2018 Season Wrap Up

Just as the end comes sooner and more abruptly than expected with life and apple pie, so did the 2018 football season for the Bears. Because of the early exit, writing this post is harder than others. Not because of the loss, but because of how the outcome occurred. We want to celebrate a good season and a region championship, but we also want to acknowledge the disappointing ending to the season. We will try our best to walk that line as we talk about the season as a whole, but also recap the final game.

Round 1 Recap


BHP hosted the at-large seeded Westwood team out of region 3-4A in the first round matchup. BHP, coming off a very impressive winning streak culminating in a region championship, entered the playoffs as the team that could have home field advantage as long as they won. Ultimately after 48 minutes of gameplay, the Bears would have played their last game of the season. BHP was able to get on the scoreboard first by converting a 25 yard field goal. After that, BHP was held scoreless for the rest of the game while Westwood would score 20 unanswered points. BHP’s offense was completely engulfed by Westwood’s speed and athleticism and was held to 157 total yards, the least gained in any game since 2014 (BHP had 6 quarters this season where they gained 157 or more yards). The 3 points gained by BHP was only the 5th time since 2010 that the Bears scored less than a touchdown in a game and this is the second season in a row that BHP scored only 3 points in their playoff loss.

As good as Westwood performed on defense, their offense performed nearly as well. They gained 397 total yards, the 2nd most given up by the Bears this season. Westwood would also gain 9.2 yards per pass attempt, the second most allowed by the Bears all season. Even with the large number of total yards allowed, BHP only allowed 20 total points (second least points per yard this season, 0.05 points per yard).

Even being down the whole second half, it felt like the Bears were always in striking distance. However, the strikes kept falling short and because of that, BHP exited the first round in disappointing fashion. Nevertheless, BHP came up short against a team that was maybe the second most athletic team BHP faced all year.

With all this being said, having both Daniel and Wren still playing in the 3rd round makes the loss to Westwood feel even worse (both teams lost to BHP by 38 total points).

Sidenote


With rain leading up to the game and the lowest temperatures of the season, the feeling going into the game was strange. The elements and BHP seemingly being the favorite to win the game seemed to keep a lot of BHP fans away. That combined with the lack of energy for nearly every aspect of the BHP side led to an atmosphere that should embarrass all BHP fans. This atmosphere may or may not have affected the play on the field, but as a BHP fan, former football player, and graduate, it was embarrassing.

Along with the atmosphere, there was no pageantry. This has been an issue at BHP for a long time. One of the special aspects of football on all levels is the pageantry and the game day experience. Honestly speaking, playing the fight song and running through a paper banner does not do justice for what this team means to two communities. We will hopefully have a series of posts this offseason on ways we could work on improving this for upcoming seasons and we’d would love to hear your ideas.

Season Recap


As disappointed as the season ended, we have to take a look and celebrate how well the team played during the regular season. BHP ended the season 8-3 with losses coming to T.L. Hanna, Walhalla, and Westwood. 8 of BHP’s 10 regular season opponents made the playoffs. Only eight 4A teams won 8 or more games this season. Also, this team became the 20th BHP team to win 8 or more regular season games. Along with the 8 wins, BHP ended the regular season on a 4 game win streak that won BHP their 11th region championship in school history. This season BHP was led by an explosive offense, scoring 4.6 more points per game than they did last season. The offensive output was mainly led by a prolific passing attack which gained 26% more yards and scored nearly 1 TD per game more than last season. For more season stats check out the Week 11 Bear Tracks post.

Records Set


One way we can quantify how great of a season the Bears had is to show all of the records that were set. 9 BHP offensive records were set.



Conclusion


We have mixed emotions about the season, on one hand the team was extremely frustrating by playing down to their opponents’ skill and making extremely bad game decisions. But on the other hand, this team won 8 games, a region championship, and played two of the best games in recent BHP history. We want to celebrate the great performances by this team and their seniors. Also, having underclassmen taking on big roles this season gives an optimistic view for upcoming seasons.

This is where we usually give our prediction of the game score. Well, our prediction is that we will quit giving score predictions. This season we were on average predicting BHP’s score 5.5 points higher than their actual game points, and predicting their points allowed 4.7 points lower than actual points allowed. However, we were 8-3 with my win predictions (we did predict every game would be a win for the Bears).

We want to thank all of you who read our weekly recaps and view the Bear Stat pages. We also want to thank Coach Blackston and his staff for giving us access and the ability to gather these stats.

We should also thank our sponsor this season, Exceeding Sports. They helped us provide all of the resources we did. They have let us know that they will be launching their first online application soon so we will keep you up-to-date with that as well.

Finally, I want to thank the people who make our Friday nights enjoyable: Joel, Chandler, and Allen Kay. We get to share a press box with them and truly enjoy their company, the history they can add to the game, and their viewpoint on the Bears. You might not know it, but my dad and I are the ones who gather the stats on Friday night. I want to thank him for putting up with some of my weird demands and tailoring our stat gathering processes to fit our system. Lastly, I want to give a huge thanks to my wife who to wrangles our two toddlers all day on Friday, then again on Friday night, just so I can go to each game. Thank you all.

Follow us on Facebook /howboutthembears and Twitter @bhp_bears for any and all of our offseason updates.

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