Fayetteville defeated St. John Vianney from St. Louis by a score of 64-0 tonight in Casey Dick’s first game as the Bulldogs’ head coach. Fayetteville led 43-0 at the end of the first quarter and 57-0 at halftime. Vianney is a defending state champion in Missouri 5A, which is that state’s second-largest classification.
Fayetteville has a lot of really great skill players, but I was impressed with the play calling tonight. I think you can see a lot of Bobby Petrino’s influence in his play calling. He did a great job tonight of getting the receivers to the soft spots in the secondary.
Lets hope play calling and finding soft spots in a secondary is all he took from Bobby. I’d hate to see him have Bobbys’ personality or Bobbys’ ability to find soft spots in ditchs or with his female staff. Look forward to seeing great things from Casey.
It has been an up and down year for FHS. They have been beaten pretty soundly by their best opponents, Owasso, Okla. (51-19), Bryant (42-13) and Bentonville (55-14). Those are all state champion-caliber teams. They also lost at Bentonville West.
But there have been some blowout wins, including over Vianney by 64 points and over Rogers and Van Buren by 40.
Fayetteville probably will be the No. 3 or No. 4 seed from its conference. It plays Har-Ber to end the season. That will probably determine who is No. 3. The Bentonville-Bentonville West game is going to determine the conference champion again.
I wouldn’t say West thumped Fayetteville. West scored with about two minutes left to set the final score, 35-17. It was a pretty competitive game that included a couple of killer turnovers for FHS.
The Bryant game was the biggest mismatch. I have never seen a high school team in Arkansas with as much size on the offensive and defensive lines as Bryant has this year. I’ll be surprised if anyone beats that team.
The Owasso and Bentonville games were pretty evenly matched for most of the first half. Both games turned on turnovers just before halftime. Fayetteville had momentum vs. Bentonville the other night and was set to get the ball back with the game tied. The punt returner fumbled the catch, Bentonville recovered and went on to score 41 straight.
One of Fayetteville’s best players, receiver Beau Stuckey, tore his ACL in the Owasso game. That has been a blow to the offense. I think he is good enough to play college football but is committed to play baseball at Missouri State.
There have been some injuries at linebacker, too. Quade Mosier, who is committed to play at UCF, was out for the Owasso and Bryant games.
There are a couple of younger Fayetteville players who look to be good recruits to me. One is receiver Isaiah Sategna, whose father, Mario, is an assistant track coach at Arkansas. Isaiah has become a big-play receiver, but he is already a star sprinter on the track.
Fayetteville also has a good-looking sophomore linebacker named Kaiden Turner who has played a lot this year and made a lot of plays when the senior linebackers were hurt. He is 6-2, 215 already, so I tend to think he will have some colleges show interest.