Jim Mashek

OWENSBORO BANKS ON DEFENSE; SPARTANS LOOKING FOR 10th VICTORY

Brandon Smith, South Warren High School’s 10th-year head football coach, understands what’s in front of the Spartans.

It’s a little journey up Interstate 165, more commonly known as the William Natcher Parkway, and a regional semifinal game against Owensboro High School in the KHSAA Class 5A playoffs.

It’s called Rash Stadium, “and the fans are right up on you; there isn’t a track or anything,” Smith recalled.

Owensboro is playing in the fabled stadium for the 100th season, a compact, concrete structure named after a physician and one of the city’s civic leaders, Dr. O.W. Rash. The Red Devils began playing football in 1895, and 10 years after moving into Rash Stadium, in 1923, they played their first game under the lights at the iconic stadium.

Owensboro, like the visiting Spartans, has an impressive football history, one that includes four KHSAA state championships, most recently in 1986. That was two decades and change before South Warren even OPENED.

Smith has guided South to three state titles, in 2016, 2018 and most recently, 2021. Former South Warren QB Gavin Spurrier led the Spartans to a 44-7 victory over Owensboro in 2018, in a regional championship game, but that was played on the South Warren campus.

This time, the Red Devils (7-4 overall) are playing on their home turf.

Owensboro coach Jay Fallin said his squad was hit by graduation, hard, after the 2022 campaign. After a slow start, against a challenging non-district schedule, the Red Devils have won six of their last seven games, including last week’s 67-0 throttling of visiting Ohio County in the KHSAA 5A playoffs.

The Red Devils are a young team — Brandon Smith and other area coaches have been raving about sophomore running back Evan Hampton — but they’ve shown steady improvement over the last couple months. Hampton has rushed for a team-high 1,050 yards and 19 touchdowns this season — while averaging 11.7 yard per carry — and Fallin has plenty of reinforcements at that critical position, too.

“They’ve got two running backs (Hampton and OHS teammate Deion Winstead) who are as good as any tandem you’ll find in the state,” Smith said. “No matter what year you play them, they have good running backs. They’ve got great team speed.

“I tell our younger kids, ‘By now, you’ve got a season under your belt.’ I don’t want them thinking this is their first rodeo.”

The Spartans opened the playoffs with a resounding 50-12 victory over visiting Madisonville-North Hopkins last week, and Madisonville-North Hopkins knocked off Owensboro, 45-38, just three weeks ago. South quarterback Bryce Button, a 6-foot-2, 195-pound junior, said his team will use ‘tunnel vision’ and not get caught up in comparative scores against common opponents.

“I think we’re hitting our stride right now,” Button said. “We don’t want to have anything to do with the ‘comparative game,’ the comparative scores. This is a good team. We’ve just got to execute, take care of the ball, and have the right frame of mind.”

That’s something the Spartans have stressed since their disheartening 36-29 loss to Bowling Green High School on October 13. That’s when South went ahead, 29-28, on Button’s two-point conversion run with just 34 seconds left in the game. Bowling Green reached the South 40-yard line before the winning score, the “hook-and-lateral” play, when Trevy Barber caught BGHS quarterback Deuce Bailey’s quick sideline pass before his lateral gave teammate Trey Graham an unencumbered path to the goal line with six seconds left.

Owensboro coach Jay Fallin said his team understands what it’s up against, in the Spartans.

“We felt like we had the pieces in place, with our younger kids, but we just needed some seasoning,” Fallin said in a telephone interview Thursday. “South Warren is a really good team. Bryce Button, he’s done a very nice job at quarterback. We tell our young guys, ‘You’ve played a whole season, by the time you get to the playoffs.’

“Our quarterback, Trevor Delacey, has made a lot of progress. We feel like we’re playing our best football at the right time of the year.”

South Warren was the beneficiary of junior fullback/linebacker Ethan Reynolds’ return to the team last week from an injury. Reynolds scored two first-half touchdowns as the Spartans buried Madisonville-North Hopkins, 50-12. Button has passed for more than 3,000 yards and 36 touchdowns, with just five interceptions, and he has plenty of receiving options, too.

Senior wideout Bailey Shoemaker leads the Spartans with 51 receptions for a team-high 1,049 yards and 11 touchdowns, and speed merchants DeShawn Bridges and Isaiah Rigsby have combined for more than 900 receiving yards and 12 touchdowns themselves. Bridges is one of the 15 or 16 South Warren seniors who have been so diligent in putting last year’s 6-6 season in the rear-view mirror.

The closer we get to Thanksgiving, the lure of a trip to Lexington’s Kroger Field for the KHSAA Championship Weekend in early December comes more into focus.

South Warren made it in 2021, defeating Lexington’s Frederick Douglass High School 38-26 in the championship game. Jay Fallin’s Owensboro squad made it in 2020, the season turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic, before Bowling Green’s defense took charge in a 17-7 victory over the Red Devils in the championship game.

Brandon Smith has compiled an impressive 108-20 record in 10 seasons as the South Warren head coach.

Bridges and fellow South Warren senior Jack Neeper, a 6-foot-8, 310-pound offensive tackle, like what the tea leaves are telling them before the road trip up the Natcher Expressway.

“I feel like we’ve done everything we can to prepare, that we’re going to be ready to play,” Neeper said.

Bridges was a little more specific.

“They’re fast. Owensboro has lots of athletes,” he said. “But if we can stop them before they get going, if we can start fast, I like our chances.”

Kickoff is at 7 p.m.