Three High School Football Playoff Games to Watch This Weekend
It's Round Two of the Playoffs and the Acadiana Area teams are still well represented. I've been looking over the match-ups and I wanted to highlight three games that really jumped off the page at me leading up to Friday.
1). #2 Iowa at #18 Crowley
These are two teams that are very familiar with each other, they met up in week one at the birth of a new football season and will meet again with everything on the line. Iowa narrowly defeated Crowley in that week one match-up 13-12. Despite Iowa being undefeated and Crowley having an up and down year at 5-5 the experts are calling this more of a toss up type game. Crowley did pull the upset of #15 Albany last week while Iowa easily got by #31 Wossman. This Crowley team has come a long way from the 2-8 season a year ago and it also underwent a coaching change (Jeptha Wall), yet they're still here. This Iowa squad also has a new coach this season (Tommy Johns) yet they expected to be here, as they look to advance to the quarterfinals for the third straight year. Both of these teams have a new aura about them but who will come out victorious will come down to who executes best on the field Friday night, Crowley has the home field advantage.
2). #3 Acadiana vs. #14 Landry-Walker
Immediately after the Class 5A brackets were released I texted Acadiana Broadcaster James P. Bitterman asking what he thought of the 3 seed for the Wreckin' Rams. He responded, "It's the second round vs. Landry Walker that will be a significant challenge." This is certainly a tough second round draw for Acadiana as this Landry-Walker team is super athletic and James Bewers of the Advertiser says, "they're loaded with Division I talent." Senior wide receiver, Devonta Jason is the fifth ranked player in Louisiana, he's already committed to Kansas, and will be a handful for the Rams secondary. On the contrary, the veer-machine is well oiled and a difficult thing to stop under Ted Davidson's watch. Running back's, Ziggy Francis, Jalen James, and others have the potential to cause all kinds of trouble for Landry-Walker. I can not wait to see how this one plays out.
3). #5 Kaplan vs. #12 Iota
It may be a 5-12 match-up but these two squads have very similar styles of offense, both teams love to run the football which I think makes this game very intriguing. For Iota their most impressive rusher is that of Kaleb Guillory. He's garnered plenty of attention from Kaplan's Head Coach, Tank Lotief, “He gives great effort. It’s hard to bring him down. He runs very hard and their offensive line does a great job in front of him." On the season Guillory is the leading rusher for the area, he's totaled 2,194 yards and 34 touchdowns on 257 carries, talk about a workhorse! On the Kaplan side it's all about running back Mac Thibeaux who is the area's fourth leading rusher. He's racked up a total of 1,494 yards, 10 touchdowns, on 190 carries. In the win against Kipp Renaissance last week Kaplan tallied 392 yards on the ground as a team. This will definitely be one to watch on Friday and certainly could be one of the quickest played games of the year.