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Bucks answer a few more questions
By Mike Perry / mikeperry@avalanche.com
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Above, Buck receiver Alfredo Armendariz always makes something happen after the catch; below, the best possible setting for a football game.
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The Alpine Bucks entered the 2008 season with young talent, strong lines and a lot of questions.
On top of the questions, the Bucks were facing their toughest nondistrict schedule in quite a few years. After all, four of the five nondistrict opponents are Class 3A teams.
So, after three games, here’s the scorecard:
Are the Bucks a good football team? Yep, these guys are 3-0 against tough competition.
Do they have a solid successor for record-break Moises Estrada? Yep, Dominic Scott has started writing his own record book.
Can the defense win ball games? Yep. The line is stronger, the linebackers are stronger, the secondary is stronger than a year ago. What does that translate to? Well, the Bucks have caused 10 turnovers, dropped quarterbacks for 14 sacks, and dropped other runners for losses 18 times. Think about that for just a moment: Three opponents have run off 197 plays against the Bucks; 42 of those plays have resulted in a turnover, a sack or lost yardage. Put more bluntly, Buck opponents can expect some kind of disaster on 22 percent of their plays.
Do the 2008 Bucks have the star power of the 2007 Bucks? Hmmm, maybe, maybe not. What they do have is a 29-man varsity that’s solid from top to bottom. You can plug any of those into just about any situation and they will kick some patootie.
Are the defensive and offensive lines meeting expectations? Supposedly, the Bucks had one thing to build on this year, a veteran group of linemen. Those guys have opened holes on offense and slammed ‘em shut on defense.
Has the secondary learned to avoid the long ball, which plagued the 2007 Bucks? So far, the answer is a resounding “Yes.”
Can the young receiving corps match last year’s star-studded group?
Match, shoot, they appear capable of more than matching. Five Alpine receivers have shown that they can (a) get open, (b) catch the darn ball, and (c) make something happen after the catch.
OK, OK, enough of that. Let’s not get too high after just three games. After all, as head coach Shad Hanna says, “the mark of a good team is steady, consistent improvement.” They’ve done that for three games, but seven tough ones remain.
Last Friday, the Alpine Bucks put together a solid, workmanlike game against a good Fabens team at Jackson Field for homecoming.
In some ways, it was their least flashy game of the year; in other ways, it was a hard-won, physical experience.
“Fabens was big and physical,” Hanna said. “They are just getting better and better. I’m glad we caught them when we did. Every week they get better.
“I was really worried about how physical the game became because we don’t need to be losing anyone,” he said. “We lost Caleb [McBride] for the next game, maybe for awhile, maybe for the year. We won’t know for a day or two.”
Other than McBride, the Bucks got out of the game with a few bruises and sprains. “But we’ll be OK,” Hanna said. “And we’ll have a couple of guys back. Jeff Raatz played a little bit against Fabens but we held him out of a lot the game. He’ll be back against Clint along with Daniel Flud and Skylan Green.”
Flud and Green could have played against Fabens, Hanna said, but were held out just to be on the safe side.
“Taylor Moore came in for Caleb and played most of the night,” Hanna said. “He’s danged good. We don’t lose anything with him in there except that we lose a good backup. And we’re thin already.
“Against Fabens, we might not have been quite as focused as we were for the first two games,” Hanna said. “But we played hard, and Fabens could easily have beaten us if we hadn’t.
“Now, this week,” the coach added, “we’ll find out how well this team travels Friday night.”
Clint is a 200-mile trip from Alpine to the suburbs of El Paso.
I asked Hanna how you gauged a team week in, week out.
“If you have a team that is a steady climber, and improves steadily each week, if it keeps getting better, that’s a sign of a really good team,” he said. “I think we have that kind of team.
“A team that’s up one week and down the next, is not that good a team. We don’t have that problem. Yes, we kind of leveled off this week because of homecoming, but I just think we’ll keep getting better each week. This team has just been a lot of fun to be around.”
Clint is another tough 3A team he expects to challenge the Bucks.
“Whoever makes the least amount of mistakes and who plays the best defense, will win this game. We’ve both been scoring a lot of points. And they run the wishbone, so they’re going to be trying to keep the ball away from our offense.
“Clint is big and physical and they’ll try to run the clock to keep our offense off the field,” he said.
On offense, Hanna said, Taylor O’Bryant, Carlos Mendoza and the entire receiving corps looked good Friday night against Fabens. “And our offensive line - particularly Logan (Lewis) and Travis (Prausa) - had a good game.
Defensively, Everett Morrow had an excellent game. In fact, Morrow, a defensive tackle, had a team-leading 9 tackles. That’s particularly impressive because defensive tackles rarely lead the team in tackles in Alpine’s defensive schemes.
In a recurring theme from previous games, Hanna praised the secondary.
In 2007, the Buck secondary took several hits, particularly for giving up the long ball. That has not happened this year.
“The secondary did a fabulous job of covering their receivers,” Hanna said. “They did a marvelous job of holding down a wide-open offense. And Taylor Moore and Wes Bynum each had sacks.”
Junior quarterback Dominic Scott had another good game, “maybe not as good as his first two games,” Hanna said, “but he’s had no interceptions this year, which is fabulous for a new quarterback. He makes sure he throws to an open receiver.”
Hanna singled out Carlos Mendoza as representative of a tough five-man receiving corps: “Carlos may not be very fast, but he runs great routes. He just gets open and he can catch the ball. Shoot, they’re all that way - Taylor (O’Bryant), Emilio (Lopez), Alfredo (Armendariz) and Arael (Huerta).”
Dominic is “really spreading it around to a lot of good receivers. Any of those five guys can make something happen. I’d sure hate to have to figure out how to defend them.
“The kids are excited,” he added, “ready for the next one. This team has been a breath of fresh air to be around.”
The Bucks carry few players on the varsity this year, 29 to be exact, which is six or seven fewer than suited up for games last year. So, they can be more susceptible to the effects of injuries and bad grades. Injuries, you can’t do anything about.
As for grades, Hanna said, “we have four kids that we’re a bit worried about on grades, but we’re working on that and hope we won’t lose anyone to grades.”
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