Eric Clark
BCP
If I didn’t know any better I’d swear there was a full moon last Friday night, lots of crazy things happened.
1. I will just go ahead and say it. East Lake has some very good football players but collectively they are not playing up to expectations. Either that or they are not being put in the best position to make plays and win. I don’t know which way to go with it but something is missing there and it is glaringly obvious. From the outside looking in it the Eagles have too much offensive firepower to be sitting at 2-3. The made Countryside, Largo, Trinity Catholic and somewhat CCC seem to have PERFECT defensive schemes to keep them somewhat neutralized. I just can’t put my finger on it.
2. Small School Ball: I know we sound like a broken record but there is some good ball being played down in 2A-5. The district is up for grabs right now but I am picking Admiral Farragut to close this out.
3. Big favorites squeak by: Is there reason for concern that Countryside nearly lost their streak against Palm Harbor, a team that typically Countryside should never lose to? If anything this may have been a wakeup call and might spell trouble for the rest of the district as now they will start district play more focused on the end goal. The other would be Lakewood. No real excuses here but perhaps this could be a wakeup call for them as well. A loss to Middleton would have meant a much more difficult task of getting to the playoffs. They will need to play much more inspired football to unseat Jesuit as the favorite.
4. Tarpon: No Head Coach, No QB no problem… Well sort of, Tarpon got down early but showed its resilience and skill coming back to get a 10 point win over Northeast. Hat’s off to Kenny Blanch and Kenyatta Merriex who came up big in this game. Blanch replaced Louis Pappas and Merriex picked up the slack from missing Dondre Daley. Let’s keep it in perspective though, they were playing Northeast.
5. Dunedin, Dunedin, Dunedin. Dunedin will not make the playoffs this year but they are looking to play spoiler in anyway they can. This loss by Gibbs most assuredly takes them out of the district race. It appears to be more of a 3 team race but there is a long way to go. Spoto, and Gibbs are technically still in it but it doesn’t look good. Watch out for the Falcons (Just a bit of homer there).
6. Boca Ciega: What are they? They are not what we thought they were because we thought they were much better than this. It’s clear that at this point they have no chance at making the playoffs. This team is very talented which makes it all the more shocking the performances they’ve had the past few weeks.