolodex, trying to remember a few nuggets of information about the game. Finished with, "Sorry I can't do more."

The latest coach to play this game with Herald staffers late on a Friday night was Southridge's Andy Troxel after his team's 42-0 waxing of the Pirates. Guess what Andy got to do with his Saturday afternoon? That's right -- he sat in front of his TV watching film of the game and compiling the stats to send to John (and eventually to us).

So please, please, please ... if you are a coach about to play Davis, play it safe. Have your statisticians there as a backup. We sportswriters will thank you for it.

I, meanwhile, watched the Battle of Richland, as Bombers senior Quinn Zorich called it after he made a game-saving tackle on fourth-and-inches to help his team beat the Falcons 21-20.

Unlike mi compadre Andy Perdue, though, I wouldn't say that Hanford controlled the game. Nor would I say that Richland controlled it. The game was a series of ebbs and flows, with each team seizing control for a while, then coughing it up with a turnover or a badly-timed penalty.

It came down to which team would get the final break to go its way, and it was the Bombers who got two big breaks in the final quarter -- the first Hanford's botched extra-point try on what looked like the tying touchdown with 7:50 to play, and the second a personal-foul face mask that gave Richland a first down with 3 minutes to play, allowing the Bombers to run out the clock.

Zorich's tackle of Hanford quarterback Travis Chalk on that critical fourth down made up for his whiff on the Falcons' Kody Winsor on another fourth-and-short early in the quarter -- Winsor shirked off Zorich's diving tackle attempt and then raced untouched 33 yards for the touchdown right before the missed PAT.

But the defensive star of the game was Hanford senior DE Tony Griggs-Smith, who was playing his first game of the season after being ineligible the first four weeks. Griggs-Smith was a disruptive force in the backfield all night, finishing with six tackles -- 4 1/2 for loss -- before getting hurt in the final minutes of the third quarter.

Talking to another of mis compadres, Kevin Anthony, it sounds like Kamiakin is in a world of trouble. The Braves offense sputtered all night in a 10-0 loss to Eisenhower, and the addition of formerly ineligible sophomore RB Dominic Davis -- about whom coach Craig Beverlin had been raving for some time -- didn't make that big of a difference.

Kamiakin is now in definite trouble just to make the playoffs. The Braves are 2-2 in Cascade Division play, but their losses are to teams they might end up tied with at season's end (Eastmont and Ike) and they still have to play Walla Walla and Richland. They've lost Dane Knapp for the season to a head injury -- that poor kid has been snakebitten throughout his career. It's not lookin' good right now.

I noticed that Kennewick went back to Trent Brown at quarterback this week against Moses Lake, and he threw a pair of TD passes to Dakota Tripp in the Lions' 28-13 loss. That's a good sign for the Lions because their best bet for success is for Brown to do well behind center and to have both Tripp and sophomore Drew Loftus effective in the passing game as receivers.

OK, time to head out for the weekend.

Til next time ...