Tigers Must Guard Against Letdown Against Lions

Worth County is unbeaten at 5-0 going into Friday’s game, while St. Joseph Christian is 1-3, with winless Albany going the distance against them. But that doesn’t always mean anything. In 1990, Worth County, playing in its first full year of eight man football, came into its game with a 4-2 record. North Nodaway, the defending state champions, was struggling to get back on their feet, coming in with a 2-4 record after dropping their first four. Worth County took a 14-8 lead at halftime, but the second half was all North Nodaway as the Mustangs went on to win 30-14 and Worth County’s season ended with a 6-3 mark. It would be another five years before Worth County’s playoff drought would end, when they won the state title in 1995.

The parallel is that all four of North Nodaway’s losses were close in 1990; Christian went the distance against North Andrew and had close losses to Pattonsburg and Stanberry. Christian has been Kryptonite against Worth County, beating them in the State Championship in 2007 as well as last year. The flip side is that Worth County has only lost one Homecoming since 1993, to Mound City in 2004. Something has to give in Friday’s game.

Worth County did nothing to hurt their offensive numbers in last week’s 80-20 victory against King City. They now average 71.2 points per game, behind only Stanberry with 72.

They allow 12 points per game, second only to Rock Port. Worth County will have to shut down another potent passing game as Lion quarterback Ben Craven has completed 24 of his 49 passes for 264 yards. Their best runningback will be Braden George.

A series of short fields against Albany, along with a couple of returns for touchdowns meant that the stats were down for that week, but Tevin Cameron’s career night against King City, where he ran for 236 yards, put him back into the hunt for the rushing title. He is in third with 49 carries for 675 yards, behind only Stanberry’s two-headed monster of Trey Schieber (809 yards) and Cole Durbin (807 yards). Cameron leads the league in yards per carry, at 13.8. With the emergence of Cameron, Isaac Alarcon has returned to his role as a blocking back, where he helped Brevyn Ross rack up 1,900 yards his freshman year while running for 900 more himself. Quarterback Ryan McClellan can also break loose.