Football Friday: Battle at the top as Tiger Cubs, Eagles look to topple 2A No. 1 Miners, A No. 1 Saints

Week two of the IHSAA Football State Tournament comes with a challenge for both remaining Putnam County teams.

Namely, just knock off the No. 1-ranked teams in their respective classes.

Greencastle will travel to No. 1 Linton in Class 2A Sectional No. 37 play while South Putnam will host a familiar face in No. 1 Indianapolis Lutheran in Class A Sectional No. 47 action.

Outside of facing Evansville Mater Dei, whom the Miners have lost to in five-consecutive postseasons, Linton has been a historically strong team in the area, winning 15 sectional titles and 11 regional titles, adding one of each last year after a drought following the school’s only football state title in 2016.

The Miners live on the running game, having a season-low rushing total of 272 yards against Sullivan while rushing for a season-high 375 yards against Western, utilizing a spread formation with one or two wings in a modified Wing-T set.

“Linton has a real good run game,” Greencastle head coach Dave Stephens said. “Everybody knows that and a lot of it is based on misdirection and leverage blocks, using motion and blocking angles to get some advantageous runs.

Sophomore quarterback Paul Oliver has handled the ball the most among the Linton ball carriers, rushing 136 times for 878 yards and 13 scores while Jesse Voigtschild (746 yards, nine scores), Eli Scott (530 yards, six scores) and Christian Shon (442 yards, eight scores) will also get plenty of touches throughout the night.

Greencastle has been after running quarterbacks the last three weeks in dealing with Owen Valley’s Elijah Anderson and North Putnam’s Christian Kramer, efforts that Stephens said would help in trying to deal with Oliver this week.

“Kramer is no joke; I don’t feel like we did a poor job in containing him and hat’s off to North Putnam’s staff as he is seventh overall for total yards in all classes,” Stephens noted. “That kid is a baller and for the most part, I’m happy with the job that we did on him.

“Nothing changes this week. Oliver is really good in his own right and we look forward to the challenge but we also feel prepped well with the talent Kramer has and the scheme in which North Putnam used him.”

Oliver has thrown for 600 yards on just 29-of-79 passing with four touchdowns and eight interceptions but the Miners use the pass game as an over-the-top threat as several players, including Oliver himself, average over 20 yards per catch.

“They’re a run, run, run team then try to hit play action over the top,” Stephens said about the Miner passing game. “They’re not going to bang a five-yard hitch or out route but sucker you up and try to hit you deep.”

Defensively, Linton uses three down linemen and crowds the box with its linebackers, often creating four - and five-man fronts as a result with four defenders in the secondary.

“They do a good job with their front seven and are big and physical,” Stephens said about the Miner defense. “They’re fast and they do what they do well. They are the envy of a lot of 2A programs.”

Corey Andrews leads the team with 71 tackles, including 17.5 TFL and six sacks while Shonk and Ashton White have more than 60 tackles and 10 TFL each. The Miners have 14 fumble recoveries on the year and five interceptions.

“Linton isn’t going to throw a one-off defense at us,” Stephens said. “They’re going to run their scheme, run it well and do what they do.

“They have the ability to adjust within their scheme, so you won’t see them abandon it. They’re not unfamiliar with Putnam County teams and they’ll likely play us similar to the way they’ve played South Putnam in recent years.”

Greencastle freshman Cole Stephens sits just shy of 2,500 yards through the air on the season, having thrown 32 touchdowns passes against 11 interceptions.

Owen Huff sits at 822 yards receiving on the year with 10 touchdowns while three other receivers have more than 300 yards receiving in Ian Williamson (533), Brendle Brennan (448) and Brayden Monroe (370).

Lamar Moore shot past 1,000 yards rushing on the season with his 203 yards against the Cougars, sitting at 1,143 yards on the season with 19 touchdowns to his name, 12 coming in the last four weeks.

Moore also leads the team with 89 tackles while Parker Welker and Cameron Pingleton both have more than 70 tackles each, the latter recording 11 TFL and five sacks while Monroe leads the team with 12 TFL and 5.5 sacks.

Greencastle has relied on its running game the past few weeks, rushing for over 200 yards twice against North Putnam, while the passing game has been on a lower ebb at the same time.

Stephens said it was all a matter of what the team was being offered by its opponents and that would be no different against Linton.

“Balance to me is, can you do what you need to do when you do it?” Stephens said. “If it calls for you to run, can you run? If it’s a pass, can you pass it?

“One of the things that I’m really excited about this team is that they’ve won in all kinds of conditions, in hostile environments, on last-second field goals and touchdowns. For a first-year program, we’ve won in a multitude of ways and I have confidence that this team, no matter what teams force us to do or what the weather forces us to do, we’re going to have success offensively.

“We are a balanced team. The calls might not always seem that way, but everything is planned,” Stephens added. “The way we practice and everything we do is set up for a long tournament run.

“We may not always get there but we’re going to prep and look to peak like you would in track season, to peak when playoff football is around. Half the teams were gone last week; more will be out this week and we want to be running full steam and have the balance to do it no matter the conditions or the schemes we face.”

