The idiom “mixed bag” generally has negative connotations in my experience, but this column is going to be a mixed bag.
Who knows, a negative meaning of the phrase might be fitting.
We’ve reached a quieter period as another fall season comes to a close, but I’m still full of things I wanted to write about. Unable to make a decision, I decided to write about all of them.
Is Patuxent good enough to beat Fort Hill?
Should we change how we measure success for some local high school teams?
Maryland’s basketball players can’t simply pass the ball to each other, and this Players Era Festival is a microcosm of everything that’s gone wrong with college athletics.
Frostburg State and coach Wagoner deserve some flowers too.
Patuxent
I had a lot of time to think about Patuxent on my three-and-a-half hour drive through a steady rain to Ellerslie from the Southern Maryland school.
By the time I crossed through Sideling Hill and entered into Allegany County as the clock struck 3 a.m., I’d finally made up my mind:
Patuxent left me wanting more.
Sure, Class 1A’s No. 1 seed was impressive in its 42-0 rout of Allegany in the state quarterfinals on Friday night. There was a maturity to its passing game, which consistently completed intermediate passes to stay ahead of the sticks.
They’re well-coached, too. I remember a third-and-long where the Panthers ran an out route where the receiver cut off his run at exactly the first down marker and got both feet in at the boundary.
That’s Day 1 stuff at the college level, but it’s impressive at the small public school level.
Patuxent was almost in slow motion, like it was toying with Allegany instead of blowing them out of the water.
This is a program, after all, that beat Dunbar for the Class 2A/1A title last year and lost close games to the Poets in the playoffs the prior two years.
Their top receiver, Evan Jones, with offers from Maryland and Virginia Tech, had just three catches and was mostly invisible until Patuxent decided to put him in the backfield and allow him to break off a 66-yard run through Allegany’s entire secondary, starting to the left side and finishing just inside of the right pylon half a football field later.
Allegany’s defensive front, down Amanni Blowe, also held its own against a left tackle standing at 6-foot-5, 300 pounds and a 6-3, 300-pound center.
Like Blowe, Patuxent’s starting running back Antoine Wilkins broke his collarbone late in the season and is out for the year, and that’s taken a hit from their running game.
Suffice to say, it was a weird night.
In the coming days, however, I’ve wondered if Patuxent’s vanilla approach was by design.
Its coach, Steve Crounse, is a Hall of Famer for a reason, and he has a 2A title at the school a decade ago along with a full trophy case to show his success isn’t based on one dream class.
I watched the Commercial Video replay of the Fort Hill/Green Street game when I got home, mostly for comedic purposes, and it’s not like the Sentinels opened up the playbook in a game they were all but assured to win either.
Coaches don’t want to play all their cards before they have to.
So I don’t really know how “good” Pax is. Its staff is one of the state’s best, and I don’t think it’ll show up not knowing how to defend the Wing-T like Oakdale inconceivably did twice in 2021 and ‘22.
I’d say they’re closer to Hollidaysburg’s level than that of a Bridgeport or Dunbar. Instead of being a power run squad like the Golden Tigers this year, they use quick game and short passing.
I know, both still have semifinals to get through, as Fort Hill hosts Perryville and Patuxent welcomes Boonsboro.
But, like those who pay attention up here, Crounse has had an eye on Fort Hill ever since his school dropped to 1A.
He told me Friday that after games or practices, they’ve viewed success through the lens of, “Were we good enough today to beat Fort Hill?”
So I asked him, “Were you good enough today coach?”
“No.”
Expectations
As an avid consumer of local media, I try to listen to WCBC’s Saturday Morning Quarterback program whenever I am actually able to wake up during normal human hours.
For the record, this isn’t an endorsement of one radio station over another, but game recognizes game. As someone who puts in the work, it’s obvious when others do too.
A few weeks ago, Jim Zamagias posed the question, “Should we alter how we evaluate success for Allegany?”
I agree completely. Years ago, past coaches have measured success by Homecoming. A 9-1 season with a loss to Fort Hill was viewed by some as a failure.
The 2025 Allegany season, regardless of a 57-13 loss in Homecoming, was a resounding success.
This team endured transfers of stars Devin Tinnen (St. John’s) and Kane Williams (Morgantown), and had just seven seniors and 16 underclassmen on its roster.
