[Hoot Gibson]

Who knows you may be right. I had a different take on the 09 & 10 fades. Ashland had been thin on O/D linemen prior to this year's team. In both of those years several key linemen went down with career ending knee injuries. Unfortunately the players that replaced them just couldn't match that level of play. That's when the Cats faded. The good news was it prepared them for this year.

And FWIW, in 2009 during Ashland's annual nose dive. JC barely eeked out a miracle finish at the end (while trailing) A rarely used backup QB comes in cold and just heaves up a prayer which looks to be headed out of the back of the endzone on 4th and long and JK Hall comes down with it. JC comes from behind late wins 29-28, at home no less. Talking about your games that Ashland should have won. I will say this however, I didn't see anything from the boys in stripes that I thought was questionable. We had no complaints except for that infernal PA system on steroids. And you guys didn't hear a peep out of us except congrats. Ashland's record that year was 9 & 2, you all beat us by 1 and Dixie Heights beat us 46-12 in our playoff game. Annual nose dive?

I felt like Ashland could have concievably won last year too but things were a little more complex. I thought we should have won Friday's game at Belfry too, but here's a word to the wise from a from a guy with no dog in the fight. If you guys face the same team, with the same crew we did it's going to be a hard game. You look past these guys and you'll get tatooed.

There is no chance that Johnson Central will look past Rowan County or Belfry. With nobody giving JC's defense any chance of slowing down Rowan's offense, the Golden Eagles' starting defense have something to prove. But if Rowan is unable to run on JC, Adam Wing will have a very long night.

As for Belfry, it has not been long since the Golden Eagles won their first game ever against the Pirates and Matney is a Belfry graduate. Everybody expects a tough game when JC meets Belfry, regardless of how Belfry's season has gone up to that point. Belfry is one of those teams that always peaks at playoff time, and they are the last game on the regular season schedule.