The Liberty Redhawks will head out to challenge the Walnut Grove Wildcats at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday. The teams are rolling into the game with opposing streaks: Liberty has struggled recently with 16 defeats in a row, while Walnut Grove will arrive with six straight wins.
Liberty is headed into the contest out to prove that what happened against Emerson on Thursday (when they were outscored in every quarter) was just a minor bump in the road. Liberty was outmatched by Emerson at home and fell 60-6. While losing is never fun, the Redhawks can't take it too hard given the team's big disadvantage in MaxPreps' Texas football rankings (they are ranked 858th, while the Mavericks are ranked 85th).
Meanwhile, winning is always nice, but doing so behind a season-high score is even better (just ask Walnut Grove). They breezed by Memorial on the road to the tune of 64-24 on Friday. The matchup was pretty much decided by the half, when the score had already reached 49-14.
Walnut Grove's success was spearheaded by the efforts of Cameron Newton, who gained 221 total yards and three touchdowns, and Hayes Hackney, who threw for 389 yards and six touchdowns while picking up 14.4 yards per attempt. With that strong performance, Hackney is now averaging an impressive 3.4 passing touchdowns per game. John Hutson did his part to keep the secondary busy, picking up 116 receiving yards.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the score, Walnut Grove was unstoppable on the ground and finished the game with 295 rushing yards. That strong performance was nothing new for the team: they've now rushed for at least 174 rushing yards in nine consecutive matches dating back to last season.
Walnut Grove wouldn't let Memorial keep a hold of the ball as they managed to force three fumbles. It was truly a group effort as Jacob Sutton, Cole Loveland, and Antonie Van Tonder picked up one apiece. Another thorn in Memorial's side was Parker Devenny, who picked up two sacks and made eight total tackles.
Liberty's loss dropped their record down to 0-6. As for Walnut Grove, their victory was their fourth straight on the road dating back to last season, which pushed their record up to 5-0.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
