Panthers' Notebook
• Tickets
The ticket booths will open at 5 p.m. and prices are $5 for adults and $4 for students K-12. Tickets will not be sold prior to game night. This is a KSHSAA sponsored event and passes will not be accepted, including student activity passes and season reserved tickets. Reserved seating is not available for this event.
• Unlucky 21
Wichita’s Bishop Carroll Catholic High School — Great Bend’s opponent tonight — opened and closed the regular season with losses.
Carroll (7-2) opened the 2010 football season by losing to Wichita Heights, the No. 2-ranked team in Class 6A, 21-14. It closed the regular season with a 21-14 loss to Hutchinson, the No. 1-ranked team in Class 5A
In between, Carroll won seven straight games, all by 28 points or more.
• Cornerstones?
Beau Bell, a 6-foot-1, 215-pound senior, and Tucker Chadd, a 6-0, 205-pounder, are mainstays at the defensive end positions for Carroll — three-year starters.
Carroll head coach Alan Schuckman doesn’t call them cornerstones, though.
“They’re a big part of our defense,” Schuckman said of the duo. “Our front seven are pretty good and we have eight starters back from last season, so there’s a lot of experience there.
“All eight of those guys are the cornerstones of our defense. We played in the state semifinals last year, so they’re pretty good.”
• Model of consistency
Carroll is making its 10th straight appearance in the state playoffs. It was the state runnerup in 1997.
• Nance at QB
The starting quarterback for run-minded Carroll is Tyler Nance, who leads the team with 795 rushing yards for a 6.4 yards-per-carry average and 13 rushing touchdowns.
Nance has only attempted 33 passes on the season, completing 16, for only one scoring pass.
• Quoting
“They don’t have a superstar, where you can only key in on one guy,” GBHS head coach Bo Black said of Carroll. “You’ve got to be able to stop everything that they do.”
The Big 3 that rule the roost in high school football in the western part of the state for Class 5A, according to Great Bend head coach Bo Black, is Hutchinson, McPherson and Bishop Carroll.
Top-ranked Hutchinson (8-1) is in quest of building on a glossy resume that includes an unbelievable run of six straight state championships. Hutch’s only loss this season came to Rockhurst, out of Kansas City, Mo., and the Salt Hawks appear to be on a collision course with Gardner-Edgerton and quarterback Bubba Starling in the title game.
Great Bend, sporting the toughest regular-season schedule in the state, would like to make its mark in its first postseason appearance in three years, when the Panthers (4-4) take on Bishop Carroll (7-2) tonight at 7 at Memorial Stadium in the first round of the state playoffs.
“They’re very well-coached and the strength of their team is their defense,” Black said of Carroll, which lost to Hutchinson 21-14 in a district championship game. “They have a great defense. Not only do they have great athletes on defense, they give you a lot of different fronts, a lot of different coverages and a lot of different looks.”
Great Bend, featuring a getting-better-by-the-week, quick-hitting pass offense, has won three of its last four games, including two of three district outings to clinch the district championship and an opening-round home berth in the postseason.
Great Bend beat Salina South, and Hays knocked off Salina Central last Friday in district finales, causing the Panthers to pass Central in the points system for the district title. Central has the Herculean task of traveling to Hutchinson tonight.
For Great Bend, it is the school’s first appearance in the playoffs since the 2007 campaign, the final year in a six-year run of the Panthers making it to the playoffs.
After missing out the past two seasons, Great Bend is back.
Back in Black.
“It’s exciting,” Black said, “and the best thing about it is that it was our goal all year long to get in. We’re really excited for our kids to have the opportunity. I just think, in high school football, this is the payoff. As we well know as adults, you go to work and go to work and eventually, you get your paycheck.
“You’re working towards something and the gratifying part, in my eyes, is that the playoffs are your payoff. You put in all of the hard work in there so you can be paid by the great opportunity to represent your school. Now that we’ve made it here, one, you get the opportunity to dream big and understand that anything can happen.”