In taking on Lutheran for the fifth time in the last decade, South Putnam will be looking to break one of the state’s longest winning streaks as the Saints have won 38-straight games, including the last two Class A state titles.

While not as talent-laden in the receiving corps as the team that rolled the Eagles 42-0 in the sectional opener last year, Lutheran has found a better balance between the running and passing game as the Saints have rushed for 1,484 yards in eight games while throwing for 1,790 yards behind an experienced sets of linemen.

“(Lutheran’s) offensive and defensive lines are a year better and they run the ball better than they did last year,” South Putnam head coach Chuck Sorrell said. “They focused on the passing game last year and we didn’t do a good job of stopping it.

“This time, it’s about stopping the run and making them pass. You’re not going to stop both all at once, so it’s about stopping one first and then moving on to the other.

“(Lutheran head coach Dave) Pasch does a good job of mixing up his play calls, throwing a screen, throwing deep and then running right at you,” Sorrell added. “That said, if we can stop the run like we have with our front, we can put six guys in the backfield and it should be a competitive game.”

Sorrell added the length of the Lutheran front lines was something the Eagles didn’t have the ability to replicate and would have to negate those advantages as best they could.

“They’ve got a pair of 6’6” guys at the tackle spots and more normal guys like us in the middle,” Sorrell noted about the size advantages the Saints held across the lines. “On their defensive line, they’ve got some big, long guys from 6’3” to 6’5” who have played for a long time and won a lot of football games.

“We have to show up and hit them in the mouth. It has to be a South Putnam kind of game, a hard-hitting kind of game, and hopefully they don’t like that very much.”

Junior quarterback Jackson Willis has thrown for 1,634 yards on the season, completing 69 percent of his passes with 24 touchdowns to just three interceptions.

The ball doesn’t go to just one place as five different Saints have more than 200 yards receiving this season in Javerrea Cooper (329), DeVuan Jones (272), LJ Ward (272; not played since week four), Jeremiah King (233) and Cole Snow (232).

Braydon Hall has been the one to move the ball on the ground, racking up 1,209 yards on 138 carries and 17 scores.

Defensively, Johnny Hall, who was in on 13 tackles against the Eagles in last year’s game, trails only Snow in tackles on 70, the latter recording 75 for the season.

Gavin Mimms leads Lutheran with five sacks while the Saints have only recorded 11 turnovers in eight contests but still only allow 10 ppg.

All said, the Saints have only had one contest decided by less that 20 points when the team defeated Speedway 28-9 in Week Eight, the last time Lutheran has taken the field after no Week 9 opponent and drawing the bye in the opening round of sectional play.

South Putnam has not lacked in firepower this season either as Wyatt Mullin has thrown for 2,021 yards with 25 touchdowns and just three interceptions.

Mullin has also been a key cog in the ground game, rushing for 603 yards and seven scores while Kolby Harcourt has carried the ball 157 times for 820 yards and 17 scores.

Bransyn Hanley and Wyatt Switzer have been Mullin’s two favorite targets, the former leading in receiving yards with 687 while the latter leads the team in receptions with 28. Both players have nine scores on the year. Zach Dorsett has 343 yards receiving but has not played since Week 8 against Heritage Christian.

Aiden Beadles continues to be a tackling machine, leading the state in the category with 178 on the year and in solo tackles with 109 while adding 35 TFL and eight sacks. Keenan Mowery-Shields is close to the 100-tackle mark, sitting on 91 tackles with 19 TFL while Mullin and Caden Switzer have six interceptions each.

Both teams will look to run the ball first and attack through air to supplement the run game, a trait Sorrell said came about as the two teams ran very similar schemes and play calls.

“When you look at Lutheran and at us, we’re running the same sort of offense and defense with each team having a few wrinkles here and there,” Sorrell said. “It’s a lot of two-by-two on the outside, three-by-one with a tight end, power, counter and inside zone runs.

“Based on that, it comes down to who shows up and does more on offense and defense. We’ve seen similarities in a couple of teams they’ve played in Scecina on defense and Triton Central on offense.

“A lot of those Indy teams play man coverage and while we’re not a man team, we’ll throw that in the mix,” Sorrell added.

While South Putnam will be an underdog in the game, Sorrell said the matchup was one the team wanted in the end.

“We have been, in every offseason workout since Dec., asking ourselves how do we beat Lutheran,” Sorrell said. “Every team we scheduled in the summer, every weight and agility drill, every wrinkle we threw in and out this season has been with the goal of trying to beat Lutheran.

“They are the standard of Class A football; they’ve not lost in two years but if anyone has a chance to beat them, it’s us. We’re a good football team, too, and if you throw about three minutes of football out, we’d also be unbeaten going into this game.

“This group of seniors aren’t scared; this group of juniors aren’t scared of this team,” Sorrell added. “They put their pants, pads and helmets on every day the same way we do.

“Yes, they are a little bigger than us but if you watched the NFL over the weekend, teams like the Jets and Bears won games and there were upsets all over the league last week. Why can’t we be the team to beat someone like that? This would be the signature win for this program since I’ve been here and it’s our time for that win.”