ST. PAUL — Even by now, Sunday morning, St. Paul football coach Rusty Fuller is probably still smiling. See, football hasn’t been very fun here for sometime.
And, coach Fuller and his Wildcats are trying to change that.
Friday’s 35-0 win over Central City advanced the Wildcats to the Class C-2 playoffs for the first time since 2011. How frustrating has it been since that season? The Wildcats had won four games since 2012.
What happened?
“I think offseason training,” Fuller said, as the biggest factor. “They put a lot of hours in the summer weight room. Our senior leaders just kept getting better. They finally understood where we want this program to be in the next three to five years. Just pushing them to be the natural leaders they are was probably the difference this year.”
Like Pop Warner or Woody Hayes, the Wildcats do it the old-fashioned way. They beat you up on defense and grind it out on offense. It’s a formula that allows them to not have to be perfect each time out, but when they are the results are kind of like Friday.
The middle of the defense is the heart and soul for St. Paul.
Hunter Kocian, who has 15 tackles behind the line of scrimmage so far this year, is second on the team with 73 tackles. Behind him, linebacker Cole Fousek is part quarterback, part wrecking machine. He leads the team with 75 tackles, but, more importantly, he leads a defense that was rarely out of position against Central City’s high-speed spread attack.
Central City coach Troy Huebert’s assessment?
“We knew (Kocian), and No. 76 (Zach Derner-Hulinsky) were really good players,” Huebert said. “They didn’t let us get in the flow of anything offensively.”
Consider, the Bison had just 109 yards and four first downs. One of the first downs game on a 21-yard pass on a fake punt on CC’s first possession of the game. Central City managed seven yards rushing on 15 attempts.
Fuller rattled their names off like they were his own sons. In a way, maybe they are.
“Zane Goldfish, our center, and Hunter Kocian and Dylan Price and Zach Derner-Hulinsky and Cole Fousek and Thomas Mrkvicka game in a did a nice job,” he said. “Carson (Morgan) we haven’t been playing him at tight end all year.
“We’ve been kind of hit and miss with him at wide receiver and tackle. But, we thought his natural position was tight end and we need to take advantage of that this week.”
The result? A pair of touchdown catches from quarterback Tanner Wroblewski that gave St. Paul an early lead and a late game clincher. And, oh, that trip to the playoffs where they’ll face Hershey in the first round.
“We’ve never been in this position before so everything is new,” Fuller said. “Especially these kids because they have never been in the postseason. I told them this is great, but you can’t be satisfied. Now it’s one game at a time.”
Load the bus, coach, the whole town is going with you.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A48es1Df0-0&w=560&h=315]
Let’s Rewind
Class A | Bellevue West slips by Burke
Class A | Trickery helps LSE nip GISH
Class A | Spartans start quick, clinch playoffs
Pospisil | Millard West doesn’t stop in Links win
Class B | ES gets by Gretna | nebhsfootball
Class B | York powers past GINW
Class C-1 | Wahoo clips cross-town rival
Class C-2 | Crofton gets LHNE for playoff berth
Class D-1 | Stuhr powers Heartland to district title
Behind the Bracket
The Rewind was thankful for a special invitation from NSAA assistant directors Nate Neuhaus, Jeff Stauss and Jon Dolliver for an inside look at the bracket process on Saturday. While most everybody can “predict” the brackets before Saturday morning, the checking and double-checking process is quite fascinating.
And, oh, those coin flips and tiebreakers. They are the ire of Neuhaus, who, as director for the sport takes the lead. Each tiebreak has at least three sets of eyes on it, however.
By the time I arrive at 7:40, Neuhaus and Stauss have gone through the Class A bracket. The Class B bracket is done shortly before 8:00, with the caveat of double checking the district title for Omaha Gross.
“Those scenarios always make you look at things a few different times,” Stauss tells me.
Gross has won the B-1 district, but it was a three-way tie with Nebraska City and Plattsmouth. Since all three teams are outside of the top-16 in playoff points, it’s especially worth the extra work. Gross wins on overall win percentage.
The 16-team brackets for Class C-1 and Class C-2 are also in place in the next 45 minutes. With no geography to take into consideration the past three years, the process moves a bit more quickly here.
A few double and triple checks happen here as well. In C-1, Syracuse is a district champion, but is 17th in points, which keeps Ord (16th) out; and a three-way tie for seeds 13-15 between Stanton, Sutton and Cross County is the most stress that the NSAA crew goes through in Class C-2.
After the teams are seeded, Stauss enters them into the NSAA website that has a bracket builder. While near fool proof (because of how it’s built, only teams from the class can be entered), he double checks each entry with Dolliver.
For the most part, the morning has gone smoothly.
By just before 9:00, the 8-man brackets are being built and selected and mapped. The process is arduous and Neuhaus is old-school. He’s purchased two Nebraska maps and breaks out a fine-point black Sharpie.
These 8-man brackets will give the crew plenty of work to decipher. In Class D-1, the first order of business is determining district champions and then the final 22 spots for qualifiers. This year, there is a five-way tie for the final three spots.
“Ok, here we go,” Neuhaus says, before shifting to pencil mode and a makeshift tiebreaker sheet. His normal sheet has maximum room on it for four teams. He’ll enter the teams — Southwest, Omaha Nation, Bertrand, Amherst and Clearwater/Orchard — on the grid.
He prints each team’s schedule to go through the tiebreak process. It’s quicker than he thought for this one. Because Amherst, Bertrand and Clearwater/Orchard have all played four division one teams, it ends at the second tiebreak. Southwest and Omaha Nation played just three.
“Quicker than we thought,” he says.
At 9:12, he is on the phone with Alma and Hemingford representatives for the coin flip on a tiebreak that couldn’t be broken with the five-way process. Hemingford wins and gets to host the game. It’s a 311-mile coin trip.
While the same happens for Kenesaw and West Holt about 15 minutes later, it’s only for seeding, not hosting the game.
“I think that’s the first time we’ve had that,” Stauss quips of the two coin flips in the same class. “You picked a good time to come watch.”
Four hours after Neuhaus has arrived at the office — 6:30 on Saturday morning — the final bracket is built, double-checked and posted on-line by Stauss for Class D-2. Some 10 minutes later, Stauss notes there are 870 active users on the NSAA website.
Neuhaus, Dolliver and assistant Ashton Honnor will work for a few more hours trying to get officials lined up for the Thursday 8-man and Friday 11-man games.
But, for today, the bracket process is over. One more year down. Now, the players and coaches get to provide the final result. Just how these guys like it.
