Seminole High at Oviedo

[DarterBlue]

Went to Oviedo High and got the benefit of two games for the price of one. In the first game, which featured Varsity starters for all four quarters, Lyman High defeated Hagerty High by a final score of 35-28. Lyman over the past two decades has produced several nice athletes, but only a couple decent teams. Hagerty is a relatively new school. To date its best football player was Jeff Driscol, who was a 5 star dual threat QB coming out of high school, but a relative disappointment at the college level. Lyman's former HBC has been an Assistant at Apopka the last several years and two of his sons have played for Apopka including one that was on the 2012 and 2014 championship teams. The game was entertaining and, with the exception of the third quarter which was scoreless, was dominated by the offenses of both teams, both of which had distinct identities. Lyman ran a spread offense but mostly ran the ball, while Hagerty operated mostly out of the single wing, which is the same as Apopka. It was interesting to watch them run the single wing. It looked a lot different than when APK runs it. For while both teams depend on getting more players at the point of attack for the offense to be successful, Apopka's version relies more heavily on deception and, to some degree, athletic improvisation. Lyman's QB is a nice athlete to watch. He probably won't play QB in college. However, he was elusive and fast, and was a thorn in the side of the Hagerty defense. He took one keeper 75 yards making at least four defenders miss along the way for a score early in the 4th quarter. He also has a decent arm. Hagerty's QB was also good; however, I think he would be more effective in the spread or and offset I formation as he has a really good arm, and while he can run, I don't feel it is his primary strength. 

Seminole and Oviedo are two of the oldest high schools in Seminole County. Oviedo's best footballer is probably Blake Bortles, former UCF and current Jacksonville Jaguars QB. Seminole has produced many athletes including Tim Raines in Baseball and Ray Ray Armstrong in football. Oviedo's best performance saw them making the State Semifinals once in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Seminole, in its only state championship football game in 2008, came from a 21-0 deficit against Miami Northwestern early in the second quarter, to defeat Northwestern 28-21 when with less than a minute left in the game, their star wide receiver, Andre Debose, made a miraculous catch in the end zone despite being tightly covered by the MNW corner. A video clip of that game's highlights is show at the end of this post.  The second game between Seminole and Oviedo, was the one I made the trip to see mostly because I wanted to see how much progress Seminole's freshman QB had made. Seminole came out on top 14-0. Varsity played the 1st, 2nd and 4th quarters while the 3rd quarter was played by the JV teams. This enabled the game to be continuous without the usual half time break. The Varsity portion of this game was dominated by the defenses of both teams. McClain, Seminole's QB was hurried most of the night and was not able to make the pinpoint passes I was used to seeing from him last season. However, he did account for both touchdowns in the air. He has also filled out his body quite a bit which is good as he was real skinny last season. Look for this kid to be picked up by a power 5 college and I would not be surprised if he ends up being a 4 or 5 star recruit. 

My expectations going into the game, were for Seminole to be a live threat for the 8A title this season. Last year Seminole was a district champion and went 9-2 overall, losing in the first round to Apopka by a deceptively wide 54-24 margin in a game that had been very close till midway though the third quarter when the wheels fell off the Seminole wagon. My high expectations for Seminole are based on the fact that last year the team was very young, being sophomore and freshman heavy, with only four or five seniors starting on Varsity. This year they will still be relatively young, but with experience. However, if they are going to fulfill my expectations, they will need to improve the play of their offensive line which had problems with Oveido's front four and linebacker corps all night. Regardless, my expectations of Seminole have not changed. They have a good coaching staff whom I expect will address any shortcomings early on.