The Morning Blend
Welcome
Complete Media Kit
SIERRA VISTA — The Buena varsity football team has its best shot at picking up a victory since its week four visit to Rincon when the Colts travel to Marana to take on the Mountain View Mountain Lions.
Buena comes in with a 1-5 record after falling to Sunnyside last week 49-6. Mountain View is slightly better at 2-4, but the Lions victories — a 29-14 win at North on Sept. 12 and a 20-6 win at Casa Grande last week are less than impressive.
For the second week in a row the Colts are expected to be without sophomore quarterback Jeremy Tuttle, who injured his ribs in the second half of an Oct. 3 game at home against Ironwood Ridge.
Senior Billy Grant is expected to get the start after he hit on 5-of-16 passes for 54 yards.
|
|
Mountain View is led by tailback Myles Williams and his 583 rushing yards on 90 attempts. The Lions have thrown on almost 40 percent of their plays from scrimmage with C.J. Evanson completing 44 percent of his passes for 427 yards.
Buena comes into the game ranked 24th in the Class 5A Division I power point rankings. Mountain View is 16th in Class 5A Division II. The top 16 from each make it to the state playoffs.
Should Buena win tonight, the Colts would still almost certainly need to also win their final three games against 5A-I opponents Tucson, Salpointe and Casa Grande in order to qualify for state with the Southern Region’s automatic berth.
Kickoff is at 7 p.m.
Pumas take on Cowboys
BISBEE — If the Pumas continue alternating wins and losses each week, they’ll have the upper hand against Willcox tonight.
The Cowboys (2-5) visit Bisbee (3-4) tonight in a 2A East matchup. Both teams are coming off losses, Bisbee in a shutout, 21-0, against 2A East dominating Benson and Willcox in a 29-8 loss against Thatcher last week.
Bisbee head coach Truman Williamson is optimistic about the Pumas’ chances.
“I’m looking forward to the game,” Williamson said. “We’re going to have all our people there. We don’t have anybody ineligible and we don’t have anyone hurt. We’ll have a full contingency of players. It helps to go with a full deck.”
As a team, Willcox is averaging 114 rushing yards, 74 passing yards and almost 57 tackles per game. The team’s leading rusher is Shelby Bonner with an average of 37 yards per game. Rudy Verdugo has the Cowboys’ lone receiving touchdown of the season, and he’s also leading the team in receiving yards with an average of 26 per game.
Willcox will be without starting quarterback Justin Rockhill, who blew out the ligaments in his knee halfway through last week’s loss at Thatcher, Williamson said.
In the loss, Willcox rushed a total of 47 times for 137 yards, led by junior backup quarterback Gerald Fleming’s 12 rushes for 65 yards. This season, Fleming has seven interceptions in his 61 passing attempts.
To make matters worse for the Cowboys during what’s mostly a rebuilding season with a new coach, the varsity and junior varsity have a total of 22 team members. Six players quit two weeks ago.
“I think the new coach coming in,” Williamson said. “He was from an area where they had a lot of pretty good athletes, and it looks like his defense was built for kids with a lot of speed, and he doesn’t have a lot of speed.”
Like Bisbee, Willcox lost to Benson by a wide margin this season. The Cowboys fell 34-6 at the end of September.
Jackets go up against Thatcher
TOMBSTONE — Coming off a big win over Morenci last week, the Tombstone Yellowjackets hope that some of the momentum they had against the Wildcats is with them tonight when they host the No. 10-ranked Thatcher Eagles.
Game time is 7 p.m.
Thatcher comes to Tombstone with a 3-4 record and is all but assured of a berth in the Class 2A state playoffs early next month.
The Eagles have defeated No. 15 Safford, 33-21, No. 7 Snowflake, 28-21 and No. 18 Willcox, 28-98, while losing to No. 4 St. Johns, 34-6; No. 1 Blue Ridge, 45-6; No. 2 Phoenix Christian, 34-20 and No. 7 Benson, 32-0.
Safford, Snowflake and Blue Ridge are Class 3A teams.
Tombstone, on the other hand, is hoping to play spoiler in this, as well as their other two remaining games.
The Yellowjackets are 2-4 on the season and ranked 24th in the 2A Power Rankings.
Tombstone has wins over No. 29 Baboquivari, 55-8 and No. 15 Morenci, 35-0 and losses to Class 4A Perry (for which they receive no bonus points because they have no seniors on their team); No. 6 Valley Christian, 47-6; No. 5 Scottsdale Christian, 50-33 and No. 18 Willcox, 26-18.
Yellowjacket coach Mike Hayhurst has said all year long that this is by far the toughest schedule his team has played.
“We go against teams who have very strong programs, year in and year out,” Hayhurst said.
After facing Thatcher tonight, Tombstone hosts No. 7 Benson next week before hosting No. 17 Bisbee in the final regular season game on Oct 31.
LocalCoach wrote on Oct 17, 2008 1:05 PM:
Prediction: Mountain View 26-16
Lowdown: Just when I thought Mountain View was down for the count, it pulls off a nice road win at Casa Grande last week. The Mountain Lions' run game should get rolling again this week in a win over Buena.
GO COLTS!!! Prove them wrong!!! "