Hammer said:
Senior has a nice team, they have some athletes. I like their QB, he is a dangerous runner. Pretty athletic. Their tailback is pretty big and runs hard straight ahead. On defense, I like their secondary. They covered pretty well. Senior is competitve.
Butte tried two unsuccessful on-side kicks in the first half (all while always having the lead), it was the oddest thing. They gave Senior great field position twice early in the game (in Butte territory both times). Early in the 1st quarter after going up 7-0 Butte tried the first one, and then up 13-6 they tried the 2nd one...almost cost Butte the game.
I thought coach Grey was going to get lynched by an angry fan base for those shenannigans. But Butte held a 13-12 halftime lead, and held Senior off in the 2nd half. Butte went up 20-12, and Senior tied it 20-20. But early in the 4th quarter, speedy RB Jake Eisenbarth (who missed the 2012 title game because of concussion the week before) sprinted for a long TD, kick was no good, Butte went up 26-20. The Butte defense turned away two Senior possible and near game-winning drives to end the game.
Butte has just as good, if not even slightly better skilled athletes (with the addition of 6'4" SR WR Peter Granger) on this years team, but they are missing 4 out of 5 OL starters (3 of the 4 were All-Staters), and instead of having the Senior 6'3" Mr. Clutch at FG Kicker they have a 5'6" Freshman kicker.
They definitly have the skilled players to repeat (team did very at passing camps this off-season), but a lot of other players will have to step up. Obviously it's terribly difficult to repeat as champions in any sport at any level, so the odds are definitly against them. But Butte definitly can beat any team on any given night, as can a lot of AA teams. Bozeman looks loaded again, for example. I don't know rosters of anybody else. Football in Montana is so damn competitive!! I love it. Good luck to everybody's teams. :thumb:
