The Male High School football team (11-0), No. 1 in the state in The Courier-Journal’s Litkenhous Ratings, will host No. 18 Manual (9-2) at 7:30 p.m. Friday in a second-round Class 6-A playoff game.
A head coach with knowledge of both programs broke down the matchup with The Courier-Journal’s Jason Frakes.
Question: What’s the toughest part about preparing for Male?
Answer: The obvious is that they have so many fast kids. For a lot of teams, you prepare and say, “We have to know where No. 10 is all the time.” With them, if you focus on one player, they have so many other kids who can hurt you. Defensively, up front they’re just so good. It’s not even close to where most high school teams are. … You can say, “We have to establish a little run game to keep them honest.” But if you do that you’re just saying, “We’re going to be second and 10 all the time.” They’re just so much better than you.
Q: Is Male’s biggest advantage over other teams its offense or defense?
A: They’re good on defense, but … I feel like teams can move the ball against them. Their secondary is good and really athletic, but I think they know they are and they take chances. You can hurt them with play-action because they attack a lot. If you can play-action, you can get guys behind them. They seem to have a vulnerable spot there. On offense, I don’t know that they’re vulnerable.
Q: How significant is the fact that Male plays five defensive backs?
A: It’s just the fact that they can play five defensive backs because they’re so strong on the interior. That says more to it than anything. A high school quarterback going back, he has very few options if five guys are covering. That’s why play-action is what you have to do. You have to get those inside linebackers coming up and throw behind them.
Q: What stands out most when preparing for Manual?
A: Just how good they are up front. It’s all about defense with Manual. They’re going to have a hard time on offense moving the ball against Male. … They’re going to have to suck it up and realize, “We can’t play them head-to-head.” And having that earlier game gives them the advantage of hindsight and saying, “We can’t play them straight up.” I don’t know how exotic they can be with their offense, but they have to do something other than just their traditional offense.
Q: So what can Manual do to turn the tide from its 43-7 loss to Male last month?
A: Just even going to more of a traditional read option and including a pitch man. Something like that could put pressure on what Male does. Manual doesn’t really pitch the ball. But if they did, there’s an extra man that maybe Male hasn’t accounted for in their game plan. But the main thing they have to do is more play-action. I’ll say that to anybody who plays Male. You have to try to turn their strength into a weakness. They’re really fast. So if you can get them running in the wrong direction at the beginning of the play, they’re going to run really fast in the wrong direction. Now you have a chance to run by them.
Q: Give us a prediction for a final score.
A: I think it might be a 28-point lead for Male at halftime. After that, it doesn’t matter. It depends on how much Male wants to play their kids. But I could be wrong. Maybe Manual held back a bunch of stuff in the first game.
Jason Frakes can be reached at (502) 582-4046 and jfrakes@courier-journal.com.