Football Preview: Pine Tree Pirates vs. Stafford Spartans
The Pine Tree Pirates and the Stafford Spartans are set to duel on Friday. Pine Tree is coming into the match hot, having won their last six games.
Pine Tree is on a roll after a high-stakes playoff matchup on Friday. They came out on top against Bridge City by a score of 35-28. 35 seems to be a good number for the Pirates as the team scooped up a win with the same number of points in their previous game.
Meanwhile, winning is always nice, but doing so behind a season-high score is even better (just ask Stafford). They simply couldn't be stopped on Friday as they easily beat Wheatley 41-0. Given the Spartans' advantage in MaxPreps' Texas football rankings (they are ranked 348th, while the Wildcats are ranked 912th), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.
Stafford can attribute much of their success to Zachary Brown, who threw for 62 yards and two touchdowns, and also punched in a touchdown on the ground. Dillan Tatum was another key player, rushing for 94 yards on only 13 carries.
Stafford was unstoppable on the ground and finished the game with 215 rushing yards. That's a new trend for them: they were averaging 73 rushing yards per game earlier this season, but in their last five matchups they've averaged 148.
Special teams also played a big role in the game for Stafford, adding 11 points to the final score. All came courtesy of Fernando Correa: he went 3-for-3 kicking field goals for nine points, and 2-for-2 kicking extra points for an additional two.
Stafford has been performing well recently as they've won five of their last six games, which provided a nice bump to their 7-4 record this season. Those victories were due in large part to their defensive effort, having only surrendered 10.5 points per game. As for Pine Tree, they pushed their record up to 10-1 with the victory, which was their third straight at home.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
