MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A pair of dynamic yet contrasting offenses collide at Wayne Jamison Field Saturday in a quality Class AA quarterfinal. Mingo Central averages 290 yards a game through the air. Randy Moss Award contender Drew Hatfield is the state’s leading receiver with twenty touchdowns and 1,854 yards. Bridgeport averages 290 yards on the ground. Five different backs have rushed for over three hundred yards and four scores each. While the styles are starkly different, the coaches agree on one thing — it is nearly impossible to prepare for the other on the practice field.
“It is hard to match those things and replicate them in practice,” said Mingo Central head coach Josh Sammons. “I am sure it will take us a least a series to get going in the game.”
“They are miserable to prepare for,” said Bridgeport head coach John Cole. “To stop them is quite a task. The problem is simulating it in practice. Getting a quarterback to do that too, and Mingo is pretty good at it.”
Mingo Central’s defense is vastly improved from last fall. They are allowing eleven points less per game than they did a year ago. But Sammons knows his front seven will face a stern test.
“It is going to be a very physical game,” Sammons said. “That is what we are trying to preach and preach these past three days. We have to win the line of scrimmage.”
In Mingo’s 13-7 win at Shady Spring last Friday, junior quarterback Daylin Goad toted the ball 21 times for a season-best 190 yards. Much of that was by necessity against a stout Shady Spring defense.
“If we can get him ten to twelve carries a game and have some success with that, that is the number I have in mind.”
“He is 6-foot-2 and over two hundred pounds, and my goodness if he falls forward he is getting three or four yards,” Cole said.
The Indians run the ball 93 percent of the time, a system that has been tweaked over the years but the principles remain the same.
“I don’t think they see where they play and the teams they played, how we play football,” Cole said. “Our offense is old but it is sort of new. Not many teams see that and prepare for that.”
Both programs have taken titles in Wheeling in recent years. Bridgeport won championships from 2013 to 2015, Mingo Central did the same in 2016. Saturday’s winner will be one victory away from a return to the island.
“In this tournament it is fun to win but that road gets tougher every week,” Cole said. “I hope our kids understand that.”