Improved effort not reflected on scoreboard
Jeremy Heath

The Lampasas High School football coaches must have been scratching their heads Saturday morning when they watched the game film from last Friday's 42-7 loss to Pflugerville Hendrickson.

Not because of the outcome of the game. Hendrickson, with a talented cast on offense and an aggressive defense, proved much better than advertised and played like a team with playoff hopes intact.

Losing the game probably wasn't what bothered those coaches. It was the score.

Hendrickson is not 35 points better than Lampasas, and the Hawks didn't play 35 points better at Badger Field. The Badgers, for all their struggles this year, gave one of their better efforts of the season. It just seemed like something out of National Lampoon's Vacation in that whatever could go wrong did -- and to an extreme degree.

Take the seven penalties marked off against the Badgers. Two of them killed first-half drives, and one ignited the Hawks' opening drive.

First, a holding penalty wiped out a successful third-down conversion on the Badgers' opening series, setting up the Hawks near midfield after the punt. So the Badgers went from having the foundation of a solid drive in place to defending half a field, all because of a yellow hanky. (I'm not disputing whether or not the call was correct. Officials have their jobs, and I have mine.)

Second, the Hawks had that half a field shortened tremendously when a 15- yard face mask is called after running back Delvonta Glenn gets his helmet knocked off. (I will dispute this call. See the photo for visual evidence.) After cashing in on the drive, a fumbled kickoff return set up Hendrickson with another short field, and the team again got into the end zone. So midway through the first quarter it's already 14-0.

Third, with the Badgers down 21-0 early in the second quarter, the Lampasas offense moves the ball to midfield on a sharp pitch and catch from Vann Millican to Jarrod Bowen. Two plays later, Millican finds Ryan Abbott in the flat, and Abbott squirts down inside the Hawks' 30. But wait, there's a flag on the play. Holding. Drive over. Game over.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not blaming the officiating for a 42-7 loss. I'm not blaming the officials for anything. Hendrickson is a better team, no doubt. I'm simply trying to point out the fact that the Badgers really had some opportunities to make a game of it. In short, they didn't play nearly as poorly as the score would indicate.

That's why the coaches must have been scratching their heads as they tried to match up what they saw on film with the final score.

Let's grade the Hendrickson game:

Offense, B: Possibly the best effort of the season.

At times, sophomore QB Millican showed the rest of the world the promise head coach Ryan Bailey sees in him. On the underneath and intermediate routes -- which are the bread and butter of this offense -- Millican was quite sharp. On the deeper routes, he showed the three weeks' worth of rust he accumulated while sidelined due to a staph infection.

Millican's receivers -- and this is a big one -- did not drop a pass.

Because Hendrickson led 21-0 after one quarter, the running game was neutralized as much by circumstances as by the Hawks' defense. When it was called upon, it was decent. Sophomore Brode DuBose broke loose on a 39-yard run, and Bowen was effective on the ground.

Penalties were an obvious problem, but on the bright side there were no fumbled shotgun snaps or delay-of-game penalties -- a first.

Defense, C-Plus: I've seen every snap of all eight games this year, and for the life of me I couldn't remember who the defensive starters were in the season opener.

It seems like every week defensive coordinator Jimmy Randolph has to ask a kid to play a new position in order to replace an injured starter. And most of the starters on the field were wrapped up in tape themselves.

The past six games, the defense has been bled to death by opposing running games. Part of it is size. Other teams have it; Lampasas doesn't. Part of it is depth. There just aren't many small Class 4A schools with enough depth to withstand a plague of injuries.

Special note: Linebacker Coleton Lucas is a tough kid. He is playing through so many injuries right now that if someone asked him to name them, five bucks says he'd forget one.

Special Teams, C-Plus: Seth Fry highlighted this group with five solid punts, and the kickoff and punt-coverage teams were more than effective.

On the negative side, Sam Barbero hooked a field-goal attempt wide left, and Bowen fumbled the kickoff return that set up the second Hawks' score.

I've always been of the opinion that all fumbles are inexcusable but some are understandable.

Bowen has fumbled four times on kickoff returns this year, and while they are inexcusable, I think in proper context they are understandable. Opposing coaches have put so much emphasis on kicking away from Bowen, the Lampasas coaches have resorted to hiding where Bowen will line up until right before the kick in an attempt to gain him more opportunities.

When he does get his hands on one, Bowen wants so badly to make a big play for his team that he gets a little reckless. It's hard to fault a kid for trying to make a play in an attempt to fire up his struggling team.

And the key word is "trying." At 0-8, this group could easily stop trying. I wondered after the loss at Pflugerville Connally if the Badgers would do just that.

In my estimation, they did not against Hendrickson.

And they probably won't when they travel to Cedar Park Vista Ridge tonight.

Jeremy Heath is the Dispatch Record's sports editor. He can be reached via e-mail at jheath@lampasas.com.