[charlie22]

I noticed that they still brought back some good talent. Plus they played a few games without Simpson last season and done good without him.

BCA, I have to respectfully disagree with your ranking of SK. I believe it's too high. You are correct in that SK did fine without Simpson when he was hurt last year; but they were not near the team they were with him playing. Their QB, Lawrence returns and he is a good'un. Their RB will be the kid who filled in when Simpson was hurt and he is a fine player also. But he's no Simpson. But what will really hurt SK this year is the loss of I believe every O lineman from last year. There may be one starter returning, but I don't think so. Maybe they have a lot of talent O linemen to fill in and they'll surprise me, but SK is not historically known for developing very good O linemen. They were just blessed last year to have a bunch of very talented senior O linemen. Personally, my bet is on Ryle this year to win the N. Ky 6A district. They have a QB (Hempel) that is as good as if not better than Lawrence and a RB (Elliott) that is better than SK's RB. If what I heard is correct, they also have more returning starters than SK. Not saying that they'll destroy SK, but I think Ryle will be the better team.

As for the western vs eastern Ky debate going on in 5A, I'm a Highlands fan as most know so I have a pretty good perspective of the quality of the teams from both sides of the state. JC's O gave Highlands more problems than John Hardin's did last year, although both were pretty good. If I had to choose one, I'd say JC's O was better. Two completely different styles of O. I agree with the posters that think that until JC can pass the ball with better efficiency, they will have difficulty winning state. Perhaps I'm wrong and JC will prove that to be the case this year. I have to assume that Matney will work on the passing game much, much more this year during the regular season to prepare his team for the playoffs. In JC's form of O, they have to execute perfectly drive after drive, play after play. It's a ball control O. Against weak teams they can make 60 yd runs for tds. Against the better teams, those runs are limited to 5-10 yards. Which means that in order to score, JC has to put together strings of 10 play drives without any turnovers or big penalties drive after drive. That's hard to do in the pro's and very, very hard to do in high school. Particularly late in the game with more than a few players playing both ways. Fatigue causes mental mistakes. When you are playing against equally talented teams and equally conditioned teams, the team that doesn't have two way players has a huge advantage. A fumble here or an interception there can cause JC to have to come from behind. If you need a big pass at the end of the game to move the sticks or to score, JC is in trouble against teams that have good pass defenses. They pulled it off against Ashland on a miraculous play last year, but with no offense intended to Ashland, Ashland was not Highlands or John Hardin last year as Dixie showed.

As for a comparison of JC's Defense and John Hardin's Defense, I'd probably give the slight edge to John Hardin. But it's only a slight edge. Highlands benefitted from the short field in the second half due to JC turnovers, but JC didn't stop Highlands in the first half when JC didn't have turnovers. I have no reason to believe that JC would have been able to stop Highlands O if Highlands had to drive the ball over a long field to score. Realistically, Highlands was up 42-14 late in the fourth quarter and was moving the ball using second stringers when Highlands fumbled. JC scored very late in the game using its starting O against Highlands second string D to make it a 21 point game. Had Highlands second O not fumbled, the margin of victory would have been 28, which is the same margin of victory over John Hardin.

All of which leads me to believe that if JC had played John Hardin last year, it would have been a very close game. I don't believe that the western schools are better than the 5A schools from eastern Ky from my observation of playing Hopkinsville and Bowling Green in 07, Hopkinsville and Christian County in 08 and John Hardin in 09. There may be a little more parity in western Ky than the eastern Ky schools though.