TC Must Contain Spread Offense

There is a type of football Tampa Catholic coach Bob Henriquez says his team needs to avoid in Friday's Class 2A semifinal game against Miami Gulliver Prep: flag football.

Gulliver Prep runs the spread offense, and it is one of the most effective and productive teams the Crusaders have faced.

Raiders junior QB Michael Strauss has passed for 2,817 yards and 29 touchdowns and has four receivers who have caught 30 or more passes this season. One, senior Conner Vernon, has 60 receptions. To keep defenses honest, Gulliver features a breakaway threat in RB Darian Mallary, who has rushed for 1,602 yards and 14 TDs.

"They want it to be a flag football game," Henriquez said. "So we have to limit their opportunities, which for us means playing better on offense and controlling the ball."

Behind Crusaders junior QB Christian Green, Henriquez believes his defense gets to see an effective offense - one that runs some spread formations - on a regular basis. But the key for TC, he says, will be limiting turnovers, producing time-consuming drives and winning the field-position battle so that when the Raiders have the ball, they will be facing a long field.

"You don't want it to be a scoring contest against them," Henriquez said. "That's the mistake other teams have made and what we'll be trying to avoid."

SILENCE IS GOLDEN: One problem Armwood had on its last trip to Plant was dealing with the noise echoing through Dad's Stadium.

The raucous Panthers crowd kept the Hawks' offense out of sorts all night. Armwood normally uses a no-huddle attack and relies on coaches vocally sending in plays from the sideline, but the Hawks struggled with that process the entire game in a 9-2 victory.

"It was very difficult," Hawks senior QB Mywan Jackson said. "We couldn't hear anything. The band was playing real loud. We really didn't get much done that week."

Knowing a return trip to Plant's home field in the playoffs was a possibility, the Hawks have been working on a solution to combat the noise.

"We're going to be huddling up or we're going to be doing hand signals - no coaches communicating vocally from the sidelines at all," Armwood coach Sean Callahan said.

MURRAY BACK ON FIELD: Plant's football team witnessed something Monday night it hadn't seen since Oct. 16 - QB Aaron Murray running around and throwing the ball.

Gone were the crutches and the plastic cast Murray had worn since breaking his leg and dislocating his ankle in the Oct. 16 game against Hillsborough. Murray began jogging in water two weeks ago, and he got the green light from his doctor on Monday to ditch the crutches and large cast. He now sports a smaller support brace on his ankle.

"I feel good," Murray said. "The bone's healed. I just have to get everything else around it stronger. It's going to take some time, but I'm way ahead of schedule."

Murray's teammates joked that he would play Friday night against Armwood. That game is out, but the Army All-American Bowl on Jan. 3 in San Antonio remains a possibility. Murray graduates from Plant in a couple of weeks, so he can enroll early at the University of Georgia and participate when offseason workouts begin.

Bill Ward, Adam Adkins,

Katherine Smith