[Orange Blaze]

Raceland may be the most experienced team to ever take the field in our area.  The Ram defense should be lights out considering every player on it has the equivalent of 2 full years of high school experience with a few having 3 and nearly 4 full years of experience of playing high school football.

They are facing a team in Ashland whose entire offense with the exception of a couple of players is getting their first career varsity start.  Defensively, Ashland does have some experience returning but this is experience from a defense that gave up 262 yards rushing to East Carter, 394 yards passing to Russell, and 105 yards rushing to the Greenup quarterback in their last 3 regular season outings.

Put simply, this is as "David vs. Goliath" as you'll ever see in an Ashland-Raceland matchup where Raceland is actually playing the role of Goliath.  They've done all the right things at Raceland as far as players taking the COVID year and holding back.  Getting Lykins and Webb was icing on the cake.  The only thing they haven't done right is getting their turf installed.  That's a little disappointing as I would have thought they would have had the whole community out there trained in cutting and gluing numbers and hash marks round the clock to get that inaugural game played for this team.  The field looks great.  Whatever the case, though, Raceland is a 14 point favorite over Ashland no matter where the game is played.

There are no excuses for Raceland this year.  It's state championship or bust.

As an aside, though, does Wheelersburg's field come with Ohio refs?  If that's the case, expect flags any time a Kentucky team scores a long TD or hits a big play.  This one could end up 0-0.

Hahah all great points….even the Ohio refs hahah. All but the state championship or bust. Idk how people think you can erase a 36 point running clock in one year. Pikeville didn’t lose everyone. I don’t wanna get caught up in talking about the end of the year at the beginning of the year but I believe there will be a lot of upset people when they realize Pukeville is still better then the Rams. List of football to be played u til then….let’s have some fun!! 

BTW ….if this weather doesn’t get you ready for football you’re dead inside

I agree with what you said about the gap closing with Pikeville.  I know it’s still a long time from now but after seeing us play last weekend we don’t look like we have closed the gap with them from a pure strength standpoint.   But that is still a long time from now and a lot can happen between now and November.

As for this game I think the defense will carry our team for most of the season and I don’t see this game being any different. Maybe Wheelersburg’s defense was just that good but our offense has had a tendency to sputter in the past and right now looks more or less the same.  As always we will improve over the course of the year but we have a lot of work to do before anyone starts talking about being able to play with Pikeville.