The road to the first Prep Bowl at the new US Bank Stadium gets underway throughout Minnesota Tuesday night as Section 5AAAAA quarterfinal action is the first step on the road to a state tournament berth.
In the upper bracket, the top seeded Spring Lake Park Panthers get a first round bye and they will await the winner of the game between the fifth seeded Minneapolis Southwest Lakers and the fourth seeded St. Louis Park Orioles. Last time the two schools met was in the 2014 section semifinals in Linden Hills with the Lakers eliminating the Orioles on a chilly Saturday night. This year, the scene shifts to St. Louis Park where both teams have identical 1-7 records. The Orioles lone win came against Park Center and the Lakers only victory was against Minneapolis South on September 22 41-0.
Last week, St. Louis Park had a chance to win their second game of the season but quarterback Logan Romero's pass on fourth and goal to Mykel Howard with :10.4 to go was incomplete. The key to the game for the Orioles is to take care of the football and play strong defense.
As for Southwest, they came up short last week against the St. Anthony Village Huskies. They did get their offense going against the Huskies, losing 28-22. They will need to get the offense going just like they did last week.
Now to the lower bracket where the second seeded Cooper Hawks wait in the wings for the winner of the second quarterfinal game between the Park Center Pirates and the Irondale Knights. No, this isn't a rerun of last week's game that had the Knights beat the Pirates 28-13 to improve their record to 2-6 while Park Center fell to 0-8. Sean Sutherlin caught two touchdown passes from Brendan White and Deandre Clarke ran for 80 yards and reached the end zone twice. It's pretty unusual that two teams that played each other the previous week play the following week. Irondale has the talent to go for its second straight win against the Pirates.
Following semifinal play on the 29th, the section final game takes place on Friday, November 4. It could have the makings of another battle between Spring Lake Park and Cooper. The Panthers beat the Hawks on October 19 57-39. How many points will the two teams combine for if it does come to fruition?
No comments:
Post a Comment