The No. 2 seed Pilot Point Bearcats football team rolls into the playoffs for an opening round matchup against the No. 3 seed West Trojans at Herman Clark Stadium in Fort Worth on Thursday.
The Trojans finished with a 7-3 overall record but finished the regular season with back-to-back losses, falling to Grandview 49-30 on Oct. 31 and Whitney 41-28 on Nov. 7.
“They’re a well-coached football team,” said Chad Worrell, Pilot Point athletic director and head football coach. “Coach [David] Woodard has been there for a long time. They play hard, and they’re huge. That’s the first thing that jumps out at you on film. … We’re going to have to rely on our quickness against a bigger team like this.”
West’s offense fields a balanced offensive attack spearheaded by their offensive line, anchored by left tackle Ayden Poteet, which has allowed quarterback Dub Crain to tally over 1,800 yards of total offense and 22 total touchdowns.
“In the past when you talked about West, you thought about the Wing-T or what we do under center and power running football,” Worrell said. “They still do that, but they do it from the gun, and their quarterback does a really good job. … He reads defenses well, and he’s thrown for 20 touchdowns and three interceptions, so obviously, he makes good decisions with the football.”
Worrell emphasized that winning the battle in the trenches will be a major key if his team hopes to slow down the Trojans’ offense.
“They definitely hold a size advantage, but we can’t get mashed by them,” he said. “I told our kids we’re going to have to use our quickness and tenacity because we’re not going to win the eyeball test when we get out there during pregame, … [but] we’re fine with that. Our kids play with great effort; they play hard, and they play ferocious.”
Coming off of one of the program’s best regular seasons in recent history, Worrell made sure to hammer home the point that the Bearcats are fully aware of how quickly things can change in the playoffs.
“We want to enjoy it, but we know we want to advance,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how many where you finished in District or how many losses you have at this point in the season. We learned last year that the playoffs are a whole new season. This is the third season, and we want to play well, take it one game at a time and advance as far as we can.”
Pilot Point and West were scheduled to play at 7 p.m. Thursday at Herman Clark Stadium in Fort Worth.
The results were not available by press time.