Somehow there are still people lambasting Bryan Hansel and the Allegany coaching staff for winning six games and getting to the state playoffs for the first time in 16 years.
Allegany sweeping Mountain Ridge with a 35-18 romp in the region co-final, down one of its top players Blowe to injury, is one of the season’s most impressive results.
Allegany will measure success on beating Fort Hill again in the not so distant future, don’t you worry.
Frankfort no underdog
In that same vein, I think it’s time we view Frankfort in a different light.
Frankfort should be judged by the same standard we judge Fort Hill. The Falcons haven’t been in a close game in the fourth quarter in two seasons.
Frankfort has won 26 games in a row, 25 by at least 20 points. It’s the longest streak in the state (West Virginia).
In the history of Fort Hill High School, the Sentinels have never had consecutive seasons in which they won every game by double digits.
No, not even when Fort Hill was playing Silver Oak, Capital Christian, etc. to try to run the table for playoff seeding.
And yet, late in the season, I had Frankfort people telling me that they’re not capable of beating vaunted Independence, or weeks earlier, Herbert Hoover.
It beat Hoover, 37-25, and mercifully kneeled it out on the goal line at the end of the game. “Powerhouse” Independence lost to Doddridge County, 38-27, in the quarterfinals last weekend.
The Falcons are not plucky underdogs anymore.
With no Bridgeport in Class AA now that the state has added a fourth class, Frankfort has become the new Bridgeport or Fairmont Senior in AA. Embrace it.
Frankfort’s last six playoff finals are 50-15, 49-7, 49-14, 49-7, 27-6 and 45-0.
When Fort Hill pounds Green Street, 77-12, in the quarterfinals, people rightly say how top-heavy the Maryland high school football playoffs are.
When Frankfort pounds Mingo Central, 50-15, nobody talks about the quality of the playoff field.
How Mingo Central won nine football games not being able to snap the football to its quarterback, I’ll never know.
“Well, Mingo Central is better than Green Street!” somebody told me after the football game Saturday in defense of Class AA.
It really showed when they finished with minus 41 rushing yards.
Both schools are the big fish in a small pond in these expanded playoffs. We need to alter our expectations thusly.
Feel the Buzz
I stayed up late Monday night to watch Maryland take on UNLV at midnight in the sham Players Era Festival.
The Terps turned it over 15 times in the first half, prompting several early bedtimes, before eventually figuring out you can simply pass the basketball to players wearing the same uniform.
Maryland didn’t turn the ball over once in the final 12 minutes, and it held on to win 74-67.
This column will be on the pages ready for print by the time Maryland and Gonzaga take the floor Tuesday in Las Vegas, but I’ll predict something like 90-71 Zags.
The only thing worse than Maryland’s first half was the Players Era Tournament itself.
Instead of a multitude of compelling tournaments during Feast Week, which the Thanksgiving in-season tournament week of Thanksgiving is often referred to as, we have 18 programs at one site.
There are a litany of ads all over the court in a dead atmosphere that is indistinguishable from the NBA’s bubble in 2020 when fans were barred. Oh, and it’s held in Vegas, fitting given the recent FBI investigation into professional sports.
Buzz Williams must’ve had the boys out playing craps the night before. They certainly played like it.
The reality is, schools would be stupid to spurn the $1 million check in favor of a real tournament.
Historically significant events like the Maui Invitational are afterthoughts in favor of a tournament that’s not even a real tournament.
The Players Era divvies the 18 schools into pods, you don’t even play everybody in your pod, and a series of tiebreakers decides who gets to play for the “championship.”
They’re expanding to 32 teams next year by the way.
(Yes, I’ll still be watching)
Frostburg State
How about those Frostburg State Bobcats?
I seem to remember hearing the program was set for a decline after DeLane Fitzgerald left for Southern Utah in 2022 after building the program from the ashes.
That got louder after Frostburg started last year 6-0 and was nationally ranked before a five-game skid to end the year.
Eric Wagoner and company bounced back with a 9-2 regular season that ended with the Bobcats earning the Mountain East Conference’s automatic bid and first NCAA Division 2 playoff berth.
Wagoner was voted MEC Coach of the Year in the process.
Frostburg then upset Johnson C. Smith, ranked as high as No. 11 in the country at the time, 21-7 for their maiden D2 playoff win on Saturday.
That program has become bigger than any one person, and there’s still room to grow.