The Best Seat in the House

The weather could be lousy, but the football could be too compelling to keep Boyle County and Danville fans at home.

Boyle and Danville play their most important regular-season games tonight on opposite sides of the city. The Admirals will host Bardstown on the east side, while the Rebels will host Lexington Catholic on the west side, with both games almost certain to decide championships in their respective districts.

The Boyle-Lexington Catholic game figures to be the bigger draw, as it pits two of the top teams in Class 4A. The teams’ two meetings last year were both entertaining games, and many fans expect this one to be as well.

But don’t overlook Bardstown-Danville, either. Sure, both teams have fallen into the second tier of Class 2A, and it’s difficult to imagine either team figuring in the championship picture right now. But the teams remain evenly matched, and both just might be better than their records indicate.

If you’re a regular at either Admiral Stadium or Rebel Stadium, you shouldn’t let the foul weather keep you away tonight. Besides, if you’ve been to a game in either of the last two weeks, your rain gear should be within easy reach.

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Here are the links to this week’s available preview stories:

• Lexington Catholic at Boyle County: Larry Vaught’s preview at amnews.com; Mike Fields’ preview from the Lexington Herald-Leader.
• Bardstown at Danville: Vaught’s preview at amnews.com; Peter Zubaty’s preview from The Kentucky Standard of Bardstown.
• Lincoln County at Meade County: My preview at amnews.com; Greg Crews’ preview from The News-Enterprise of Elizabethtown.
• Garrard County at Somerset: Hal Morris’ preview at amnews.com.
• Mercer County at Southwestern: My preview at amnews.com.
• Casey County at Taylor County: My preview at amnews.com.

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Now for this week’s picks, as I try to follow up my best week of the season:

• Boyle County over Lexington Catholic.
• Bardstown over Danville.
• Meade County over Lincoln County.
• Somerset over Garrard County.
• Southwestern over Mercer County.
• Taylor County over Casey County.

Last week: 4-0; season 24-8 (.750).

Of all the non-district games on this year’s local football schedule, there might be no more unlikely matchup than Lincoln County’s game Friday at Meade County.

Lincoln coach Mike Settles said he wouldn’t normally fill the hole in the middle of the Patriots’ district schedule with a Class 6A team from more than two hours away, but he said there’s a good reason why he did.

Lincoln is in one of the few five-team districts remaining after the KHSAA expanded the football alignment from four classes to six, so in the five weeks when the teams from its district (5A-7) play district games, one of them has to play outside the district or schedule its open date. Lincoln opted to take its open date in the opening week so it could have two preseason scrimmages, so Settles went looking for a team to fill the hole in week eight.

His search was systematic: He contacted coaches in other five-team districts to find out which of them had a matching hole in their schedule, starting with the district closest to home. That led him to Anderson County (5A-4), but the Patriots and Bearcats had already scheduled a scrimmage, and the two coaches didn’t want to wipe that out.

The trail then led to McCreary Central (4A-7), but the Raiders had already scheduled a game against a Tennessee school. Next on the list was Highlands (5A-5), but Settles said he didn’t think that was a team the Patriots need to be playing right now.

Finally, he came to District 6A-2, where the team without a district game this week was Meade. It’s a 110-mile trip from Stanford to Brandenburg, and when the Patriots get there they’ll find an opponent that is better than its 1-5 record would indicated, but Settles said he believed this matchup was the best he could do under the circumstances.

Coincidentally, there are connections both to Lincoln’s past and to Settles’ past within this game. Settles coached against Meade when he was at Ohio County and the two teams were in the same district for a time, and he said he got to know many of the coaches on Meade’s current staff then.

Meanwhile, this is Lincoln’s first trip to Meade since they made a trip to Brandenburg for a playoff game during the Patriots’ run to the Class 3A finals in 1993. They defeated the Green Wave in a 1993 regional championship game to earn a trip to a semifinal game at Warren Central, where they also won to advance to the finals.

The attempts by Lincoln County to make up its football game with Pulaski County that was called off tonight have come to an unfortunate end, as the Advocate’s Hal Morris reports that the KHSAA has informed Lincoln that it will have to forfeit the game.

Lincoln was trying to find a place to put the game, which was called off after the county’s schools were closed Wednesday through Friday and all related extracurricular activities were called off through Sunday due to illness. However, Pulaski County wasn’t willing to reschedule the game beyond this week, and the KHSAA effectively said that Lincoln would have to forfeit because of the impasse.

The Patriots fall to 1-5 with the loss, which is recorded with a 2-0 score. And they are effectively eliminated from the playoffs, because a KHSAA by-law states that teams must play all the other teams in their district to be eligible for the postseason.

It might well be the toughest game of the season for Boyle County, and it’s not against Lexington Catholic or Danville. It’s Lafayette, which brings a surprisingly good team to Rebel Stadium tonight.

The Generals may not look like much at 4-2, with one of those losses to a George Rogers Clark team that appears to be nothing special. But the other loss was by eight points to a good Boone County team, and they’re coming off a win over Henry Clay, which is considered to be Lexington’s best team. They have a quality running back in Eric Shaw Jr., and a pretty good defense as well.

That’s not to say Boyle is doomed in its homecoming game tonight. In fact, I’m picking the Rebels to win again, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the game isn’t close. All I’m saying is that for my money, this is the best team Boyle will face in the regular season and the game that will show us both what the Rebels can do against a quality opponent and what they might still need to work on.

Meanwhile, there’s an interesting storyline within a game that doesn’t appear to be all that interesting tonight in Lebanon. Marion County should be a solid favorite against Mercer County in a game in which the Titans will see some familiar faces on the opposite side of the stadium.

Marion’s offensive coordinator is Craig Yeast, the former Harrodsburg star who left the same position at Lincoln this summer to direct an offense that has so far averaged 392 yards and 42.2 points per game. And of course, the superintendent of Marion schools is Donald Smith, the former Harrodsburg head coach and Mercer assistant coach.

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Here are the links to this week’s preview stories:

• Lafayette at Boyle County: Hal Morris’ story at amnews.com; part of Mike Fields’ preview of Lexington games from the Lexington Herald-Leader.
• Wayne County at Casey County: A few words at the end of in my roundup preview on amnews.com; Shannon Hutchison’s preview from the Wayne County Outlook.
• Jackson County at Garrard County: A few more words in my preview on amnews.com.
• Mercer County at Marion County: Morris’ story on amnews.com.
• Pulaski County at Lincoln County: Morris’ story from amnews.com on the attempts to reschedule the postponed game.

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Now to this week’s picks, where I try to build on the momentum of week 6, in which I didn’t miss two games for the first time in a long time:

• Boyle County over Lafayette.
• Wayne County over Casey County.
• Garrard County over Jackson County.
• Marion County over Mercer County.

Last week: 4-1; season 20-8 (.714).

Friday’s Pulaski County-Lincoln County football game in Stanford has been postponed in the wake of the closure of all Lincoln schools through Friday due to illness. No makeup date has been determined.

The game has not yet been canceled, although a number of people are saying it has been. Officials from both schools have been talking about how, when and if the game, which is a district game, can be played. However, it won’t be played Friday or Saturday.

The options are essentially these:

• Play the game on a Monday or Tuesday somewhere between now and the end of the season.
• Play on Oct. 30, an open date for Pulaski, in which case Lincoln’s non-district game with Garrard County would be canceled.
• Award a win to Pulaski by forfeit.

The third option would be easiest, but KHSAA by-laws state that you must play all the teams in your district to be eligible for the playoffs, so that could be problematic.