Thanks BB. Coffman play-off draw wasn't ideal, would have been better off with Liberty's seed lol. We all thought when the seeds were determined in R-2 that most CO teams had favorable draws, but Liberty probably had the best draw. No offense to NW Ohio D-1 schools but in recent history they haven't been as strong as Dayton area R-2 teams certainly and CO in general as well. It hasn't been easy but getting Whitmer in round one was better than getting a handful of other possibilities including say Marysville or a GWOC team. The GWOC R-2 teams are stronger than CO top teams this year, other years it's been a close argument. Not this year though.
Liberty is an interesting story as a program, with the school only having one head coach in its history. Hale built the program from scratch. When I came to this area in the earlier 2000's , Powell was a more sparsely populated area and there were a few houses we looked at there and were quasi close to choosing. Although only a few miles away, Dublin seemed more connected to the city of Columbus. So that feeling prevailed and that was that. Having a more established but still relatively new community seemed like a better choice and it was a good one in the end.
Have gotten to know a couple handfuls of folks up in Powell over the years including a few with kids who played football. Good folks and a solid community and as Huddle legend Walking Boss liked to point out some pretty good talent in the female mom realm lol. [He was right} . First saw Liberty vs. Coffman in 2008, a big rebuild year for the Rocks after a great as close to a state champion team as the Rocks have had in 2007. Rocks won a close 10-7 decision over then D-2 Liberty. Liberty would move to D-1 the very next year and play the Rocks at the Shoe in the old Herbie classic, and that excellent Rocks team would eviscerate the Patriots 52-0. They would play the next 6 years with the Rocks wining each year to start the series at 8-0 with an average margin of 17 points. Didn't play in 2016 and 2017 after league realignment but met in the R-2 Regional final in 2018 and Liberty who had shut out region fav R-Burg the week before shutting down the Rocks 21-7 to get their first win over them.
Remember very well driving home from Marion after the Rocks beat Whitmer and listening to the score wrap-up show, and they were interviewing Hale after his big win vs Burg and they brought up the 0-8 Coffman record. He was stone silent for a few seconds before kind of blowing that off, but I remember thinking and saying to my wife and the friends we were driving with from the game that this wasn't good, Hale's silence was telling. He was pi$$$DD off. Liberty had a great plan, really good size up front and won the game and got that monkey off of his back.
Since that 8-0 start , Liberty is 3-2 vs Coffman including two play-off wins , the last one an especially excruciating loss for the Rocks in what turned out to be Crabtree's last game in the 2020 Covid year. That year the Patriots were outclassed by Springfield the next week after emptying their bucket hanging on vs. Coffman. Coffman matched up much better overall than Liberty did and would have given them a much better go playing at home. Crabtree ended his Coffman tenure 9-2 vs. Hale but the two losses were play-off losses. Stokes first year the Rocks were messy and turnover prone and Liberty cruised 34-7. This year the Rocks beat Liberty 14-9 and earned it outplaying the Patriots over 48 minutes with excellent defense and a ball control attack.
Liberty again appears to be over matched but Springfield and lost to Coffman and 4 other teams this year [ No shame in losing to ST X, Pick Central, and I guess Coffman but Orange 23-7 to wrap up the reg. season was a head scratcher} That result hardly portends a deeper play-off run to be sure. BUT again, the draw was outstanding, and this isn't that surprising. Whitmer was beatable, and so was Jerome who wasn't the same team later in the year. Then Perrysburg. P-Burg was very impressive vs. Berlin, but as solid a year as the Bears had and it is an emerging top tier program in CO, it isn't there 'YET". They don't have that established success in the play-offs like a Liberty has. Liberty as we thought was going to do a better job controlling the run game vs. P-Burg and they did just that scoring on a big play in the passing game and only gave up a FG . Were ahead 7-3 and scored very late to put the game away 14-3.
Hale was 3-5 vs the great Brian White of Davidson and is 5-6 overall vs the Cats. Through the 2017 season Liberty and Hale were a combined 1-12 vs Coffman and Davidson losing by an average score of 28-11. Liberty certainly has taken some good strides as a program since then and has been more solid overall than the once pre-eminent D-1 programs on this side of town.
Pasteur has Liberty is a 28-point underdog to Springfield, [Game at London } and that is a very sharp number. The average spread in the 4 D-1 games this weekend is 17 points. I made this game 27 . In fact, Louie has Ed's a 23-point choice vs Mentor and I made it 24, and Gahanna is a 16-point fav, which I had 17 [ Would make it 17.5 if taking action lol} and the only one I wasn't within a point of his number was Lakota West and Big Moe. I made it a PICK EM , Louie has it LW - 4.