Assignment football 101

Sports

Related Photos

Huntsville defensive tackle Demonte Byrd, right, tries to hang on and tackle Brenham fullback Roderick Payne during last week’s season opener at Bowers Stadium. Tonight, the Hornets need more people to get to the football if they want to knock off College Park in a nondistrict game that starts at 7 p.m. at Woodforest Stadium in Shenandoah. D.J. Shafer

Discussion

September 1, 2010

Hornets look to wrangle Cavaliers’ tricky option attack

By Tom Waddill Sports Editor The Huntsville Item Wed Sep 01, 2010, 10:34 PM CDT

HUNTSVILLE — Football coaches talk a lot about discipline.

“We need more discipline.”

“We’ve just got to play more disciplined football.”

“If that team had a little more discipline, they would be awfully tough to beat.”

Around the Joe Clements Field House this week, it’s the players who are loosely tossing that word around as they prepare to tackle the simple, but sometimes confounding option attack of the College Park Cavaliers.

The 2010 Hornets want to be the first Huntsville team to knock off College Park and they know they’re going to have to play 48 minutes — maybe more — of fundamentally sound, “responsibility” football to accomplish their goal.

“We’ve got to have discipline,” junior linebacker Bridge Blount stressed Wednesday after practice. “Against their offense, if you mess up one assignment they’re going to capitalize. You’ve got to have someone on the dive, someone on the pitch man and someone on the quarterback. If you mess up they’re going to take it 10 to 20 yards on every play.”

The Cavaliers can take it farther than that, Hornets head coach Shane Martin said. As defensive coordinator, he’s been on the wrong end of the last two meetings with College Park. In his second game as Huntsville’s head coach, Martin would like nothing more than to come out on top for a change.

The Hornets can do that, Martin believes, if they take care of their defensive assignments, move the football offensively and score more points than they did in a 28-2 loss to Brenham last week.

“If we play with the same kind of intensity defensively as we did last week and show up with the same kind of never-give-up attitude, we can get that first win,” Martin said. “We’ve got to score some points when we have the ball, though. If we do that, we’ll be OK. But we just can’t have as many three-and-outs as we did last week.”

With a Thursday game and a couple of rainy days forcing the Hornets to shift into overdrive, center Danny Murray said the Hornets have worked fast and hard this week trying to correct the problems they experienced in the season opener last Friday.

“We just had to get more disciplined on our blocking schemes,” Murray said. “We needed to get everybody on the same track, so one person is not messing up. When one person messes up, that kills the play.”

The Hornets showed some life at times last Friday, but Brenham’s speedy and strong defensive unit forced three turnovers, one that resulted in an easy touchdown for the Cubs.

“We’ve got to stay focused this week and play at the same pace as we did against Brenham,” Murray said. “We’ve also got to capitalize on College Park’s mistakes.”

Last week, the Cavaliers lost 17-16 on the road to Lamar Consolidated. Junior quarterback Zach Wright was forced into action early in the game when senior Tyler Chaumet hurt his knee.

College Park tried like crazy to overcome a 17-7 deficit, but after Wright scored on a 29-yard run midway through the fourth quarter, the Cavaliers lost a fumble deep in Mustang territory with less than a minute left in the game.

Martin said the Cavaliers have not changed much since the Hornets first faced them four years ago. College Park head coach Richard Carson has made a few adjustments to better fit his personnel, but his team’s bread and butter is still the veer offense that can explode at any time.

“They look for their fullback to bust it big, they look for their quarterback to bust it big and they want their pitch man to bust it big,” Martin explained. “They’ve got their number two quarterback in there now, but that doesn’t really matter in their offense. Wright’s a shifty little runner who runs the veer pretty well.

“They’ve also got a third-year starter (Paco Solano) at running back. He’s a pretty good runner who catches the ball well on the pitch. Their best fullback, in my opinion, is Austin Boudreaux. He’s a good blocker and he’s hard to bring down. They’ve also got some big old kids on the offensive line.

