The Walnut Grove Wildcats will take on the Liberty Redhawks at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday. The teams are on pretty different trajectories at the moment (Walnut Grove has six straight wins, Liberty has 16 straight losses), but none of that matters once you're on the field.
Walnut Grove is headed in fresh off scoring the most points they have all season. They breezed by Memorial on the road to the tune of 64-24 on Friday. Considering the Wildcats have won four matches by more than 27 points this season, Friday's blowout was nothing new.
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. The team also got some help courtesy of Luke Watkins, who picked up 100 receiving yards and two touchdowns.
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.
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 games dating back to last season.
Meanwhile, a victory for Liberty just wasn't in the cards on Thursday as the squad wasn't able to take the lead at any point. They were 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).
Walnut Grove pushed their record up to 5-0 with the win, which was their fourth straight on the road dating back to last season. As for Liberty, their defeat dropped their record down to 0-6.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
