For Black Hills coach Garrett Baldwin, it’s the substitutions Lynden can pull off.
“I’m sitting there watching film, and all of a sudden they’ll cross a certain yard line, and all of a sudden a wave of dudes subs in, and I’m like, ‘Wow, that must be nice,’” Baldwin said. “We’ve got 17 guys, and I think that’s the story of Black Hills this year.”
The No. 16 Wolves pulled off the Cinderella act to get into the state playoff, making the crossover in double overtime in the final act of a Kansas Tiebreaker before improbably beating Mark Morris on a last-second missed field goal.
Their reward? The No. 16 seed, and a date up north with the undefeated defending 2A state champs, who have run through their schedule with as-of-yet unmatched size, skill, athleticism, and yes, numbers.
“They run spread, and then it seems like when they get bored of that they’ll go double-tight and run the quarterback and jam it down your face,” Baldwin said. “And if that’s not successful enough, they’ll put extra offensive linemen in at those tight end positions and then really jam it down your face whenever they decide to. It’s going to be a challenge.”
Winners of the 2A Northwest League, the Lions didn’t have to play in a crossover last weekend. They sealed their perfect season with a 23-13 win over then-No. 4 Anacortes in which the Seahawks managed just one offensive touchdown.
That’s the type of game that Baldwin and the Wolves would actually be happy with come Friday, with limited possessions and few points going into crunch time. After all, they’ve already proved that if you go into the fourth quarter close, anything can happen.
“We might take a page out of Aberdeen’s notebook and how Aberdeen defeated us,” Baldwin said. “They kept the ball on offense and chewed a lot of clock, slowed things down. But we have faith in our guys. We have faith in our run game and our pass game. We’re going to let our defense play and play fast, play free, try to limit thinking. We’re not scared.”
That’s not to say Black Hills won’t try to throw in a few wrinkles. Since coming back from their injury-forced off week, the Wolves have dialed up at least one pass by someone other than quarterback Jaxsen Beck every week.
In the crossover, both wideout Tanner Parkinson and tailback Johnnie Stallings got to throw the ball, and both completed their passes. At this point, it’s just about an open secret that the Black Hills playbook is deep, and with nobody outside of their locker room giving them much of a chance against a top-ranked side that outclasses them in just about every way on paper, expect the Wolves to pull out all of the stops.
“We think it allows us to have a bit of an edge and mix things up and show the defense something that they haven’t seen before,” Baldwin said. “But it also just allows us to have fun. The kids absolutely love trick plays; they love naming them, they love making signals for them, they love working with us on the white board and designing how they think it’ll work. So we just try to have a lot of fun in that way.”
