Independence head coach John H. Lilly has spent the last five years building an Independence program he hoped would rival and surpass that of Class AA powers Bluefield and Fairmont Senior.
He’s 3-0 against Bluefield in the last 12 months following a 20-12 victory in the first round of the playoffs but is still trying to surpass the Polar Bears who have beaten Indy each of the last two seasons.
Now Lilly’s group of seniors that have watched the Polar Bears celebrate twice at their expense will get one more chance to exorcise those demons, hoping the third time’s the charm.
“I think at the beginning of the year our kids knew that you had to go through Bluefield or Fairmont to get to Wheeling,” Lilly said. “That’s where we’re at. We had to go through those guys to get to Wheeling so whether you play them now or later our guys understood this was a matchup that had to happen. We expected to play them, whether it be the first, second or third round or the championship. We knew we were going to play them back in August. I’m not bragging, I’m just saying we knew that.”
It’s never been easy and won’t be Friday when the two teams meet in the Class AA quarterfinals in Coal City.
Rated No. 7 in Class AA, Fairmont brings in a balanced offensive attack with plenty of weapons.
“There’s athletes everywhere,” Lilly said . “They’ve got a really good core of athletes but they’re better defensively. They are extremely, extremely good defensively. I think they’re more wide open offensively as far as spreading the ball around which makes them extremely hard to defend because they just do so much. It’s hard to scheme because they’ve got so many athletes you can’t leave them on an island. It’s very similar to playing Bluefield where if you make one mistake they’re in the end zone. They’re very versatile offensively but they’re so good defensively and you usually don’t get both in one package.”
The Indy defense will see an array of weapons.
Dylan Ours, Germaine Lewis and Brody Whitehair have all rushed for over 300 yards and six touchdowns this season for Farimont. Ours leads the pack with 740 yards and eight touchdowns on the year while Lewis slots in second with 538 yards and eight scores as well.
Whitehair, the QB, has thrown for 1,734 yards and 17 touchdowns to six interceptions. He spreads the ball around with Ours, Trey Longwell, Jayden Cheriza and Cannon Dinger all rolling into Friday’s game with at least 20 catches. Longwell, Cheriza and Dinger all have over 400 yards receiving on the season.
Complicating matters is how formationally versatile the Polar Bears are. Quads (four receivers to a side), empty, trips, twins, pony sets (two running backs without a fullback) are all staples of the Fairmont offense designed to attack a defense until a weak spot presents itself. Within those formations are counters built to put their athletes in position to succeed. On quad sets they’ll send receivers vertical, leaving one back as a screen option with plenty of open space to operate after the catch.
Their ability to go in empty sets presents a matchup problem as well with receivers isolated on linebackers.
If there is an advantage for the Patriots it’s that they’re familiar with a lot of what Fairmont likes to do having taken their best shot each of the last two years. Last year’s game was low scoring with a final of 21-12 but three big plays proved to be the downfall for Indy. Fairmont hit the jackpot on a deep over route for a 59-yard touchdown, a 35-yard touchdown run on a cutback where an Indy defender was out of position and a double-pass trick play on second-and-30.
Lilly has spent the week stressing how important it is to eliminate those mistakes.
“I think if you’ve played them a couple of times you at least understand what they’re trying to do,” Lilly said. “I think our kids understand that you have to think. When you play against them you’re not facing just one formation or two formations. They’re going to throw 30 formations at you and keep throwing them at you until they find something. It’s our job to be able to adjust to that stuff. Last year I thought we played them really, really well and they caught us in a formation and scored a touchdown then we had one defensive breakdown on an outside zone and the next thing you know we gave up 14 points. The one thing we learned is you can’t make a single mistake against these guys or it could cost you. Not a lot of teams can do that to you.”
Still the concern for Lilly is how to attack the Fairmont defense and for good reason. The last two times the teams met the Patriots were held to 15 points in 2020 and 12 points in 2021, both of which were season lows for Indy squads that averaged 48 (’20) and 54 (’21) points per game those seasons heading into those matchups.
This year’s squad has again lit the scoreboard up to the tune of 54 points per game with condensed second halves. Leading the way is Judah Price who is a hair under 2,000 rushing yards on the season with 40 rushing touchdowns to boot.
Cyrus Goodson has 641 receiving yards and Trey Bowers has thrown for over 1,300 yards with 10 passing touchdowns and 11 more on the ground. All three will need to be clicking as well as their complementary pieces in Colten Caron and Tyler Linkswiler if the Patriots hope to piece together drives and find points in a matchup where they’ll likely be hard to come by on both sides.
“They can match you up athlete for athlete,” Lilly said. “We’ve got some really good guys and athletes too but it’s just like last week when a lot of people were saying ‘hey, this isn’t going to be a close game’ but Bluefield has athletes that can match you. We’ve got some good guys but they do too and they can match you athlete for athlete and they’re not scared to do it.
“It’s going to be a lot of Cover 0 and loading that box so you can’t run. It’s a different scheme but both (Fairmont and Bluefield) have the same philosophy as far as playing a lot of man coverage. It boils down to your quarterbacks being accurate and that kind of stuff. As a coach it’s a chess match. Last week it was a chess match and we played on the conservative side and that was the gameplan. Each week you do what you’ve got to do to win in the playoffs.”
The Polar Bears have notably churned out star trench players with brothers Darius and Dante Still as well as Zach Frazier having all followed the pipeline from Fairmont to WVU. This year the Patriots, who have a stout front of their own, will face a different look.
The Polars Bears don’t have a 6-foot-5, 300-pound lineman anchoring their front but find different ways to cause problems.
“They’re not as big as they’ve been the last four years but they’re quick,” Lilly said. “That’s a different challenge in itself. When they were big, we’re big so we could wrestle up with them and own some gaps. Now they’re quick so they get on your backers a lot quicker and we’re a 3-3 team so we can’t allow them to climb to the backers and that makes it pretty interesting.
“If you believe in the rankings, three of their four linebackers are in the top 20 players in the state. They’ve got some dudes. If you look at our rankings we’ve got some guys. It’s a good matchup and it’s going to be fun to watch.”
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on twitter @tjack94
