Just making the playoffs not enough for Pacelli
Just making the playoffs not enough for Pacelli
By DAVID MITCHELL
dmitchell@ledger-enquirer.com
When Pacelli began its 2015 football season, it had the same goal as every other program in the state that spent all summer in weight rooms and on practice fields:
It wanted to win a state championship.
To do that, it would have to be the best. A string of good fortune wasn't going to be what helped the Vikings get into the playoffs or have success when they got there. At some point they would be tested, and when they were they had to win.
There could be no title without that test.
So when coach Alan Griffin saw the Class A-private bracket that had his team matched against the defending state champions, who were the prohibitive favorites to win the whole thing again, he didn't bat an eye.
"We knew Day 1 that Mount Paran (Christian) was top of the class," he said. "We were going to have to beat them to achieve our ultimate goal. That still holds true today."
The Vikings will face Mount Paran earlier than they had hoped, opening the playoffs on Friday on the road in Kennesaw against the team that had won 23 straight games before taking a surprising loss against Pinecrest Academy to end the regular season.
Despite the loss, Griffin knows Mount Paran is among the best in the state and that it will take a supreme effort from his players to pull off the upset.
But that's nothing different than any week. He expects his team's best no matter of the circumstances.
"It doesn't matter if it's the Dallas Cowboys or Mount Paran -- you have to go out and get stops and you have to move the ball," he said. "We're not concentrating on how good they are. If you start thinking about that, you can get in trouble."
Instead, he's focused on how strong his team is. Despite finishing the regular season with an iden
tical 7-3 record to the previous two seasons, Griffin thinks this year's group is more prepared to contend against the state's best than ever before.
"The previous two years, it was the same exact roadmap," he said. "We beat the teams we should and lost to ones that were a little tougher. This year, I don't think that's the case."
It beat Dooly County and Hawkinsville for the first time in program history. It lost a game or two that, perhaps, it shouldn't have, but the team's ability to respond impressed Griffin.
"That tells me about the character," he said. "When we lost to Greenville in Week 4, they could have folded up shop. I could have been begging for effort, but that's not what happened."
Instead, the team relied on seniors like quarterback Tre Sudberry, running back DeAndre Bowman, linebacker/fullback Ben Davis and others.
Those guys were there at the beginning, when Pacelli went 4-6 in its first year recovering from a three-year stretch in which it won just three games combined. They have watched the program grow into a perennial contender, and they are looking to take the next step.
"It's no longer wonderful just to get there," Griffin said.
"And it was. The last two years, we felt like we had done our jobs as coaches to get there. Now our expectations are to get to the next level."
This story was originally published November 17, 2015 at 9:47 PM with the headline "Just making the playoffs not enough for Pacelli ."