The Daviess County Panthers haven’t taken the field since Oct. 30 when they took down Warren East 56-14 but after a couple of weeks without a game, coach Matt Brannon and his squad are hungry to take the field Friday as they open the KHSAA Class 6A Playoffs at Henderson County.
The Panthers take on the HC at 7 p.m. at Colonels Stadium as Henderson came away with a 66-43 win back on Oct. 16 when Ben Dalton set a school record with 302 rushing yards.
Brannon said while the time to practice been good, he wanted to take the field against Owensboro Catholic.
“Losing the Catholic game I think hurt us because just being able to get the game in to compete, to play a rivalry game and it’s a game we felt like we had a really good shot at winning,” he said. “That would have helped us more than an extra week of preparation.”
But, with the playoffs in Kentucky getting pushed back a week, Brannon said that gave them some valuable time to get players healthy.
“This extra week that everybody got, that’s going to help us tremendously because we had 38 players quarantined,” he said.
Brannon said the depth hasn’t been there this season but with the younger players being on the roster, they’ve been able to do different things when it comes to practice.
“We don’t want to practice and get somebody hurt in practice,” he said. “At this point, we haven’t played in three weeks. We have to be physical in practice. We can’t play not to get hurt. We’re not at that point where we’ve gone through the grind of a 10-game season and we’re going into a long playoff run. We’ve played seven games and we’ve had three weeks off.”
Daviess County and Henderson County aren’t strangers as they two have played each other several times the past few seasons.
Brannon said they can’t go into it with the same mindset and the same gameplan although he knows the Colonels do things a certain way.
“I do think they are the type of offense that they do what they do,” he said. “We’ve got to give them some different looks. We can’t just sit in the same front. We tried that last time then we said we’ve got to change some personnel up so we’ve done that. We’ve got some guys playing in some different spots so hopefully ignite a little bit of fire.
“As coaches, we look back and kind of evaluated our gameplan and it wasn’t solid. Changed the way we were going to attack them and I think we need to be more aggressive going after them. It’s option football so you have to play assignment driven football and can’t let these young guys be indecisive whatsoever.”
Joe Humphreys has lead the Panthers from the quarterback position this season as the junior has 1,311 yards with 17 touchdowns and just two interceptions.
Coming into the season, he said he wanted to change the tide.
“I was looking to have a better season than last year,” he said. “We started off a little slow with an 0-3 start. This year kind of the same thing but just looking to turn that around, have a better start to the season.”
Humphreys has also ran for 412 yards and seven scores for the Panthers.
He said he knew him being more mobile could make the offense more lethal.
“I didn’t run as much last year,” he said. “That’s something we added more into this year to make it a little harder for teams to adjust to what we’re going to do. We have the passing game and we still have (Bryson) Parm and they can add me into that now.”
The Panthers’ leading rushing this season has been Bryson Parm as he has 975 yards and 12 scores on the season.
Humphreys it makes his job easier to have Parm in the backfield.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “He’s liable to break a play any moment. He’s so twitchy and quick, he can make a move and he’s gone.”
Coming into the season, Humphreys knew the accolades that his friend Gavin Wimsatt had and for Humphreys, he said that made him that much hungrier to do his best this season.
“Definitely,” he said. “It makes me want to work even harder to get my name out there and have my chance like that.”
While Humphreys is on offense, he said they have a huge to play on the defensive side of the ball come Friday because when the defense does their, he said it’s the offenses job to make the most of the takeaways.
“I think if we can capitalize off of their stops and score, that’ll be the key to the game.”
On defense, one of the key leaders for the Panthers has been the play of sophomore Isaac Blue. Blue has 58 tackles, five TFL and three sacks for DC but he’s all about helping the team where he can.
“I think it’s just important for me to do my job to the best of my abilities all over the field,” he said.
With the amount of solid linebackers in the city, Blue said he knows it’s key to give it his all on every play.
“I think it’s very important because I’m trying to prove to everyone in the city how good I am and what I can do,” he said.
The Panthers and the Colonels take the field at 7 p.m. Friday in the first round of the KHSAA Class 6A State Playoffs.
