The names change but the success remains.
After a tumultuous regular season that saw the Bluefield Beavers finish with a 4-5 mark, they earned their keep with a 20-18 victory over South Harrison in the first round of the Class AA state playoffs.
Now they’ll face another difficult challenge in a season chocked full of them when they travel to No. 1 Frankfort for a Class AA quarterfinal matchup with the Falcons on Saturday at 4 p.m.
The Falcons have rolled through their schedule this year, boasting an 11-0 record and have yet to play a game decided by fewer than 20 points.
The challenge for Bluefield is finding a way to slow what’s been an unstoppable force.
“They’re a fundamentally sound team and they execute well,” Bluefield head coach Fred Simon said. “They don’t make many mistakes and are good on defense so their record is exactly what they are. They’re very well-coached, a hard-nosed football team and one of the better teams they’ve had.”
The Falcons are disciples of the wing-T, running it to perfection.
Carder Shanholtz (79-921-15) and Jullian Pattison (94-957-21) lead the ground attack while QB Uriah Cutter has completed 54-of-74 pass attempts for 890 yards and five touchdowns. His top receiver has been Jacob Nething who has hauled in 28 passes for 398 yards and four scores.
While the wing-T has become less common, Bluefield has a lot of experience with it. The Beavers ran it during their 2009 title-winning season and faced it numerous times during the decade in matchups with Wayne.
They have recent experience with it as well as it’s the offense Beckley has utilized over the last three years.
“We gotta be heads up,” Simon said. “I mean our guys that are on the pass have to remember it’s pass first, run second and our other guys have take care of the run so they can do that. We’re OK but that’s easier said than done because all that misdirection and movement, they lure you to sleep and all of a sudden they hit you. I think probably, thinking situation-wise if it’s third-and-long, I probably wouldn’t think it’s gonna be a run. I’d probably focus on the pass if I’m in secondary.”
For Simon and Co. the hope is that the daunting schedule they played during the regular season has prepared them for a matchup like this.
“Oh man, we’ve seen as good of teams as we’ll see and I’d rank Frankfort right there,” Simon said. “They’re no better than a Beckley, and a Princeton and a Graham. They’re a very good football team, but we’ve seen some good football teams. We’ll have to tackle better than we did last week and we’ve got to tackle our butt off as far as getting to them. The key to even having a chance to beat them is stopping their run game cause they are very good at it and they’ve got some athletes that can do it. The fullback’s a nice size, the running back’s a good size, wing, their whole team is rangy. They’re just nice and tall and rangy type players.”
Bluefield’s coming off of one of its best offensive games of the season where it strung together and sustained four long drives despite a 16 degree windchill. In that game Ty Patton ran for a career-high 168 yards, moving from fullback to running back in place of the injured Willis Wilson.
Wilson, who leads the Beavers in yards from scrimmage (931), will miss his second straight game after suffering an ankle injury against James Monroe in the regular season finale.
“I don’t project he’ll be back,” Simon said. “Maybe after this week if we were fortunate enough to win, maybe. He’s walking and moving better but not enough. The doctor basically says he’s going to wear that boot at least three weeks, so he’s off the boot but unless something really changes, I don’t foresee him playing this week.”
The Beaver offense isn’t hapless. Patton’s proved he’s capable of handling the load and has 608 yards rushing on the season. Jeff King leads the receivers with 25 catches for 428 yards and five touchdowns. The engineer of the offense is freshman QB Max Simpson. Simpson has thrown for 1,251 yards and eight touchdowns while completing 60 percent of his passes.
They’ll go against what Simon considers a sound defense.
“They’re strong upfront and have nice size,” Simon said of Frankfort. “They tackle well and their linebackers are downhill. They’re a physical team. I’ve never been paid attention much to Frankfort as much over the years, but I can look at them and tell they’re a physical team.”
One of Simon’s more inexperienced playoff teams, he’s hoping last week’s win helped put them on the right track against Class AA’s new Goliath.
“I think it helped their confidence cause we could’ve folded,” Simon said. “We had a couple opportunities that we could’ve given up and then we didn’t … I thought we battled hard and it was nice to battle hard and have a reward for it.”
