When Owensboro quarterback Gavin Wimsatt took the field for his final drive Friday night against Frederick Douglass, Red Devil coach Jay Fallin said he, along with offensive coordinator Jeff Reese, had all the confidence in the world in their junior leader.
Wimsatt delivered in the big moment to propel the Red Devils to victory when he found senior Ethan Avery for the score after Avery was able to get to the pylon.
Reese said Wimsatt has grown a lot since he started at QB for OHS.
“He’s really matured over the course of time where he could kind of cut his memory off,” he said. “We’ve told him from day one, great quarterbacks have very short memories. He blows off mistakes and he plays the next play, he’s really matured in that aspect because young quarterbacks, they let one mistake turn into two and he’s been able to understand ‘okay this is the mistake I made. I’ve learned from it, it’s not going to happen again. Let’s play the next play.’
“He’s so talented, the next play could be the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen. He can kind of self-correct because he is talented. He’s really worked on his craft as far as his mental approach to the game and it’s really gotten a lot better.”
Coming into the season, Reese said he knew he had a lot of weapons on the offensive side of the ball and with five runners with 100 rushing yards and six players with 100 receiving yards, the Red Devils have been balanced in every sense of the word.
Avery has led OHS in rushing with 630 yards and 9 scores this season. Reese said Avery adds a lot to the Red Devil offense.
“I had a lot of faith in Ethan being our running back,” he said. “Ethan does a lot of things that nobody notices in the way of blocking, he’s become a really good route runner. His pass-catching ability has come on and he’s really been the linchpin in creating that extra dynamic in our offense because now we can throw to him and as well as the other four guys and that creates a matchup problem for the defense somewhere.”
While the Red Devil offense has been giving defenses fits this season, it’s much of the same with the Bowling Green defense as they’ve forced turnovers all year long.
Reese said a key Saturday afternoon will be getting the running game going early.
“We just have to be able to rush the ball,” he said. “We can’t just drop back and chuck it down the field 60 times. We’re going to have to mount some kind of running game and that’s a tough task to do because they’re awfully good upfront. Their front five are as good as we’ve seen or will see for times to come. If we can run the ball a little bit, I feel confident we’ll be able to complete some passes and get some first downs.”
