Tornado, Hurricane meet in regionals

RICHLANDS, Va. — Some things never change.

The last time Richlands didn’t play for a region title? How about 2003. They’ve not only played for it, but they’ve won it for the last five years.

The drive for number six continues tonight. A win over Marion and a regional championship game awaits. That game can wait.

“This is game 11 for us,” Richlands head coach Greg Mance said. “Our focus and energy is all on Marion, which is a quality football team.”

Richlands (9-1), winners of nine straight games, will host Marion (8-3) in a Group AA, Region IV, Division 3 semifinal contest tonight at Ernie Hicks Stadium/EMATS Field.

Kickoff is slated for 7:30 p.m. The seats will probably be filled long before then.

“Our kids just seem to play at an extra level when we play at Ernie Hicks, they do a good job, they’re comfortable here, and there is always a big crowd,” said Mance, whose Blue Tornado have already won their sixth straight Southwest District title. “We call our fans the 12th man and they make that noise and the kids feed off of that.”

These teams met before this season, with Richlands winning 27-7, although Marion trailed just 14-7 going into the final quarter. A pair of long touchdown runs by Austin Johnson — who also caught a third period scoring pass — helped the Tornado pull away for the win.

The Scarlet Hurricane started the season 5-0, lost three straight, but have since won three more in a row, advancing in the opening round of the playoffs with a 38-12 win over Grundy.

Brett Johnson, who had four touchdowns in that game, is the third leading rusher in the SWD, having run for 892 yards and nine touchdowns. He had 256 yards and three touchdowns in a win over Graham earlier this season.

“He’s a special ballplayer, he can cut on a dime, change directions, the last time he played on field turf he rushed for 200 and some yards against a pretty good football team that Graham has,” Mance said. “He’s very good, he’s a kid that will play on Saturdays somewhere.”

There is more. Eric Bane has run for 705 yards and eight touchdowns out of Marion’s Winged-T attack, while quarterback Matt Noe has run for seven scores and thrown for four.

Marion likes to keep the ball, and have done it well, including an 11-minute drive for a touchdown this season against Lebanon.

“Marion is a good football team, they play great defense, they don’t give up big plays, they keep everything in front of them,” said Mance, of the ‘Canes, who have allowed just 13.3 points per game, including holding five teams to single digits. “Offensively, they have three very, very good athletes in the Johnson kid, and the Bane kid at fullback does a great job, gets the tough yards. He is very quick and is a tough kid.

“They’re well-coached, up front they fly around, they’ll get after you and they don’t make mistakes....They just eat the time of possession up. They limit the touches you’re going to get and play great defense. If you add all that together, that is a quality football team.”

That’s sounds like a prescription for a win. Mance hopes it is, but hopes it works for his team and not the ‘Canes.

“We’ve got to win the time of possession, we can’t allow them to have 11 minute drives so it’s a big challenge for the defense,” Mance said. “We can’t turn the ball over, we’ve turned the ball over a couple of times this year and gave the other team good field position and you can’t do that in playoff games.

“We’ve got to eliminate the penalties. We’re having way too many penalties. I think we’re averaging maybe seven or eight penalties a ball game and that is way too many. We’ve got to cut that in half, we’ve got to take care of the football and eliminate the penalties.”

Since a 10-7 loss to Gate City to open the season, the Blue Tornado — which returned just two starters on offense and four on defense from the ‘08 regional champions — have jelled together and won nine in a row, with only two of those being decided by less than 10 points.

“We’ve grown as a football team...Up front we were starting two sophomores on the offensive line and two sophomores on the defensive line,” Mance said. “It takes a while for them to grow and jell and each week we’ve gotten better.

“The team chemistry has really improved and it just seems like each week we get a little bit better as a football team. The kids play together, they’re feeding off each other’s energy, we’re taking care of the football and making some big plays.”

Many of those big plays are coming from the Big Creek trio of Cody, Devon and Austin Johnson. Very fast and athletic, they transferred to Richlands before the season and have brought a new dimension to the Blues.

Devon is second in the SWD with 1,006 yards and 13 touchdowns, while his brother, Austin has run for 271 yards and five scores, and caught 18 passes for 507 yards and seven scores. Cody, a senior quarterback and a cousin to the other two Johnsons, has thrown for 991 yards and 13 scores, and run for 558 yards and 12 touchdowns.

“Here at Richlands, if you go back and look, we have been blessed, we have had some really, really good football players,” Mance said. “The thing we have lacked in the past is speed and Devon, Austin and Cody all can run so that has allowed us to hit the big play factor.”

Mance said that trio has fit right in with the Blues.

“That’s the thing where they really fit in well with our football team because they are competitors and they have worked hard in practice,” Mance said. “Our kids wouldn’t accept anybody that didn’t come in and work hard and wasn’t tough.

“You’ve got to have those two traits to play at Richlands and they all three do.”

Defensively, Richlands has been the normal stingy unit, allowing just 14.5 points a contest, led by Cody Thomas (123 tackles), Will Lowe (69 tackles, 9 sacks), Bradley Strong (4 interceptions), Albert Fajardo (4 interceptions) and Jack Vance (66 tackles), who can also play quarterback, performing admirably in place of Cody Johnson for part of the regular season finale against Grundy.

Mance has been especially pleased with the improved line play from Jeremy McGlothlin, Hunter Brown and Hunter Childress.

“I’ll tell you at Richlands, people talk more about defense moreso than offense,” Mance said. “I get a kick out of it, the year we won the state (in ‘06), everybody talks about how well we improved from the beginning to the end on defense.

“We hang our hat on defense around here because to win championships you’ve got to be sound on defense and we take our best players and they all play on defense.”

Mance, who admits to not being a big fan of the expanded playoffs, didn’t like having to take last week off because of the next six-team regionals, but he made sure his team took advantage of the opportunity to focus on the fundamentals.

“I hate it, once you get in rhythm I like to keep going,” Mance said. “I think you build off the previous weeks’ games and the practices. You don’t know who you are going to play, you have to wait and see who wins.

“You can go back to the fundamentals and work on tackling and blocking, taking care of the football and add a wrinkle or two and that’s what we did.”

Tonight’s winner will meet either Cave Spring or Graham for the regional title next weekend.

—Contact Brian Woodson

at bwoodson@bdtonline.com

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