Of the 24 first-round playoff games across the state, seven feature matchups that occurred during the regular season.
Among those seven is Thursday’s 7:30 p.m. affair between No. 9 Wheeling Park and No. 8 Musselman. The game in Inwood was originally scheduled for Friday, but moved up 24 hours due to the threat of heavy rain.
The teams met on October 14 at Wheeling Island Stadium after Musselman became the new No. 1 team in the Class AAA playoff ratings. The Applemen were then 5-1 with three victories over teams in the Class AAA playoffs.
Yet Musselman struggled mightily with Park, which outscored MHS 21-0 after halftime that night to pull away for a 34-7 win.
The loss in Wheeling marked the start of Musselman losing two of its final four regular season games as the Applemen (7-3) went on to also fall to Bridgeport.
However, 10th-year Musselman head coach Brian Thomas is confident his team can learn from its first meeting with WPHS.
“Going into the first game, we knew their speed, but now we have seen that speed up close. We have that familiarity even though they beat us good,” Thomas said. “We have to contain the speed. A lot of people talk about [Jerrae] Hawkins. He is the fastest kid in the state, but they have two or three other kids who can also move. They are similar to a Martinsburg because if you mess up, it is a 60 or 70-yard touchdown. We have to be smart every single play, and we have to play assignment football.”
Thomas is hopeful the leadership and play of quarterback Bayden Hartman can pay dividends.
“We have a lot of speed from a team standpoint,” Thomas said. “We have a lot of leadership as well. Bayden Hartman, our quarterback, is one of the better leaders and competitors I have been around. I do not want to call him the best, because we have had a lot of great ones. He is certainly up there. Any time you have a kid like that, it bleeds out to the rest of the team with energy and excitement.”
Hartman has enjoyed a fantastic senior campaign, completing 66 percent of his passes for more than 1,800 yards and 15 touchdowns.
“I call him Brett Favre, but the guys do not know who he is, so I now call him [Pat] Mahomes,” Thomas said. “He is the type of guy that when you call a play, he will run around and chuck it downfield, and we will act like we drew that up. He brings improvising to the table that you cannot teach, and when you have a kid like that, he makes good things happen.”
Thomas has now led seven different teams to the Class AAA playoffs over the last eight seasons.
“One of the things they have had in common is competitiveness,” Thomas noted. “We have a group of kids that compete. At Musselman, the thing we have evolved to is that we think we can win every game. The kids go into every game thinking that they can win each one. As far as what separates them, the speed stands out. We have changed what we have done compared to the personnel we have had. We went to the state semifinals one year with quarterback Tre Beard, an option player. We utilized his legs a lot more. A few years ago, we ran a two-type power system and had the best running back in the state [Bayden Hartman’s older brother Blake Hartman] to which we could feed the ball.
“We are different now because we can go to three or four different guys. This is probably the fastest team I have coached.”