[charlie22]

For me, it would have to be the Highlands win over Cincy St. X a couple years ago. Nobody expected Highlands to pull it out after the Ohio monster defeated Trinity and St. X by large margins. That was an amazing upset I will never forget.

At the same time, our first round playoff game against Bryan Station in 2008 - even though we won - nearly gave me a heart attack lol. It took a touchdown in the last few seconds to seal the deal. Had they held on that would have been one of the biggest upsets ever probably.

Hey now, don't say nobody expected Highlands to win. Beating T and Lou X caused some folks some concern. Beating Cathedral and Colerain caused some folks even more concern. But I have many witnesses to my prediction, after watching a lot of film on St. X, that Highlands would win. I was disappointed that we didn't convert on a couple of those goal line area opportunities as I had predicted that Highlands would win by 14 points.

St. X was big, but way too slow and unimaginative on offense to be able to move the ball on Highlands. Their O was predictable and we had way too much speed and quickness for St. X's o line to be able to get and maintain blocks. Plus with the big boy (JJ Johnson) playing nose and a very good sized and extremely talented LB playing the middle (Roller) I wasn't concerned about them running the ball down our throats. I predicted that St. X would score 7.

Defensively they looked much better on tape than they did offensively, but they hadn't faced any one that was as diverse and as good as Highlands. By diverse I just don't mean passing and running the ball about the same amount. Our running was itself diverse. People focused on Collinsworth running the ball (St X surely did to its peril) but we had an exceptionally good running QB (Bardo) and another exceptionally good running back (Fennell). We had a very quick O line that had some size (two of them went on to be first team All State and three of them were returning starters). We could run up the middle with power or get outside. We could use Collinsworth as a decoy and give the ball to Bardo or Fennell. Our passing game was also very diverse: three exceptional receivers in Drennon, Buten and Gold, each with speed good enough that St. X had to honor the deep routes. A big tight end (Welz) that had good hands and not afraid to catch the ball in traffic. Plus we ran the screen pass as well as any Highlands team I've seen. Collinsworth was an excellent receiver out of the back field too. We could throw deep, middle and short all very well. As good as St. X' defense was, I was very confident that we'd score at least 14 points (I actually predicted 21).

Special teams were also very, very solid. Return game with Collinsworth returning kickoffs and Gold returning punts was dangerous. Kicking game was very good too. Weinel could pretty consistently hit the endzone. And with so many starting spots filled by seniors, there were plenty of talented juniors to fill most of the special team spots, so we weren't relying on a whole lot of sophomores to play special teams.

I didn't and don't consider it an upset at all. Frankly I was disappointed in the margin of victory.

I do agree with you about the BS game in 08. It was nerve racking. We went through a lot of bourbon at the post game party.