Graham to entertain Gate City in VHSL Class 2 second round game
Nov. 17—BLUEFIELD, Va. — After last year's 61-14 win over Gate City in the 2022 Class 2D playoffs, Graham head coach Tony Palmer cautioned that the win was not achieved as easily as it appeared.
He also noted that Gate City was a football program 'on the way back up.'
It is by no means apparent that the Blue Devils program is on the verge of the dynastic prominence it previously enjoyed under Harry Fry, Nick Colobro and Bill Houseright — father of current GC head coach Jeremy Houseright. But Gate City is definitely on it's way back up to here this week.
No. 2 Graham's defense of its 2022 Class 2 state championship continues this week as the G-Men (10-1) confront the No. 3 Blue Devils (8-3) at Mitchell Stadium. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m.
"I think they've got a good football team. I think Coach Houseright has done a great job with them this year. I think it'll be a tough task for us on Friday," said G-Men head coach Tony Palmer, who is a very good candidate for eventual enshrinement in the VHSL Hall of Fame.
Tonight's victor will advance to face the winner of tomorrow's 2 p.m. game between No. 4 Tazewell (8-3) and No. 1 Union (10-1) at Bullitt Park in Big Stone Gap, Va.
Next week's showdown, which will be played at the highest surviving regional seed, will decide the Region 2D championship.
"The top four seeds are all that is left. That seems about right," said Palmer, whose squad comes off a 56-14 rout of Lee High.
The Blue Devils come to Bluefield after a 28-14 first round win over Marion — which also sounds about right, given Gate City's 20-7 win over the Scarlet Hurricane in the regular season. Then again, there was really nothing to prove against Marion last week.
This week there is everything to prove for a program that only last year obtained its first home playoff game since 2014.
"They've been running Full House, some H-Back ... really multiple offenses. They do everything well," said Palmer, who is impressed by Gate City quarterback Luke Bledsoe, who had the poise to pass for 191 yards after Graham initiated scoring last year with a 32-yard Pick Six by Braden Watkins in the first quarter.
Bledsoe has more than 1,000 yards passing on the year headed into this weeks' game.
"They've got a good quarterback, they've got a good running back. They play well. And they're fundamentally sound on defense. They've got a good football team. They're at the same level we are right now," Palmer said.
A trend worth noting: since getting their noses bloodied by Union (35-0) and Tennessee High (42-13) the Blue Devils have won five straight, including a shutout of Ridgeview. The Blue Devils defense — which is an ancient point of pride at Legion Field — has yet to allow any opponent other than Tennessee and Union score more than 19 points against it.
Finding a way to corral an offense as explosive as Graham's will certainly be a tall order for the Blue Devils, but they can be counted on to make an earnest attempt. In last year's meeting Ty'Drez Clements rushed for 238 yards and touchdown runs of 59, 56 and 4 yards.
In addition to the reigning Class 2 Offensive Player of the Year, the G-Men also have Chris Edwards, Daniel Jennings and Dalton Roberts. All three were second half standouts in last year's tilt with the Devils. This year they — and others— have been forged in fire during the weeks the G-Men successfully hid (for the most part) an assortment of regular season injuries.
"I think our kids are starting to mesh. We've got mostly everybody back healthy. We've got them all together playing for each other," said Palmer.
"There's a silver lining in the [regular season] struggles that we had. We were able to obtain some depth from other people due to the injuries. Now that we've got people healthy, they can come in and help us."
An historic note from the regular season finale was Clements' passing Ahmad Bradshaw's longstanding school career rushing record of 5,252 yards.
In spite of English poet A.E. Houseman's immortal words about the bittersweet ambiguity of all-too-mortal athletic records, there has been no sign that the Marshall University Hall of Famer — considered one of the all-time 10 best running backs in New York Giants history — was anything other than happy about his record's passage.
"Ahmad has been very helpful to our program and to our kids as far as rooting them on and things like that," said Palmer, who noted that Clements sat out at least six games due to injury over the last two seasons.
"That record probably would have went down about Game 4 or 5 if Ty'Drez had been healthy," Palmer said.
