Mustangs take on Region IV-3A2 favorites

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NIXON — Last Thursday, Nixon-Smiley’s head football coach Carlton McKinney said he was going to make sure the team was going to “enjoy the ride.”

“We’re going to work our tails off and they’re going to play extremely hard, but win lose or draw, I want them to realize they are a champion.”

The Mustangs may have looked at the bracket coming up as tonight they’ll take on the East Bernard Brahmas, currently ranked ninth in the AP Texas High School football state rankings in all of 3A.

“They do just about everything well,” McKinney said of their opponents. “They’re a solid football team. As you advance, [it’s] important for us to try to focus on being the best that we can be [to win].”

In the preseason, Dave Campbell’s Texas Football named East Bernard fourth in Division II in their preseason rankings while coaches had the team third. The Brahmas were Region IV favorites then and prognosticators still have them listed as region favorites now.

East Bernard is explosive both on offense and defense and McKinney has noted that they are indeed “bigger, stronger, faster.”

However, the Mustangs have been underdogs all season long, taking on teams that are bigger, stronger and faster. The same prognosticators that have East Bernard as Region IV favorites also pegged Nixon-Smiley at fifth in their district. Now it’s November and the Mustangs are coming into their second playoff game as the runner up representative of District 15.

After their historical win last week (the Mustangs’ first playoff win since 2000), McKinney noted that underdog persona was something he and the team enjoy.

“I like it that way,” he said last week. “I think our kids handle it better that way. When they feel they have something to prove, they just play.”

The Brahmas come into the game with a running attack very similar to what Nixon-Smiley runs. They run a Wing-T, Slot-T offense, a tight formation with a lot of misdirection.

“They’re very consistent,” McKinney said of East Bernard’s offense. “They highlight two running backs but they definitely have three [good ones]. They have a stable of capable running backs. The quarterback is young, but he’s solid, does what [coaches] want him to do.”

Meanwhile, the defense will run a “33” or 3-3-5 stack defense to disrupt what Nixon-Smiley will want to do.

“The tackles attack the line of scrimmage, they will send those guards and tackles up…they do a really good job of occupying the front,” McKinney noted. “They’re athletic in the secondary. They won’t let people get behind them. They keep people up front. Once the ball is in the air, they do a good job of attacking the football.”

Nixon-Smiley will have to run precise routes during the passing game while also not blow assignments up front.

“Our kids have gotten better at it each game,” McKinney said.

The game plan for the Mustangs will be to simply not make mistakes.

“We got to make sure we don’t give them any extra opportunities,” he advised. “Turning the ball over, creating penalties…doing things that we can control. It’s going to be tough enough to play them heads up. We got to make sure not to shoot ourselves in the foot.”

That run game is going to be key for Nixon-Smiley as well. In theory, a team can’t score if they don’t have the ball. For an upset to happen, the Mustangs will need to do just that and not give the ball up to East Bernard.

Again, the Brahmas are ninth ranked in Class 3A (a poll that puts both divisions together). As the Region IV favorites, East Bernard is surely picked to win this game. But Nixon-Smiley has been the underdog before. It’s going to take some solid football from the Mustangs to continue their historic run and McKinney believes his team has a good chance of success if indeed they play near-perfect football.

Kickoff for tonight’s game is at 7:30 p.m. at New Braunfels Canyon High School.

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