Photos by Kevin Nagle
On Nov. 7, the Bryant Hornets will be hosting the Conway Wampus Cats with the 7A/6A-Central Conference championship on the line as well as a top seed in the Class 7A playoffs and a first-round bye.
On Nov. 7, the Siloam Springs Panthers will be traveling to Russellville where they will battle the Cyclones for a spot in the Class 6A playoffs. It’ll be win or season over.
And, for both teams, such will be the case regardless of the outcome of the game between the two teams tonight at the Panthers’ Glenn W. Black Stadium.
The incentive for Bryant, currently 7-0-1 overall, is the potential for an unbeaten regular season. The incentive for Siloam Springs, 3-5 overall, is the chance to pull a season-making upset. And it will be Senior Night.
But the Panthers are coming off a 57-3 bludgeoning from the Greenwood Bulldogs, who appeared to be taking out some frustration after consecutive losses to Conway and Bryant.
Yes, the Hornets beat a team that beat Siloam Springs by 54 points.
It stands to reason that, if either team builds a big lead early, the reserves for both teams could get considerable playing time, just to prevent front-line players from getting banged up going into the much more important games next week.
Kylon Boyle (19) goes high for a pass against Greenwood. (Photo by Kevin Nagle)
So the Hornets will make the four-hour trip to the border town in northwest Arkansas, leaving early, returning late — really late.
As far as the game goes, the Panthers (whose uniforms will remind Bryant fans of those other Panthers) are led on offense by quarterback Chris Lampton, one of the top pass-run players in the conference. He’s rushed for 444 yards and seven scores and passed for 1,493 yards and 10 touchdowns, completing 54.5 percent of his throws.
However, Lampton has thrown a league-high 11 interceptions as well, the same number that the Bryant defense has picked off thus far.
“Things revolve around the quarterback,” acknowledged Bryant defensive coordinator Steve Griffith. “He’s an outstanding athlete. He does a great job of running their offense, throws the ball well and runs the ball well.
“They run the power read and zone read offense like several teams we’ve seen this year,” he noted. “The key is (Lampton) runs the ball real well. We need to make sure we keep him contained in the running game and, in the passing game, put a little pressure on him, do a good job of getting into the passing lanes. They do a nice job on their screens so hopefully with some of the experience we’ve gotten over the last few weeks playing some of those things, it will help us as we go.”
Running back Rickey Hughes has rushed for 430 yards and five touchdowns. Lampton’s favorite pass target is Zane Washington (31 catches, 330 yards, three TDs). Parker Baldwin has 26 receptions for 613 yards and six touchdowns).
The Hornets changed up their defense last week to slow down Van Buren’s top pass-catcher, Jaylyn Dye, who came into the contest averaging five catches a game for an average of over 21 yards per pass. The Hornets held him to three receptions for 41 yards.
“We knew in the passing game that (Dye) was the key,” Griffith noted. “He’s an outstanding football player, the leading receiver in the conference. We started out playing our base defense and they were able to get a nice gain with him.
“So we just made our minds up that he was not going to beat us,” he noted. “We went to what we call our star coverage. We put a man on him man-to-man, zoned up the rest of it, took one guy out of the equation of stopping the run. We felt like we could contain the run without that extra man in the box and we could win the football game. That was the ultimate goal. They got some yardage as a result of that but we kept it contained and kept everything in front of us.”
The Bryant offense had a good night, racking up over 400 yards of offense. They’ll see a different defensive approach from the Panthers but not something completely foreign.
“They’re a pressure team,” said Bryant offensive coordinator Lance Parker. “They’re going to show us a lot of different fronts and try to just cause some chaos. They bring a lot of blitzes so it may be a little bit of a frustrating game at times, just trying to figure out where all the pressure’s coming from. But people have done that to us before. I think we’ll be okay.”
BRYANT HORNETS
2014 stats through 8 games
Score by quarters
Opponent 19 35 35 20 — 109
BRYANT 69 79 46 76 — 270
Team stats
Oppt Bryant
First downs 126 150
Rushes-yds 257-898 329-1,988
Passing 129-204-11 87-114-1
Passing yds 1,460 979
Fumbles-lost 21-12 9-8
Penalties-yds 29-283 58-473
INDIVIDUAL STATS:
Rushing: Boyle 91-570, Turner 75-441, Warner 76-400, Terry 29-182, Burks 28-156, Hunter 10-96, Tierney 3-53, Schrader 3-30, Tucker 1-30, Coleman 9-28, Dr.Alpe 4-7, Bonvillain 1-(-5).
Passing (C-A-I-Y): Warner 75-110-0-852 (4 TD), Burks 7-8-1-61 (2 TD), Bonvillain 3-4-0-34, Schrader 1-1-0-23, Jacobs 1-1-0-13, Lee 0-1-0-0.
Receiving: Lee 23-306, Turner 13-64, Orender 12-179, Boyle 11-101, Kelly 8-97, Royal 6-62, Terry 6-62, Tierney 5-42, Hunter 2-12, Martindale 1-31, Hunt 1-13, L.Smith 1-10.
Scoring: Boyle 54 (9 td-r), Denker 50 (6 of 7 fg. {41, 45, 44, 48, 35, 28}, 33 of 34 PATs), Warner 36 (6 td-r), Turner 30 (4 td-r, 1 td-rec.), Burks 24 (4 td-r), Lee 18 (3 td-p), Kelly 8 (1 td-p, 1 conv.-p), Terry 6 (1 td-r), Bruick 6 (1 int.-ret), Chapdelaine 6 (1 int-ret.), Murdock 6 (1 td-bl.punt ret), Murray 6 (1 ko-ret), Royal 6 (1 td-rec), Tucker 6 (1 td-r), Ray 2 (2 of 2 PAT).
