WARDSVILLE - The Blair Oaks Falcons aren't quite sure what team they'll face in tonight's Class 3 District 6 championship game.
Sure, they know they'll be playing the Fulton Hornets. But what Fulton team will it be?
Will it be the one with the run-heavy attack, as Fulton was for the first 10 weeks of the season? Or will it be last week's team that threw for 422 yards after star running back Travis Dean was lost for the season with a torn ACL?
All will be revealed at 7 p.m. tonight when the Falcons (11-0) host the Hornets (9-2) at the Falcon Athletic Complex.
"They've played one game without the Dean kid, so I don't know how many tendencies you can draw from that," Blair Oaks head coach Terry Walker said. "... Our goal certainly will be to try to make them one-dimensional, which is was we try to do with all the teams we play. So (tonight) will be no different."
Still, there are certain things the Falcons can count on.
"Preparation-wise, you've got to hang your hat on something," Walker said. "We've got a couple films on them and at this time of year, most teams are who they are, whether they run or throw. We know they like to run the zone read, they like to run some jet sweep. Their quarterback is certainly a dynamic player who can hurt you in a bunch of different ways."
Junior quarterback Devin Masek threw for 407 yards in last week's win against Southern Boone, completing 23-of-34 passes with no interceptions. For the season, he has completed 116-of-197 passes for 1,785 yard with 20 touchdowns and five interceptions.
"We're going to prepare for what we've seen them do offensively, just because we don't have any other options," Walker said. "We know that they threw the ball quite a bit more against Southern Boone, and we'll try and match our coverages to it and do the best we can.
"The one thing that I noticed last week in the Southern Boone game was they made some big plays vertically down the field. With our base defense, our No. 1 goal against any team is to take away the vertical passing game, because I just don't like big throws going over the top of our secondary. We will certainly try and negate that or prevent that to the max extent possible."
Radarion Glover, a senior, is the Hornets' leading receiver with 37 catches for 612 yards and seven touchdowns. Alec Fleetwood, a junior, also has seven touchdowns in his 20 catches for 392 yards.
"All four of their receivers can catch the football," Walker said. "They all run decent patterns, so secondary-wise, this will probably be our toughest test to date. The quarterback can extend plays with his feet and he can throw on the run and he throws a good football. We're going to have to do a really good job in the secondary to be able to withstand that kind of pressure."
The Hornets are averaging 174 yards passing and 288 rushing per game. With the absence of Dean, who had run for 1,920 yards on 174 carries (11.0 average) with 25 touchdowns, Masek is the team's leading rusher with 552 yards on 80 carries (6.9) with 11 scores. Ammod Davis, a sophomore, is next with 336 yards on 50 carries (6.7) with five touchdowns.
"(Masek) reminds me to some extent of (Blair Oaks quarterback) Jordan (Hair) in the sense that he has the ability to run, but he keeps his eyes down the field and can make throws on the run," Walker said. "We're just going to try to contain him the best we can, with the understanding that when you play against a good team, they're going to make some plays., You just don't want them to be scoring plays - you survive the play and line up and do it again."
The Fulton defense has allowed 27.2 points per game this season. But if you throw out the two games they played against state-ranked Class 4 teams (62 to Hannibal and 64 to Mexico), that number drops to 19.3.
"Their kids appear to be pretty aggressive ... and they do a pretty good job of being disciplined and adhering to their assigned responsibilities," Walker said.
Senior linebacker Kobe Kaminski leads the Hornets with 131 tackles, including 73 solo stops. Senior nose guard Clayton Bristol is next with 76 tackles and junior linebacker Lukas Berrey has 74, while senior defensive end Alex Garner paces the team with nine sacks among his 72 tackles.
"We've seen them in some four-man front, a three-man front from time to time and an occasional five-man front," Walker said. "We'll have to be prepared for all of them and be ready to execute against all of them."
That defense will have the task of trying to slow down a Blair Oaks team that hasn't scored less than 42 points in any game this season and comes in averaging 55.4 points per game. Walker said his players have worked hard in practice to get the offense humming as well as it is right now.
"Any time you have an offense that has the ability to pressure you horizontally and vertically, both in the running game and the passing game, where you're forcing the defense to cover every quadrant of the field, it becomes pretty challenging," he said. "Most teams at the high-school level are not able to do that.
"We feel if we are able to execute, don't turn the ball over and are able to avoid injuries, then we'll have a good chance to continue to be successful."
It would be hard to execute any better than last week's 58-6 win against Eldon, when Jordan Hair completed an impressive 21-of-23 passes and Adam Schell and C.J. Closser both had more than 200 yards receiving.
"One thing we noticed about Jordan early on is that he was extremely accurate," Walker said. "He's been accurate in the pocket, he's been accurate on the run.
"If he can play to that level, then that puts a lot of pressure on the defense and gives them not a lot of margin for error."
The Falcons will host their third straight playoff game thanks to being the top seed in the district.
"It's just a credit to the kids," Walker said. "When we started way back in August, we didn't say, "Hey, we want to have a home district championship game.' We said, "Let's go out and prepare for Week 1,' and then we did that every single week. The kids bought into that and did that, and they earned this chance and this opportunity. Hopefully we'll make the most of it."
Notes: Running back/defensive back Cody Alexander is still on the mend after a neck injury suffered two weeks ago against Versailles, although he got good news last week and saw limited time against Eldon. "His X-rays came back normal, his MRI came back normal," Walker said. "We've just been being really careful with him, because we need him. So we pulled him out on offense (against Eldon). Just because of where the game was, we didn't feel like we needed him on offense." ... Two-way lineman Chance Cumpton has a foot problem that has slowed him recently. "We'll watch how much he plays (tonight) and try and use him where we think we need him most," Walker said. Players who see more work if Cumpton is sidelined include Cole Stockman on offense and Stockman, Justin Cobb and Riley Boeckman on defense.