“Coach Carson does a tremendous job from the junior high up to his varsity team.”

The Hornets say they’re assignment tonight is simple, but challenging.

“Stopping the option,” cornerback Chris Burns said. “That’s the main thing we’ve got to do to win.”

Text Only

Sports

Outright champs, again
Even with a little bit more difficulty, the Lady Hornets weren’t going to be denied another outright district championship, especially not on their own floor. Despite a first quarter filled with turnovers, the Huntsville girls turned up the heat and eventually wore down Kingwood Park on Friday night. Led by seniors Ceidra Coleman, Breanna Fuller and Dequayla Terry, the Lady Hornets beat the Lady Panthers 64-43 to clinch their second straight outright District 18-4A girls basketball title.

February 4, 2012 2 Photos
Hornets struggle in 4-1 loss to Pasadena Dobie
The problems with Huntsville’s boys soccer team are fixable, head coach Robert Taylor said after a 4-1 loss to Pasadena Dobie on Friday night.

February 4, 2012 1 Photo
Lady Hornets make progress in shortened golf tourney
The Huntsville girls cut a substantial amount of strokes off their score from a week ago and finished fourth in the College Park Invitational that was shortened to one round because of wet conditions at the River Plantation Country Club in Conroe.

February 4, 2012
Bulldogs primed for today’s powerlifting meet
The first-year powerlifting program at New Waverly High School is embracing the underdog role, especially at today’s meet in Shepherd.

February 4, 2012
Rivalries Renewed
Starting this fall, Huntsville will be back in a district that includes Montgomery, Magnolia, Magnolia West and Waller. The new District 18-4A also will include Bryan Rudder and Brenham. That’s going to make it tough on all sports, from volleyball and football in the fall, basketball and soccer in winter, to softball, tennis, track, baseball and golf in the spring.

February 2, 2012 3 Photos
Not many changes for Bulldogs
Bulldogs athletic director and head football coach M.K. Hamilton couldn’t sleep for nervousness Wednesday, the night before the latest realignment plan was released. It happens every two years, when the University Interscholastic League announces its classification and alignment adjustments by conferences in each region around Texas. As a result of this year’s realignment, the Bulldogs will travel less during the football season, where the district remained relatively intact, but substantially more in all other sports.

February 2, 2012
Hornet wrestlers ready for district
The Hornet wrestlers enter the District 20-5A meet today with a high level of experience compared to this time last season. Huntsville wrestlers have more than 20 matches under their belts, whereas they only had eight a year ago. That experience, the Hornets believe, is what allows them to have a little more confidence than expected as they travel to Conroe today for a meet that begins at 9:30 a.m.

February 2, 2012 1 Photo
Hornets RB Ford and OL Long headed to Kingsville
Huntsville teammates Henry Ford and Aundra Long knew exactly what they were going to do after taking a visit to Texas A&M-Kingsville. In limbo about where their college football careers would kick off, Ford and Long found a home as soon as they stepped foot on the campus in Kingsville.

February 1, 2012 3 Photos
Huntsville's Blount, Hazlewood and York earn academic scholarships
Huntsville linebacker Bridge Blount described the recruiting road he recently trudged as rough and rocky at times, full of twists, turns and changes in direction. When Blount finally reached the end of the road Wednesday morning and accepted a preferred walk-on offer from Sam Houston State coach Willie Fritz, he was thrilled beyond belief.

February 1, 2012 4 Photos
Bearkats building for the future
On the heels of a trip to the Football Championship Subdivision title game, Sam Houston State coaches had very little time to square away their 2012 recruiting class. In a span of less than a month, Bearkats coach Willie Fritz and his staff did some last-minute selling and signed 17 recruits on Wednesday on national signing day.

February 1, 2012 1 Photo
More Sports Headlines

Sports

Search Results

Related Photos

Discussion

Assignment football 101

Hornets look to wrangle Cavaliers’ tricky option attack

Site Map

Contact Us