CARROLLTON - For the seventh season in a row, the Carrollton Hawks are playing a tenth game.
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The 10-seeded Hawks will face the 7-seed Sesser-Valier Red Devils in the first round of the Class 1A IHSA Playoffs on Saturday at 1 p.m.
This will be the second time during Carrollton’s playoff run that they’ll be starting their journey on the road. However, on the previous occasion, they defeated the Camp Point Central Panthers 46-0 in 2016.
“In a first-round playoff game there’s a lot on the line,” Carrollton head coach Nick Flowers said. “We’re really going to have to get after the ball. I feel like we're doing a better job later in the season at flying to the ball.”
The Red Devils, who are 7-2, finished in third place in the Black Diamond Conference, which is made up of mostly 2A-3A schools. Their average margin of victory is 25-21 and have competed in three games decided by single-digits, which they all came out winners.
Carrollton is coming in with a 6-3 record on the back of a 40-32 defeat to the Camp Point Central Panthers, who are the 2-seed in Class 1A.
“I’m pretty excited. It’s fun to play new people, something different,” Carrollton wide receiver Nathan Walker said. “We played right with [Central], and we had a ton of mistakes. They’re pretty highly ranked this year, so that makes us feel confident about the playoffs.”
The Red Devils have two threats in the backfield, Jayon Malon and Eli Gunter.
Quarterback, Reid Basso is more of a weapon running the football but is a capable passer. His favorite receiver is slotback Chris Eubanks.
“They’re probably 75 percent run and 25 percent pass, but they’re going to see last week's game and see that Camp Point hurt us in the flat with a quick passing game,” Flowers said. “We didn’t realize how quick [Chayse Houston] was last week. We made some adjustments this week.”
“They have a quick quarterback. He’s not afraid to throw the ball, but he’s shifty running it as well,” Flowers said. [Eubanks] is their go-to guy. They’re trying to be deceptive with what they do offensively. They’re going to shift some guys around.”
Offensively, Flowers and the Hawks are confident they can cause Sesser-Valier plenty of problems. Carrollton’s averaged 40 points a game, however against teams with winning records, that number drops to 25.
“We had the run-game working pretty good, and we were passing the ball to all of the receivers,” Walker said. “It’s fun. You never know what’s going to happen.
Quarterback Hunter Flowers has thrown for 2,231 yards with 26 touchdowns and ten interceptions. Nathan Walker has caught 44 passes for 743 yards with 13 touchdowns receptions. Ethan Brannan, Garrett Settles, and Zach Flowers are all big targets as well. On the ground, Flowers leads the team with 437 yards and eight touchdowns. Byron Holmes has 264 yards with four touchdowns in sporadic action this season but is expected to play tomorrow.
“They got some size up front. Maybe a little bigger than what we typically see,” Flowers said. “But with that size, I think they lack a little bit of speed in that defensive front. I feel like we’re getting better and better at pass blocking and think we’re running the football better. They’re in a run-heavy conference down there. With us being able to mix it up I feel like we’re definitely going to have some success.”
The Hawks haven’t quite gotten a signature victory this season, but to the likes of Triopia (8-1) and Camp Point (8-1) by a combined 16 points. In their second game of the season, the Hawks were destroyed by the Class 3A Beardstown Tigers 40-6. At that point, they were 0-2 and stared at a dark pathway, but the players stuck together and rattled off six-straight wins to get to this point.
“We’ve learned from some early ones. We’ve grown as a team,” Flowers said. “After a couple of tough losses like that we could’ve easily pointed fingers and start falling apart. I think that says a lot about the players that we held it together and got better. We’ve had more talented teams, but we’re getting a lot out of these kids. If we can get everybody 100 percent [healthy], we can be a big-time playoff team.”
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