OUT OF REACH: Most opponents have been unable to keep up with Gretna’s offense

DRY FORK – Buddy Brown has a unique perspective on Saturday’s Group A Division 2 state championship game in Salem.

Brown, the head coach of the Tunstall High football team, faced both finalists, Gretna and Floyd County, during a 17-day span in September.

The Trojans were the only team to take on both the Hawks and the Buffaloes this season. Tunstall lost 39-14 to Gretna on Sept. 12 and 21-14 to Floyd County on Sept. 29. Both games were played in Dry Fork.

In the first contest, Gretna quarterback Jayme Barksdale produced 266 yards of total offense in just his third varsity start. The Hawks’ defense, meanwhile, clamped down on the Trojans, limiting them to just 85 total yards.

“(Gretna coach Chris Thurman) does a good job coaching those kids up,” Brown said Thursday. “Jayme Barksdale has gained confidence and he’s throwing the ball well right now.”

In the second game, Tunstall was trying to avenge a 41-0 loss to Floyd County in 2007, and nearly succeeded. The Buffaloes raced out to a 21-0 lead before the Trojans mounted a late rally that fell just short.

Gretna has averaged 41.4 points per game overall and 44 in the postseason. Ten of the Hawks’ 12 victories have come by 20 points or more, and they have four shutouts to their credit.

Floyd County, on the other hand, has made a habit out of surviving close calls. Six of its wins have been by eight points or fewer, including four that were decided by three points or less. Last week, the Buffaloes rallied in the fourth quarter for a 14-13 victory over Lebanon.

Gretna has played just two close games all year, but one of those was last Saturday’s harrowing 45-40 win over Essex in the Division 2 semifinals. The outcome of that contest wasn’t determined until the Hawks made a fourth-down stop on their own 11-yard line with nine seconds remaining.

“Gretna’s playing awfully well right now,” Brown said. “It’s going to be a tough, tough task to stop that offense. I don’t know if Floyd can put enough points up on the board, but you never know. … The longer Floyd hangs around, the better chance they’ll have. They need some things to go well early.”

The Buffaloes are averaging just over 30 points a game, and Thurman expects to have his hands full with them.

“They give you a bunch of formations to work out of,” Thurman said. “And that’s something we don’t see a lot of. We’ll see two or three formations, but they give you four, five, six different formations to have to adjust to. I don’t know a lot about them; I’ve never met their coach (Winfred Beale). People I’ve talked to, everybody says the same thing about Coach Beale – great guy, a guy you’d like to know. So with that kind of guy coaching them, and the way they’ve been playing, they’re going to play hard.”

Thurman hasn’t spent much time dwelling on how either team fared against Tunstall.

“I’ve got some tapes on (Floyd County) that we traded for; that’s the way we do it,” he said. “You can’t really judge a common opponent. I mean, I don’t know what happened. I think they were up, from what I could read, 21-0 at halftime, and kind of put the (backups) in, and the game got close. A similar thing happened to us at Nelson, so that can happen. So I’m not going to put a lot of stock in the Tunstall score. Tunstall could have played well, or Floyd could have played badly. So you don’t know.”

The Buffaloes are led by senior quarterback Luke Harris, who engineered last week’s game-winning touchdown drive.

“They’ve got a great little quarterback themselves,” Brown said. “They’re smart; that’s an intelligent team. They’ll create some mismatches, run some combination routes. Floyd’s more of a ball-control (offense), more conventional. Gretna will spread you out.”

So how does Brown expect Saturday’s game to play out?

“If I had to pick, I’d take Gretna,” he said. “I really would.”